A letter in the August 22 Toronto Star blames European racism and insatiable greed for the “genocide” of Canada's native population. [1] Suddenly, I picture the illustrious names of our history in a Nuremberg-like prisoners' dock. The correspondent's argument is superfically plausible but lacks Depth and context. Mind you, had I not lived among the Cree and Inuit on James Bay for five years, where I studied native history and culture, I may have bought into it.

Likewise, had I not been an active defender of John Demjanjuk's innocence for seven years (1986 - 1993), I too might have bought into Walter Kish's opinion that Ukrainians should proceed full-throttle to examine their history and their conscience, and face up to the degree, if any, they were complicit in the Nazi Holocaust.

In fact, I believe we should one day do so. But now is not the time, not when – to borrow the phrase Lord Denning used to describe the toxic atmosphere that roiled the Demjanjuk trial in Jerusalem -– “racial and political vengeance” is rampant and our elders are fed to the bureaucratic Moloch of a justice system where a persecution-by-prosecution is the first order of the day. [2] I refer, of course, to the denaturalization and deportation ploy adopted by the Canadian and American authorities to rid us of the baleful presence of alleged old Nazis; criminal trials, at least in Canada, having proved a dismal failure.

You do not have to be a brilliant rocket scientist, like America's favourite Nazi collaborator, Werner Von Braun, to understand this simple fact: Venerable old Ukrainians are being persecuted by zealous Nazi-hunters. The case of our John Demjanjuk has been “out there” since 1976. Twenty-five years later, and it is still ongoing. You wonder: Will it continue being “out there” to April 4, 2020, when Demjanjuk turns 100?

The impact on the extended Demjanjuk family may be gauged by comparing it to the description provided by Dr. D.A. McMillan, physician for Johann Dueck, an innocent who was also the victim of Nazi-hunting zealotry: “As a family physician I have seen the hell this family has been through in the past 4 1/2 years. Johann, one of the finest people I know, while fighting advanced cancer, had to hide out at home to keep from facing reporters and camermen who wanted to interview 'a Nazi killer.' The phone rang with crank calls. The whole family has spent their life savings and mortgaged their properties to a maximum to fight these charges.” [3]

An end to such persecution would, to my mind, be but one of two conditions to be met before Ukrainians could seriously begin to consider their role, however marginal, as wartime collaborators of the Nazi regime. The other would be for the Jewish community to lead by example. Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal: “We [i.e. Jews] have done very little to condemn Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. When, after the war, I demanded that those who had abused their office in ghettos or concentration camps be removed from Jewish committees, I was told that 'this would diminish the guilt of the Nazis.'” [4]

Notes:

1. Stephen James Kerr,”Where were `good intentions' in founding of Canada?”,

Letters, Toronto Star, August 22, 2001.

2. Lord Denning, “Trial was contrary to international law,” Letters, The London

Telegraph, April 28, 1988 <http://www.ukar.org/dennin01.htm>.

3. Dr. D.A. McMillan, “No justice for Dueck,” Toronto Globe and Mail,

January 22, 1999.

4. Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, Weidenfeld and Nicolson:

London, 1989, p. 231.