Parts of 1986 report on Nazis in Canada must be made public, court rules

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Greater public knowledge of the country’s past, he added, promotes informed discussion and reinforces democratic life.

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The judge allowed the continued withholding of the quoted U.S. official’s remarks under section 13, because the material had been received from a foreign government in confidence. Still, he described the contents as apparently “innocuous” and said Canada should continue seeking U.S. permission to disclose them.

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“Frankly, I think the opening of the report, if that actually happens any time soon, is a non-event. There’s likely nothing in the report that’s not already known, or at least suspected by the Jewish community. I think the bigger story is how hard over the years the Canadian government has fought the Jewish community on every level regarding this issue. The non-release of this report until now is just a symptom of that,” said Steven Rambam, founder and CEO of Pallorium, Inc., a Brooklyn-based licensed investigative agency.

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In the mid-1990s, Rambam and his associates compiled a list of 2,000 possible Nazi war criminals living in Canada, and winnowed them down to 200 of the worst to investigate. He located 170 suspected Nazi war criminals and collaborators living in Canada, and interviewed about 70 of them undercover.

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“I can personally attest to the fact that all the war criminals were known decades ago. The Canadian government could have done much, much more,” he told the Post. “There’s no war criminal that entered Canada that wasn’t known to the RCMP. That I feel confident in saying.”

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Steven Rambam, one-time Nazi hunter, and founder and CEO of Pallorium, Inc. Photo by Courtesy of Steven Rambam.

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The federal government has 30 days to appeal the Sept. 1 ruling, and Robertson said that “it’s a real possibility” that they could do so, to delay even further.

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“What will the unsealing of the few remaining portions of this report, if it happens, actually reveal to Canadians or to the Jewish community in particular? Nothing that hasn’t already been known for decades,” Rambam said. Complete accountability, in Robertson’s view, would look like “full disclosure of Canada’s Nazi past, the full release of the Rodal Report, the full release of the Deschenes Commission Part 2, and turning this into part of Canadian education, so that Canadians can learn from the mistakes of our past and can understand them and come to grips with them.”

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He added: “Rather than try to sweep that history under the rug and to fight about whether or not that history should be disclosed to the public, our government should be exercising its ability in acting with moral fortitude, and leadership.”

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The issue of Canada’s allowing in of suspected former Nazis returned sharply to public attention in September 2023, when MPs in parliament gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, who had served in the Waffen-SS Galicia Division. The controversy prompted renewed scrutiny of Canada’s immigration, vetting, and historical-record practices concerning alleged Nazi war criminals and collaborators.

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