The Federal Court has ordered the government to publish redacted portions of a report about the resettlement of Nazi war criminals in Canada through a secret CIA program after the Second World War.
The court ruling is the result of legal action by B’nai Brith. The Jewish organization had challenged Ottawa’s decision to keep secret some details of American efforts to help Nazi collaborators enter Canada, contained in a report written 40 years ago.
The cover of Alti Rodal’s report, Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present.Supplied
Unless successfully appealed by the federal government, the ruling will lead to the removal of almost all the redactions in a report written by historian Alti Rodal for the 1985-86 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, headed by former Quebec judge Jules Deschênes. The commission investigated allegations that Canada had become a safe haven for Nazi war criminals.
Most of Ms. Rodal’s report had already been made public, with further declassified details released in 2024. The Federal Court judgment, issued Tuesday, relates to a section dealing with “irregularities in resettlement of defectors and former agents.” That portion has never been fully disclosed “despite its age and historical importance,” the ruling said.
Judge Simon Fothergill wrote that his considerations had included “the importance of the historical record” and ”the passage of time” in making his decision.
Historians welcomed the court ruling, saying it would help shed more light on the role American intelligence agencies played in facilitating the settlement of Nazi collaborators in Canada, some using false identities and documentation.
The report found that Nazi collaborators who had aided the United States, including by providing information, were assisted in entering Canada by the Research and Resettlement Branch of the United States Army in Europe (USAREUR).
The Rodal report said USAREUR was then a cover organization for the Central Intelligence Agency and other such U.S. agencies. The U.S. Army organization admitted that some of its informants had criminal records, including a number arising from cases involving moral turpitude – the category under which Nazi collaborators were listed.
Marsha Lederman: Find out if your kin were Nazis – in seconds
Although the U.S. had a policy of admitting 100 such collaborators a year, the report said, it perhaps preferred sending the “less desirable ones” to other countries such as Canada.
Ms. Rodal’s research found irregularities in the processing of immigration requests by Canadian immigration offices in Europe. Some applications for entry to Canada presented by USAREUR were accepted without background checks.
“It is a scandal that, during a time when Canada maintained severe restrictions on Jewish immigration to this country, it facilitated the entry of perpetrators of Nazi crimes,” Simon Wolle, B’nai Brith Canada’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Canadians have a right to know the truth about not only Canada’s actions but the U.S.’s covert efforts to sneak ex-Nazis into Canada after the Second World War.”
The disclosure of redacted sections of Ms. Rodal’s research may reveal how many Nazi collaborators were resettled in Canada with U.S. help, as well as the identities of some Canadian and U.S. officials involved.
After the Second World War, U.S. and British intelligence agencies were particularly keen to glean information about the Soviet Union, including from Germany, as the Cold War began.
Jared McBride, a history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who provided witness testimony during the court hearing, said some Nazi collaborators who provided intelligence to the Americans in the postwar years would have been promised a new life in the U.S. or elsewhere as a reward.
He said some would have entered Canada with false documentation and laundered identities with the help of U.S. intelligence, as their activities under the Third Reich may have precluded them from entering otherwise.
“The CIA program alluded to in the Rodal Report remains largely shrouded in mystery,” Prof. McBride added in an e-mail. “The U.S. government developed a variety of mechanisms for relocating individuals deemed problematic intelligence assets from Europe, sometimes transferring them directly to the United States and, in other cases, facilitating their movement to countries in South America and elsewhere.”
He said postwar programs meant to facilitate the relocation of such individuals to Canada and other allied countries “remain insufficiently researched and warrant considerably greater scholarly attention.”
To honour my father, I have a replica of his Auschwitz tattoo inked on my own arm
The court ruling follows years of attempts by B’nai Brith to gain the full report, including an access to information request in 2023 and a subsequent lawsuit challenging the decision to withhold parts of it.
The Federal Court, in its ruling Tuesday, found that the Minister for Canadian Heritage, a post currently held by Marc Miller, “did not properly weigh either the public’s right to know or the historical importance of the information withheld from the Rodal Report.”
Ms. Rodal welcomed the court decision, saying in an interview that she had always intended for her report to be public.
“After decades of misguided decisions, serious neglect, and lack of transparency, it is long overdue for the Government of Canada to make its Holocaust-related records publicly available in a comprehensive digital archive,” she added in an e-mail.
The Department of Canadian Heritage did not respond to a request for comment, including on whether it plans to appeal the ruling.