Features
Access to Canadian records of Nazi war criminals
Introduction: Following upon the huge embarrassment caused not only to the Canadian Government, but to Canada as a whole, by the decision to invite a former member of a Ukrainian Waffen SS unit into the House of Commons where he was applauded as a “war hero,” we asked David Matas, renowned lawyer and expert on the issue of Nazi war criminals who were allowed into Canada following World War II, to write a piece providing an analysis how Canada has failed so badly, not only to prevent Nazis and individuals who cooperated with the Nazi regime, to enter Canada, but also to continually refuse to identify who those individuals were. Following is David Matas’s piece:
Getting access to Canadian Nazi war criminal records has to date been nearly impossible. Efforts to obtain access to relevant files and documents have been constantly frustrated and gone nowhere. The record is this.
On January 12, 2022, B’nai Brith Canada put in a request to Library and Archives Canada for Part II of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. Part I was public in 1986 when the Commission reported. Part II was confidential.
Part II contained, according to Part I, 822 opinions on individual cases. The Commission recommended that the Government give “urgent attention” to investigating 20 files of alleged Nazi war criminals who might still be living in Canada. The report also recommended further investigation of 218 other possible Nazi war criminals living in Canada.
What happened to the 20 cases which were recommended for urgent attention and the further 218 which were recommended for further investigation? We have no idea. We know that there some cases which went to Court and we have the Court records of those cases. But which of these were part of the 20 or 218, if any, were not disclosed.
As of today, Library and Archives Canada, one year and ten months later, has not responded to the request for Part II, other than to acknowledge receipt and assign the request a file number. B’nai Brith Canada complained on December 5, 2022 to the Office of the Information Commissioner asking the Commissioner to issue an order setting a deadline for Library and Archives Canada to provide B’nai Brith with a copy of the Part II Report. That complaint, as of today, has not been decided.
Also on January 12, 2022, B’nai Brith Canada put in a request to Library and Archives Canada for records relating to investigations of alleged Nazi war criminals of the War Crimes Unit of the Department of Justice and the RCMP. Canada’s Program on Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Eighth Annual Report 2004-2005 stated that, since beginning this work, the Department of Justice had opened and examined over 1,800 files. Who are these people? What was the result of the investigations in these cases?
With that request too, Library and Archives Canada has not responded, other than to acknowledge receipt and assign the request a file number. B’nai Brith Canada complained as well on December 5, 2022 to the Office of the Information Commissioner asking the Commissioner to issue an order setting a deadline for Library and Archives Canada to provide B’nai Brith with copies of the war crimes records. That complaint, as of today, has, like the other complaint, not been decided.
B’nai Brith Canada on March 6, 2023 asked for an unredacted copy of Library and Archives Canada the September, 1986 report prepared by Alti Rodal titled “Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present” prepared for the
Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. Justice Jules Deschênes who headed the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals recommended release of the report in its entirety. He wrote: “This substantial study no doubt constitutes an outstanding contribution to the knowledge of this particular question and deserves wide distribution.”
Library and Archives Canada provided B’nai Brith Canada on July 5th 2023 a redacted copy of the report, albeit with fewer redactions than there were at the time of the original release of the report. B’nai Brith Canada complained to the Office of the Information Commissioner within 30 days of the refusal to release the unredacted report. That complaint remains undecided.
The 2000 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Stockholm Declaration commits the signatories to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the opening of archives in order to ensure that all documents bearing on the Holocaust are available to researchers.” Canada joined the Alliance in 2009.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Monitoring Access to Archives Project recommended in 2017 that governmental archival institutions “release Holocaust related records, irrespective of any personal identifying information or national security classifications”.
The US Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 created an interagency war criminals records working group to locate, identify, inventory for declassification and make public all classified Nazi war criminal records. The records subject to the Act include records of the assets of persecuted persons. The Act kept existing exemptions to disclosure in general laws, but required that they be strictly defined, with a presumption against the exemptions.
In addition to general requirements of strict definition and presumption against the exemptions, some of the exemptions were themselves redefined to limit their scope. The exemption from disclosure in favour of privacy is redrafted to become an exemption where there would be “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”. The exemption in favour of national security interests is redrafted to become an exemption where disclosure “would clearly and demonstrably damage the national security interests of the United States”. The exemptions in favour foreign relations and diplomatic activities is redrafted to become an exemption where disclosure “would clearly and demonstrably damage” foreign relations or diplomatic activities. The exemption in favour of emergency preparedness plans is redrafted to become an exemption for information that “would seriously and demonstrably impair” those plans.
The records which were disclosed as a result of US Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act give us an insight into why the documents were withheld. One set of documents showed that the US Government had a lot more detailed knowledge of the Holocaust while it was happening. Keeping this information confidential and not acting on it at the time, whether or not it fits arguably within any of the exemptions, does make the US government of the time look bad. There is presumably similar information in currently withheld documentation of other governments.
A second set of documents initially withheld and then disclosed through the US legislation was documents showing that the Government was providing haven for those complicit in Nazi war crimes because of their potential to assist the US in the Cold War. Again this sort of information now withheld may well be found in other archives.
A third set of documents initially withheld and then disclosed because of the legislation were documents which showed the initial unwillingness to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, and the argumentation both for and against within the government. This argumentation we know has been replicated elsewhere.
A fourth set of documents not yet fully available relates to the effectiveness and operational difficulties of Nazi war crimes prosecution efforts once those efforts got going. In Canada, there was a split between the investigation and prosecution efforts, with investigations allocated to the national police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and prosecution allocated to the Department of Justice. This fragmentation caused a sequence of operational difficulties about which we now have only partial knowledge.
There was also in Canada internal feuding within the Nazi war crimes Justice department unit, arguments whether the unit was too slow and cautious or overly energetic in the pursuit of their efforts. The documents we have now provide only a glimpse of this feuding.
A sixth set of documents not now completely disclosed is efforts of Nazi war crimes prosecution units that were established to obtain access to relevant documents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We know that there was a good deal of difficulty in getting that access and that eventually international agreements were negotiated that allowed foreign war crimes units direct access to those archives rather than working through local archivists. Again, this is a story which could be fully told only with release of all relevant documents.
A seventh difficulty is the inclination of archivists, government officials and Parliamentarians to address the difficulties in access to documentation all at once. Yet, attempting to do everything before one does anything is a recipe for doing nothing. Each request is particular, not least in the archival access issues it presents. An effort to resolve all these myriad issues in one fell swoop goes nowhere.
We can see in several countries self-exoneration and blame shifting as a form of Holocaust distortion. Everywhere the Nazis went they relied on local collaboration to identify, locate, detain and murder the Jewish population. What we see now in several countries is an effort to pretend that the locals were innocent, that the only perpetrators were the invading Nazis.
This whitewashing is not confined to the countries invaded. It is an attitude held within the populations which have emigrated from the invaded countries. This attitude had generated opposition to the effort to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and now generates opposition to disclosure of archives about those efforts.
Canadian privacy law allows for the lapse of the right to privacy twenty years after death. However, in the case of Nazi war criminal files, since the names of those, other than those whose cases have gone to court, are not known, neither is their dates of death. While the dates of death are not known to outsiders, they are either known or knowable to archivists.
The situation justifies these recommendations:
1) Obstacles to access to Nazi war criminal records stem from legislation which is general in nature. There needs to be legislation which is specific to Holocaust records and which provides an exception to these general requirements. The legislation needs to encompass Holocaust related archives concerning both perpetrators and victims.
2) National archives need to establish and maintain separate Holocaust records within their general collections.
3) Insofar as there is discretion in current legislation to allow for exceptions to prohibitions to access, that discretion should be exercised in favour of access to Holocaust related records, including Nazi war crimes records.
4) Parliament can obtain documents from Governments which the public can not obtain. Parliament should exercise that power to obtain Holocaust related records.
5) The public interest in access to Nazi war criminal files should prevail over the right to be forgotten.
6) There needs to be active review of Nazi war criminal files both to make publicly available the files where the dates of death are known and the fixed periods after dates of death in privacy legislation have passed, and to determine whether any of those to whom the files relate are still alive or, if dead, the dates of death, where the deaths or dates of death are not known.
Canada, as a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, is committed to Holocaust remembrance. To remember the Holocaust, we must remember the victims. We must also not forget their murderers. While the murderers are alive, that means bringing them to justice. Once they are gone, it means providing public access to the record of their atrocities.
During the Holocaust, the murderers were in Europe. After the Holocaust, the murderers scattered around the world to escape justice. Thousands came to Canada. Howard Margolian, a historian with the War Crimes Unit with the Department of Justice, in his book Unauthorized Entry, estimated that 2,000 Nazi war criminals and collaborators entered Canada after World War II.
It is understandable that files about individuals who are still alive are not made accessible to the public unless there is legal action. But once the individual has died, there is no reason why the file could not be made public, no matter what the state of the evidence about the individual. Not doing so amounts to covering up the haven Canada has given to those complicit in Nazi war crimes with a blanket of secrecy.
Philosopher George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet, we can not remember a past which remains hidden from us. To remember the past we must know the past. Only through public access to Holocaust archives can we learn lessons from those archives.
Learning lessons from the Holocaust is a legacy we can create for the victims, creating meaning from the senseless death of innocents. To learn those lessons, we need access to the archives which can convey them.
The effort at understanding, of learning the lessons from the Holocaust must never stop. For that history to be written, the files of those against whom there is compelling evidence of complicity in Nazi war crimes and who are now dead must be made public.
We have a duty to the victims, not just to remember that they died, but why they died, how they died. The picture of memory we paint must be real and complete. That picture must include the murderers.
Because we will soon be at a stage where the memory of the Holocaust conveyed by survivors will no longer be with us, access to Holocaust archives looms in importance for keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive. Access to Holocaust archives should be a matter of priority to Governments, Parliaments and archival collections.
David Matas is a Winnipeg lawyer and senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada
Features
Are Niche and Unconventional Relationships Monopolizing the Dating World?
The question assumes a battle being waged and lost. It assumes that something fringe has crept into the center and pushed everything else aside. But the dating world has never operated as a single system with uniform rules. People have always sorted themselves according to preference, circumstance, and opportunity. What has changed is the visibility of that sorting and the tools available to execute it.
Online dating generated $10.28 billion globally in 2024. By 2033, projections put that figure at $19.33 billion. A market of that size does not serve one type of person or one type of relationship. It serves demand, and demand has always been fragmented. The apps and platforms we see now simply make that fragmentation visible in ways that provoke commentary.
Relationship Preferences
Niche dating platforms now account for nearly 30 percent of the online dating market, and projections suggest they could hold 42 percent of market share by 2028. This growth reflects how people are sorting themselves into categories that fit their actual lives.
Some want a sugar relationship, others seek partners within specific religious or cultural groups, and still others look for connections based on hobbies or lifestyle choices. The old model of casting a wide net has given way to something more targeted.
A YouGov poll found 55 percent of Americans prefer complete monogamy, while 34 percent describe their ideal relationship as something other than monogamous. About 21 percent of unmarried Americans have tried consensual non-monogamy at some point. These numbers do not suggest a takeover. They suggest a population with varied preferences now has platforms that accommodate those preferences openly rather than forcing everyone into the same structure.
The Numbers Tell a Different Story
Polyamory and consensual non-monogamy receive substantial attention in media coverage and on social platforms. The actual practice rate sits between 4% and 5% of the American population. That figure has remained relatively stable even as public awareness has increased. Being aware of something and participating in it are separate behaviors.
A 2020 YouGov poll reported that 43% of millennials describe their ideal relationship as non-monogamous. Ideals and actions do not always align. People answer surveys about what sounds appealing in theory. They then make decisions based on their specific circumstances, available partners, and emotional capacity. The gap between stated preference and lived reality is substantial.
Where Young People Are Looking
Gen Z accounts for more than 50% of Hinge users. According to a 2025 survey by The Knot, over 50% of engaged couples met through dating apps. These platforms have become primary infrastructure for forming relationships. They are not replacing traditional dating; they are the context in which traditional dating now occurs.
Younger users encounter more relationship styles on these platforms because the platforms allow for it. Someone seeking a conventional monogamous partnership will still find that option readily available. The presence of other options does not eliminate this possibility. It adds to the menu.
Monopoly Implies Exclusion
The framing of the original question suggests that niche relationships might be crowding out mainstream ones. Monopoly means one entity controls a market to the exclusion of competitors. Nothing in the current data supports that characterization.
Mainstream dating apps serve millions of users seeking conventional relationships. These apps have added features to accommodate other preferences, but their core user base remains people looking for monogamous partnerships. The addition of new categories does not subtract from existing ones. Someone filtering for a specific religion or hobby does not prevent another person from using the same platform without those filters.
What Actually Changed
Two things happened. First, apps built segmentation into their business models because segmentation increases user satisfaction. People find what they want faster when they can specify their preferences. Second, social acceptance expanded for certain relationship types that previously operated in private or faced stigma.
Neither of these developments amounts to a monopoly. They amount to market differentiation and cultural acknowledgment. A person seeking a sugar arrangement and a person seeking marriage can both use apps built for their respective purposes. They are not competing for the same resources.
The Perception Problem
Media coverage tends toward novelty. A story about millions of people using apps to find conventional relationships does not generate engagement. A story about unconventional relationship types generates clicks, comments, and shares. This creates a perception gap between how often something is discussed and how often it actually occurs.
The 4% to 5% practicing polyamory receive disproportionate coverage relative to the 55% who prefer complete monogamy. The coverage is not wrong, but it creates an impression of prevalence that exceeds reality.
Where This Leaves Us
Niche relationships are not monopolizing dating. They are becoming more visible and more accommodated by platforms that benefit from serving specific needs. The majority of people seeking relationships still want conventional arrangements, and they still find them through the same channels.
The dating world is larger than it was before. It contains more explicit options. It allows people to state preferences that once required inference or luck. None of this constitutes a takeover. It constitutes an expansion. The space for one type of relationship did not shrink to make room for another. The total space grew.
Features
Matthew Lazar doing his part to help keep Israelis safe in a time of war
By MYRON LOVE It is well known – or at least it should be – that while Israel puts a high value of protecting the lives of its citizens, the Jewish state’s Islamic enemies celebrate death. The single most glaring difference between the opposing sides can be seen in the differing approach to building bomb shelters to protect their populations.
Whereas Hamas and Hezbollah have invested untold billions of dollars over the past 20 years in building underground tunnels to protect their fighters while leaving their “civilian” populations exposed to Israeli bombs, not only has Israel built a highly sophisticated anti-missile system but also the leadership has invested heavily in making sure that most Israelis have access to bomb shelters – wherever they are – in war time.
While Israel’s bomb shelter program is comprehensive, there are still gaps – gaps which Dr. Matthew Lazar is doing his bit to help reduce.
The Winnipeg born-and raised pediatrician -who is most likely best known to readers as a former mohel – is the president of Project Life Initiatives – the Canadian branch of Israel-based Operation Lifeshield whose mission is to provide bomb shelters for threatened Israeli communities.
Lazar actually got in on the ground floor – so to speak. It was a cousin of his, Rabbi Shmuel Bowman, Operation Lifeshield’s executive director, who – in 2006 – founded the organization.
“Shmuel was one of a small group of American olim and Israelis who were visiting the Galilee during the second Lebanon war in 2006 and found themselves under rocket attack – along with thousands of others – with no place to go,” recounts Lazar, who has two daughters living in Israel. “They decided to take action. I was one of the people Shmuel approached to become an Operation Lifeshield volunteer.
Since the founding of Lifeshield, Lazar reports, over 1,000 shelters have been deployed in Israel. The number of new shelter orders since October 7, 2023 is 149.
He further notes that while the largest share of Operation Lifeshield’s funding comes from American donors, there has been good support for the organization across Canada as well.
One of the major donors in Winnipeg is the Christian Zionist organization, Christian Friends of Israel (FOI) Canada which, in September, as part of its second annual “Stand With Israel Support” evening – presented Lazar and Operation Lifeshield with a cheque for $30,000 toward construction of a bomb shelter for the Yasmin kindergarten in the Binyamina Regional Council in Northern Israel.
Lazar reports that to date the total number of shelters donated by Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry (globally) is over 100.
Lazar notes that the head office for Project Life Initiatives is – not surprisingly – in Toronto. “We communicate by telephone, text and Zoom,” he says.
He observes that – as he is still a full time pediatrician – he isn’t able to visit Israel nearly as often as he would like to. He manages to go every couple of years and always makes a point of visiting some of Operation Lifeshield’s projects.
(He adds that his wife, Nola, gets to Israel two or three times a year – not only to visit family, but also in her role as president of Mercaz Canada – the Canadian Conservative movement’s Zionist arm.)
“This is something I have been able to do to help safeguard Israelis,” Lazar says of his work for Operation Lifeshield. “This is a wonderful thing we are doing. I am glad to be of help. ”
Features
Patterns of Erasure: Genocide in Nazi Europe and Canada
By LIRON FYNE When we think of the word genocide, our minds often jump to the Holocaust, the mass-scale, systemic government-led murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, whose unprecedented scale and methods led to the very term ‘genocide’ being coined. On January 27th, 2026, we will bow our heads for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 80th year of remembrance.
Less frequently do we connect genocidal intent to the campaign against Indigenous peoples in Canada; the forced displacement, cultural destruction, and systematic killing that sought to erase Indigenous peoples. The genocide conducted by the Nazis and the genocidal intent of the Canadian government, though each unique in scale, motive, and implementation, share many conceptual similarities. Both were driven by ideologies of racial superiority, executed through governmental precision, and justified by the perpetrators as a moral mission.
At their core rests the concept of dehumanization. In Nazi Germany, Jews were viewed as subhuman, contaminated, and a threat to the ‘Aryan’ race. In Canada, Indigenous peoples were represented as obstacles to ‘progress’ and seen as hurdles to a Christian, Eurocentric nation. These ideas, this dehumanization, turned human beings into problems to be solved. Adolf Hitler called it the ‘Jewish question,’ leading to an official policy in 1942 called the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question,’ whereas Canadian officials called it the ‘Indian problem.’ The language is similar, a belief that one group’s existence endangers the destiny of another. The methods of extermination differed in practice and outcome, but the language of intent resembles one another.
The Holocaust’s concentration camps and carefully engineered gas chambers were designed for efficient, industrial-scale killing, resulting in mass murder. The well-organized plan of systematic degradation, deadly riots, brutal camp conditions, and designated killing centres were only a few of the ways the Nazis worked to eliminate the Jews. The Canadian government’s weapons were policy, assimilation and abandonment. Such as the Indian Act, reserves, and residential schools, which were all meant to ‘kill the Indian in the child,’ cutting generations off from their languages, families, and cultures. Thousands of Indigenous children died in residential schools, buried in unmarked graves near schools that called themselves places of learning. Both systems were backed by either religion or ideology; Nazi ideology brought together racist eugenic policies and virulent antisemitism, while Canada’s genocidal intent was supported by Christian Protestantism claiming to save Indigenous souls by erasing their heritage.
The Holocaust was a six-year campaign of complete industrialized extermination, mass murder with a mechanized intent, on a scale that remains historically unique. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission describes Canada’s indigenous genocide as a cultural one that unfolded over centuries through assimilation and the destruction of indigenous languages and identities. The Holocaust ended with the liberation of the camps and a global recognition of the atrocities committed. However, the generational trauma and dehumanization of antisemitism carry on. For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the effects of the genocidal intent continue to this day, visible in displacement, poverty, and intergenerational trauma. While these histories differ in form and timeline, both are rooted in dehumanization and the belief that some lives are worth less than others.
A disturbing similarity lies in the aftermath: silence and denial. The Holocaust forced the world to confront the atrocity with the vow of ‘Never Again,’ which has now been unearthed and reformed as ‘Never Again is Now,’ after the October 7th, 2023, massacre by Hamas. The largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, and the denial of the atrocities committed on October 7th, highlight the same Holocaust denial we see rising around the world. In Canada, for decades, the genocidal intent was hidden behind narratives of kindness and social progress. Only in recent years, through survivor testimony for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the discovery of unmarked graves, has the truth gained recognition. But acknowledgment without justice risks repeating the same patterns of erasure.
Comparing these atrocities committed is not about comparing pain or scale; it is about understanding the shared systems that enabled them. Both demonstrate how racism, superiority, and dehumanization can be used to justify the destruction of human beings. Remembering is not enough in Canada. True remembrance demands accountability, land restitution, reparations, and education that confronts Canada’s ongoing colonial legacy. When we say ‘Never Again is Now’, we hold collective action to combat antisemitism in all forms. The same applies to Truth & Reconciliation; it must be more than a slogan; we must apply action to Truth & ReconciliACTION.
Liron Fyne is a 12th-grade student at Gray Academy of Jewish Education in Winnipeg. They are currently a Kenneth Leventhal High School Intern at StandWithUs Canada, a non-profit education organization that combats antisemitism.