Shall We Not Avenge?

Imagine you're at a bank when suddenly two or three people there pull out guns.  One of them approaches a teller and demands, in German, that she open the safe.  You understand this because you happen to speak German but the teller does not.  Frightened out of her mind, she assumes the gunman is demanding money, so she opens a cash drawer and hands over a wad of bills.  The gunman becomes angry because his instructions were not followed and repeats his demand, again in German, brandishing his weapon in a threatening manner.  Meaning to help, you explain to the teller that the gunman wants her to open the safe, which she then does.

Realizing that you speak both languages, the gunmen now press you into their service, forcing you to translate between them and their victims.  Staring into the business end of their guns, you of course comply.  Now, imagine that, before the incident is over, the gunmen wind up shooting several bank employees and a customer or two for good measure but the police do arrive and the gunmen are eventually arrested.  Unfortunately, so are you because one of the security guards assumes, mistakenly, that you were one of the gang all along.  After all, you were their translator.

You're eventually brought to trial and, as the case is heard, all are in agreement that you yourself stole nothing and harmed no-one.  However, the prosecuting attorney argues that you aided the bank robbers which makes you complicit. 

To your dismay, you are found guilty, but you appeal the verdict and are eventually vindicated.

However, about a year later, you are again tried for the same crime and once again found guilty.  You appeal again and are exonerated again.  Some time after that you are tried again, but this time you are found not guilty and don't even need to appeal.  Nevertheless, the prosecuting attorney will not accept defeat and hauls you back to court yet again.  This goes on for about two decades, during which period your legal fees practically exhaust your life savings, not to mention the fact that you can never really rest easy and enjoy life because you never know when you'll have to defend yourself against the same accusation yet again.

Surely most of those reading this would agree that this entire affair was a travesty of justice, yet this is essentially what has happened to an elderly man by the name of Helmut Oberlander.  The difference is that Oberlander was a translator for German Nazis rather than bank robbers and the victims were Jewish, which brings politics into the picture as anyone siding with Oberlander suddenly risks being labeled an anti-Semitic.

During the second world war, Helmut Oberlander was pressed into service by the Nazis as an interpreter for one of the Nazis notorious Einsatzkommando death squads.  This is not in dispute.  Oberlander maintains that he was seventeen years old at the time.  He was coerced into service in that the alternative would have been to risk being executed himself, and that he was merely a translator and did not personally participate in any violence against Jews or any other Nazi prisoners.  These statements are not in dispute either.  Although I`m sure that Oberlander`s accusers suspect him of being more complicit than he admits, the fact remains that there is not one shred of evidence, none, that he ever personally harmed anyone.

So his accusers, primarily the Canadian Jewish Congress, have had to content themselves with arguing that Oberlander lied about his association with the Einsatzkommando squad when he first applied for Canadian citizenship and that this should be grounds to revoke that citizenship.  Oberlander maintains that he did not lie on his citizenship application.  While he concedes that he did not go out of his way so reveal his association with the Nazi death squad, it was only because he was never asked about any such association.  At worst, he is guilty of failing to volunteer information about a part of his past which he could not have changed and that he would just as soon put behind him.

For "lying" on his citizenship application, Oberlander was stripped of his citizenship, won it back on appeal, was stripped of his citizenship a second time, won it back on appeal again was tried yet a third time and won yet again.  This has been going on for over two decades.  This past week, he was once again tried for the same non-crime and stripped of his citizenship a third time.  He plans to appeal again.

In what sort of legal system is it acceptable to continuously try a person over and over again for the same crime until the court finally produces the desired outcome?  Unfortunately, unlike the United States' legal system, Canada has no "double jeopardy" law to prevent this sort of thing happening.  In Canada an accuser is free to hound the accused over and over again with impunity.

Helmut Oberlander is over 90 years old.  If his citizenship is not restored, he faces possible deportation, likely to the Ukraine where he was born, far from his family, his friends and the country that he has come to call his home.  Is  this a fair and just punishment for a man whose worst crime was to translate, involuntarily,  for a group of Nazi thugs? 

To the Jewish community, and anyone else who, like Shakespeare's Shylock, cries "If you wrong us, shall we not avenge?" I say this:  While it is understandable that you should want to see someone held to account for the atrocities committed against your people, singling out a person who has done nothing wrong but whose background and nationality make him a convenient symbol of the source of your anger is wrong.  Punishing a blameless man will not bring back the dead.  Two wrongs still do not make a right.  Leave Helmut Oberlander to live out his final days in peace and let your God be his judge.