Enough with the excuses. The names of the alleged Nazi war criminals should be released

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Jared McBride is an assistant professor in history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Per Rudling is an associate professor in history at Lund University in Sweden.

With the noise of the U.S. election serving as a distraction, the Canadian government released its long-awaited decision on disclosing a secret report with the names of alleged Nazi war criminals on Nov. 5. The report was part of the 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, known as the Deschênes Commission report, which looked into alleged Nazi war criminals who settled in Canada after the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) decided 40 years of silence was not yet enough, and the public would have to continue to wait to read this already dated investigation. In doing so, LAC and the Canadian government added another chapter of obfuscation and obstruction to this decades-old story.

Only in early September did it become known that LAC had quietly held meetings with “discrete group of individuals or organizations” over the summer to determine whether portions of the Deschênes Commission report, particularly the suspect name lists, could be released to the public. Though various constituencies were at the meeting, they forgot to invite two groups: Holocaust survivors and experts, which would include historians and legal specialists. In the wake of this revelation, another round of public debates ensued, most of which have been a retread of decades-old arguments. We have already provided a public call for the release of these records (as many have), but here we would like to address arguments against the release that have appeared in recent months.

The most consistent argument in defence of keeping the archives closed is that of privacy and potential harm to national security. When groups like the Ukrainian Canadian Congress continually refer to privacy and harm concerns, they might strengthen their argument by showing concrete examples of the harm done when the U.S. government declassified tens of thousands of pages related to Ukrainian activities during the Second World War. The 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act led to the release of a treasure trove of documents in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Anyone can walk into American archives and review FBI, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, CIA, and U.S. Army documents that touch upon Ukrainian (and other groups’) complicity in the Holocaust and even the co-operation of some nationalist groups with the Nazi regime. In fact, you do not need to leave your seat to read some of these names – one can simply search the CIA database online.

As for potential harm to governments, you will find very few making the argument that releasing these records embarrassed or harmed the United States; on the contrary, this openness and transparency has, arguably, strengthened civic society by allowing historians and journalists to initiate healthy and productive discussion about the role the CIA and other U.S. agencies played in sheltering potential war criminals in the early Cold War. The releases have resulted in numerable academic publications on several topics, which continue to this day. One can find thousands of citations to these records in a range of academic studies.

The United States is not the only government that has decided to open its Second World War and Holocaust-related documents. Ironically, Ukraine itself opened its KGB archives a decade ago, releasing hundreds of thousands of pages related to the Holocaust and other subjects, many of which intimately describe Ukrainians’ actions during the war, both good and bad. A scholar trying to track down materials related to a suspected Holocaust perpetrator will have better access to materials in Kyiv than they would in Ottawa. Even at a time of war and existential crisis, Ukraine is facing its past head-on, while Canadian Ukrainians and other groups, and the rest of the Canadian public, must be shielded from the glare of archival records, according to the most recent denial of release.

Another popular argument has focused on the geopolitical situation and “risk of harm to international relations,” as one official recently put it. The argument is that the Russians will instrumentalize these releases to sow disinformation and disparage Ukrainians. The bad news is the Russian government is going to act in a dishonest manner regardless of these releases. However, most national archives would never tie their release schedules to the assumed actions of the worst bad-faith actors in the world. If this were a guiding principle, wide swaths of Canadian archives would have to be closed anew, including documents about Indigenous residential schools in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Surely, dishonest actors can weaponize the Canadian complicity in the abuse of First Nations peoples. If this feels like a disingenuous argument, imagine how ridiculous it sounds to Holocaust survivors and their families when they are told that their history must remain locked up because of the actions of a government halfway around the world.

For decades we have been told the root of every single one of these investigations was the result of the KGB duping the West by forging accusations of war crimes that never occurred. If we are to take this argument seriously, then what better lesson for the public to learn about the threat of Russian disinformation than to see completely opened Justice and RCMP files on individuals targeted by the Soviet Union, as well as the Deschênes Commission. Scholars and the public could review the allegedly forged materials with their own eyes. The releases would not only help to exonerate the accused, but it will also be a great opportunity to clear the Canadian government of any suspicions of stifling investigations for political reasons.

What makes these arguments all the more bizarre is that LAC has already released names of hundreds of people that are almost certainly on the Deschênes list through a previous Information and Privacy (ATIP) request. Anyone can walk into LAC right now and find lists of dozens of war-crime suspects. On our computers at this very moment are three RCMP investigation files related to war-crimes suspects that the Canadian government released to the public. In another document we can see the names of various war-crime suspects, their places on the Deschênes list and their corresponding RCMP file numbers. Why does the press, civic organizations and the government continue to talk about these 900 names as if they are all unknown? The government can start with a full disclosure of all materials on the already public names, and then at a later date, a conversation can be had publicly about the remaining ones.

We want to emphasize that the Deschênes list should be the start of the disclosure process, not the end. Most scholars are not interested in determining the “guilt” of the listed individuals (and recognize that Deschênes did little if any work toward this goal), but rather in asking broader questions about mechanisms of Canadian justice as the era of Holocaust prosecutions comes to an end. Scholars want to understand what went wrong and what went right when governments were asked to hold genocide perpetrators accountable. We can’t do that when governments hide their own records. Justice and RCMP records need to be made fully available for researchers, just as FBI and Department of Justice files are for the same type of cases in the United States.

Make no mistake – time is on the side of historians. Governments can stall, but eventually, historians will learn the details that are currently hidden in Canadian, British and other closed archives around the world. The only question is how many more archivists, politicians and government officials will become party to this decades-long enterprise to suppress this information in the name of privacy, conspiracy or whatever convenient excuse animates their era.