Hypocrisy of Sydney Sharpe
If hypocrisy is the basic criterion to establish one's credentials as a pimp for the Holocaust Industry, then the March 3, 2000, article in the Calgary Herald titled "war criminals don't get a pass" by Sydney Sharpe passes with flying colors. First, she concedes that there is no evidence that Helmut Oberlander committed any war crimes, then she proceeds to paint him as the worst possible monster imaginable.
Rather than try to counter the hysterical meanderings of Ms. Sharpe, I
would like to direct the attention of your readers to the rather
similar case of Vladimir Katriuk, the details of which are archived at
It is amazing that both Judges Marc Nadon and Andrew MacKay hypothesize that Mr. Katriuk and Mr. Oberlander must have been interviewed by a security officer and provided false information, even though there is no evidence of this actually having occurred. Indeed, the testimony of thousands of immigrants from that time contradict this assertion.
The companion article by Nigel Hannaford is more benign towards Mr. Oberlander but still misses the point. Self-preservation rather than hero-worship is the more likely motive for Mr. Oberlander agreeing to act as an interpreter for the Germans. To refuse such a "request" by a gun-toting German would take unusual courage bordering on idiocy.
The irony in the situation is that by 1954, when Mr. Oberlander arrived in Canada, even members of the National Socialist party were being allowed to immigrate to Canada. Obviously, Mr. Oberlander's greatest crime was to have been born in Ukraine.