The RCMP destroyed investigative files involving suspected Nazi war criminals living in Canada in 1979, making it nearly impossible to reconstruct evidence against alleged collaborators, according to newly released federal records.Blacklock's Reporter says an internal police memorandum from 1980 confirmed six volumes containing allegations of previous Nazi activities had been destroyed."Volumes 1 to 6 of the main file covering accusations of previous Nazi activities have been destroyed," said the RCMP headquarters memo. "That action makes total retrieval almost impossible."One investigator questioned who authorized the destruction and compared it to the disappearance of police records involving Nazis who fled to South America after the Second World War."I would be interested to know how the decision for destruction was reached, for it is an action similar to the destruction of police files on Nazis in South America," the investigator wrote.Another RCMP officer confirmed the records had already disappeared by the time he arrived at headquarters."It was missing in 1980 when I came to headquarters. It has not been located," the officer wrote.The revelations are contained in footnotes to a 613-page federal report obtained October 8 by B'nai Brith Canada following a Federal Court order.The report, Nazi War Criminals In Canada: The Historical And Policy Setting From The 1940s To The Present, was prepared in 1986 by Holocaust researcher Alti Rodal.It was commissioned as part of Canada's only national inquiry into Nazi fugitives, the Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes headed by Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Jules Deschênes."It should be noted that internal RCMP memoranda…refer to the disappearance in the 1970s of files relating to the subject of Nazi war criminals," the report stated.No explanation was provided for the destruction of the police records.The report also revealed federal immigration officials destroyed hundreds of thousands of historical files that could have contained evidence identifying Nazi collaborators and suspected war criminals admitted to Canada after 1945..The Deschênes Commission previously raised concerns that the destruction of immigration records may have interfered with efforts to investigate alleged war criminals."The episode has raised questions as to a possible deliberate attempt on the part of government authorities to impede action with regard to alleged war criminals in Canada," the report said.According to Rodal's findings, immigration officials repeatedly claimed between 1980 and 1983 that individual case records were unavailable.However, investigators subsequently determined that the records had existed before immigration department managers ordered their destruction."Immigration headquarters had accumulated several hundreds of thousands of original case files dating from 1946 to the mid-1970s which were destroyed only in late 1982 and early 1983," the report stated.The destruction occurred more than a year after the Interdepartmental Committee on War Criminals had identified immigration records as potentially important evidence in investigations of suspected Nazi fugitives.B'nai Brith Canada pursued legal action to obtain an uncensored version of the historical report amid renewed demands for the federal government to release records concerning Nazi collaborators who settled in Canada.Those demands intensified following the September 2023 incident in which Parliament honoured Yaroslav Hunka, a former member of the Waffen-SS, during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Hunka, who lived in North Bay, Ont., had served with the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Ukrainian formation under Nazi German command.The 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal declared the Waffen-SS a criminal organization, subject to qualifications concerning individual membership.Although Rodal's report did not identify Hunka by name, it revealed the RCMP had counted 31 former members of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Division living in Canada in 1985, including eight officers..Investigators also raised concerns that individuals involved in earlier Nazi-sponsored police and militia operations may have subsequently joined the division."It is likely that at least some persons who served with Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian police or militia units used in killing actions in 1941 and 1942 found their way into the ranks of the Division," the report stated.A heavily redacted version of Rodal's report released by the federal government in 2024 acknowledged that Nazi collaborators and suspected war criminals had entered Canada following the Second World War.The report noted Canada admitted approximately 620,000 immigrants between 1946 and 1967 from European countries where participation in wartime atrocities had been widespread."It would be rash to assume that significant numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators did not enter Canada," Rodal wrote.Despite repeated demands for greater transparency, the federal government has not publicly identified all individuals recommended for prosecution by the Deschênes Commission.In 2024, the House of Commons heritage committee defeated a Conservative motion calling on cabinet to release the names.The motion failed by a vote of 6-5.The newly disclosed records provide further details about the disappearance and destruction of federal files that could have assisted investigations into suspected Nazi war criminals who found refuge in Canada.
