of Hitler's S.S. (elite guard), which ran death camps in Eastern Europe, are living in Canada."
Upon subjecting the deflated ball to close and prolonged scrutiny, Judge Deschenes, arrived at
the following conclusions:
Between 1971 and 1986, public statements by outside interveners concerning
alleged war criminals residing in Canada have spread increasingly large and
grossly exaggerated figures as to their estimated number ... [among them] the
figure of 6,000 ventured in 1986 by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.... (p. 249)
The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide
discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and
interrogation. (p. 245)
It was obvious that the list of 217 officers of the Galicia Division furnished
by Mr. Wiesenthal was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government,
through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this Commission, to a
considerable amount of purposeless work. (p. 258)
The Commission has tried repeatedly to obtain the incriminating evidence
allegedly in Mr. Wiesenthal's possession, through various oral and written
communications with Mr. Wiesenthal himself and with his solicitor, Mr. Martin
Mendelsohn of Washington, D.C., but to no avail: telephone calls, letters, even
a meeting in New York between Mr. Wiesenthal and Commission Counsel on 1
November 1985 followed up by further direct communications, have succeeded in
bringing no positive results, outside of promises. (p. 257)
From the conclusions of the Deschenes Commission alone, 60 Minutes might have decided that Simon
Wiesenthal is not the kind of person whose pronouncements may be aired without verification.
Had any Ukrainian come to 60 Minutes carrying such a load of hatred toward Jews as Simon
Wiesenthal carries toward Ukrainians, and displaying - or rather flaunting - such credentials of
unreliability, 60 Minutes would never have given him air time, or if it did, it would be only to
excoriate him. Instead of exposing Mr. Wiesenthal, 60 Minutes has joined him in portraying a
world filled with Nazis, and so has lent support to a witch hunt more hysterical than Joe
McCarthy's sniffing out of Communists in the 50's. Consider the following excerpts from cases
submitted to the Deschenes commission for investigation as suspected Nazi war criminals, and see
if you don't agree. In the Commission report, all of the following cases end with the words,
"On the basis of the foregoing, it is recommended that the file on the subject be closed." The
selection is not intended to be representative, as the overwhelming number of cases are simply
dismissed for lack of evidence - but rather is a sample of cases that upon casual browsing stand
out as being particularly comical, pathetic, or alarming depending upon one's mood. The sample,
furthermore, is far from exhaustive - a vastly greater number of similarly striking cases abound
within the Commission report:
CASE NO. 73. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by
Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman made no particular allegation against the
subject, but referred to information obtained from a particular individual as
the source of the subject's name. Mr. Littman further indicated that the
subject resided at an unspecified address in Canada and had been the object of
an extradition request by the government of an Eastern European country. No
particulars of this alleged extradition request were provided. ... The
Commission confirmed that an extradition request had not been received by the
Canadian government and that the Berlin Document Center had no record on the
subject.
CASE NO. 121. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Department of the Solicitor