Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada, 1946–1956 by Howard Margolian (review)

596 The Canadian Historical Review The result of the inaction on the part of the Social Credit Party and the Canadian Jewish Congress is that the two components ofthe book read like two separate accounts. In fact, Social Discredit is really two studies in one: a study of anti-Semitism in the Social Credit Party that sheds new light on the history ofthe movement and party, and a study of the response of the Canadian Jewish Congress to anti-Semitism within Social Credit that makes a new contribution to Canadian Jewish history. Unfortunately, by including them both within her study when there was little interaction between the two organizations, Stingel leaves the reader wishing that she had addressed the larger issue she raises - the nature of racism in Canada and the Canadian response to it. R. DOUGLAS FRANCIS University ofCalgary Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada, 1946-1956. HOWARD MARGOLIAN. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2000. Pp. 327, $39·95 How and why approximately 2000 Nazi war criminals ended up in Canada in the immediate years after the Second World War is the focus of Howard Margolian's study, one that purports to offer the 'truth' on a topic that is controversial, to say the least. A professional historian, Margolian worked as an investigator for the Canada's war crimes prosecution unit. The essence of his argument is that the answers to these questions are more complicated than previously acknowledged by those who blame a negligent or even conspiratorial federal government and its agencies for the admittance of war criminals into Canada. The end ofwar brought a time of confusion that necessitated the creation of a new immigration screening system that required, among other things, a clear awareness ofhowthe state murderers of Nazi Germany, German and non-German alike, had been organized and how they operated. Then there was the pressure applied by the immigration and business lobbies back in Canada as they sought a relaxation ofrestrictions on those emigrating from postwar Europe. Finally, there were the war criminals themselves , who employed fraudulent means to escape justice and Europe. Margolian's determined effort to offer a more complex answer to the war criminal puzzle is largely successful. That effort involved a great deal of archival work, leading to a particularly detailed examination of the subject. This effort is apparent in the portrayal in the book ofthe variety of interests in Canada pressuring the federal government to relax screening procedures or in the confusion surrounding whether or not to restrict non-German collaborators in the late 1940s. Book Reviews 597 There is also an undeniably 'glass half empty - glass halffull' aspect to this work. The war criminals admitted to Canada, Margolian pointedly notes, accounted for approximately 1 percent of refugees from Europe between 1946 and 1951, while at the same time 15,000 were rejected because of concerns about their war records. Through this illustration, however, the author touches on the main flaw in his argument, one that, to his credit, he at least partially acknowledges. If Canadian authorities were so determined and ultimately successful at preventing the entrance ofwar criminals, how did some slip through? Margolian offers credible explanations for most, but they still do not account for the admittance of individuals like former ss officer Helmut Raucha and Radislav Grujicic, a Nazi collaborator involved in atrocities in Yugoslavia during the war. In their cases, the author admits, there appears to have been complicity on the part ofthe Canadian state to allow these men in, or at least to permit them to live undetected for decades even as their former countries sought their extradition. They apparently entered via 'ratlines,' a special network set up by Allied intelligence agencies as part of the Cold War atmosphere that descended in the immediate postwar era. Margolian freely admits that the extent of this method of entrance cannot be ascertained because relevant records remain restricted to researchers. This significant caveat prevents Unauthorized Entry, although undeniably groundbreaking, from representing the final word on the topic, despite its proclamations to the contrary. Until relevant archival material in Canada, the United States, and, especially, the United Kingdom is opened to independent researchers , the...