Review 22.12
29 August - 11 September 1997The sight of Konrad Kalejs being whisked away from a waiting press contingent and sped down Melbourne's Tullamarine Freeway to a non-descript residence in outer Melbourne was almost surreal. Here was a man, a major war criminal by any standards, returning to live in my country and my city - free to enjoy the same rights and liberties that I do. I may even see him in the street.
It hardly needs to be stated that Kalejs' return to Australia was a matter of considerable embarrassment for the Government. The deportation order from the Canadian Government, as with Kalejs' previous expulsion from the United States in 1994, has highlighted the glaring inadequacy of Australia's capacity to deal with those who have committed crimes against humanity.
The Canadian adjudication handed down last week was as unequivocal as it could possibly be, given that Kalejs was faced with an immigration hearing, not a war crimes trial. The 60-page decision by Anthony Iozzo found that Kalejs was a high-ranking officer in the Nazi-affiliated Arajs Kommando unit and a supervisor at the Salaspils concentration camp in Latvia, where prisoners succumbed to starvation, disease, torture or execution.
A telling part refers to the voluntary nature of Kalejs' involvement in the notorious Arajs Kommando. "[Mr. Kalejs] could not legally be expected to risk his life or safety for others, to be a hero, a martyr, but he could have withdrawn from the assignment. ... Membership in the Arajs Kommando was voluntary and members could obtain permission to leave the Kommando or be transferred to other assignments. He was not at Salaspils because of superior orders or because of duress; he was at Salaspils because he chose to be," Mr. Iozzo wrote.
The implications of Kalejs' involvement in the Arajs Kommando have to be put in perspective. The Arajs Kommando was so named shortly after the German Army arrived in the Latvian capital Riga in early July 1941, when the SS leader General Stahlecker made acquaintance with the local adventurer Victor Arajs, who offered him assistance in the rounding up of Jews, communists and gypsies. Put simply, the Arajs Kommando existed for the purpose of brutal subjugation, terror and mass murder. It was common knowledge in Latvia at the time.
Nor should it be overlooked that the Holocaust began in Latvia. In the second half of 1941 and during 1942, the Nazi regime deported 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Riga. To make room for this huge influx, the authorities decided to annihilate the Jews of the Riga ghetto, and so the mass killings began - mainly in the Bikernieki and Rumbula forests. By the end of 1941, an estimated 30,000 Jews had been murdered; most shot as they stood next to giant pits full of the dead. Konrad Kalejs was a recent graduate of the Latvian Military Academy when he joined the Arajs Kommando in late July 1941 - the Kommando (and the German occupation) was less than a month old. The 10-year case mounted by the United States Justice Department to deport Kalejs confirmed through exhaustive testimony that in the time immediately after Kalejs joined the Arajs Kommando, the unit liquidated thousands of civilians, mainly Jews. "Because the unit had so few members who were available to be assigned to any particular shooting operation," the US post-trial brief reads, "and because the shooting operations took place so frequently, all Latvian Auxiliary Security Police [Arajs Kommando] personnel were personally involved in the killings, even the staff of the supply department and the motorpool mechanics. These executions were supervised by officers such as Kalejs who were present at the shooting sites."
One can only guess at the number of lives lost at Kalejs' own hands. We will never really know. We are only left to deal with the unpalatable reality that Kalejs has lived virtually undisturbed since the war, gaining Australian citizenship (without divulging his war crimes record) in 1957 before moving to the United States, where he made millions through real estate dealings over a period of 35 years.
Between 1986 and 1992, Australia attempted to mount cases against a large number of suspected Nazi war criminals in our midst. Despite the efforts of the Special Investigations Unit led by Robert Greenwood QC, not one case was successfully concluded. If a little trumpet blowing may be permitted, it was the Review that successfully tracked down Konrad Kalejs in Melbourne in January 1995, which led him to flee to Canada and eventually resulted in his deportation. But such victories are fleeting, as was all too apparent to us seeing Kalejs speed away down the Tullamarine Freeway to suburban anonymity last week.
So who can touch Kalejs? The Federal Government has indicated that Kalejs will be prosecuted in Australia if enough evidence can be obtained from the Canadian authorities to mount a case under the War Crimes Act. In fact, voluminous evidence has been on record from the US case since 1994, yet no action has been taken. Attorney-General Daryl Williams has already warned it may be difficult to sustain charges against Kalejs in a criminal trial. Deportation is only possible if Kalejs' citizenship is revoked, and this would require retrospective legislation - difficult, but what Canada has done, and what we should do.
It is not a happy story, which made Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett's implicit suggestion that the Jewish Community practice the "Christian" virtue of forgiveness hard to take. Forgetting the crimes of Kalejs and his ilk is plainly impossible, just as for the tragedy of the Anzacs at Gallipoli we say "lest we forget". Perhaps one day we can forgive someone like Martin Bryant - at least he was brought to justice; but Kalejs, who remains totally unrepentant, never has been and possibly never will be, and for that he can never be forgiven.
Copyright © 1997 J.O.I.N.