Supreme Court won't hear appeal from former Nazi death squad interpreter

The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear the appeal of an elderly man whose Canadian citizenship was revoked for lying about his membership in a Second World War Nazi death squad.

Helmut Oberlander, who was born in Ukraine, has been fighting federal efforts to rescind his citizenship and deport him since 1995.

The retired real-estate developer from Waterloo, Ont., was a member of a Nazi squad that slaughtered thousands of civilians, mostly Jews, in German-occupied Ukraine during the Second World War.

The 95-year-old Oberlander says he was conscripted into duty as a teenager and that the penalty for desertion was execution.

He insists he served as a translator and never participated in any atrocities.

As usual, the Supreme Court did not provide any reasons for its decision today.