The Gleaner

Sad ending for a hunted man

le mardi 23 juin 2015
Modifié à 0 h 00 min le 23 juin 2015
Par Denis Bourbonnais

dbourbonnais@gravitemedia.com

On May 17, 2007, after a dozen years of judicial proceedings, the Canadian Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration rendered a decision in favour of Vladimir Katriuk in order that he remain a full-fledged citizen of the country.

A Ukrainian of origin, who had arrived in Quebec on the steamboat « Nelly » accompanied by his wife Maria in 1951, had used the assumed name of Nicholas Schripka to enter Canada. Having deserted the Ukraine which had fallen under the Russian empire and joining the ranks of the allies before the end of World War 2, he was forced to leave the French Foreign Legion by using the identity of his brother-in-law Simon. But Vladimir would have been destined for another bloody conflict in Indonesia.

More than five years after his arrival in Canada, the couple formulated a request to once again become Mr. And Mrs. Katriuk. This request was accepted by the « higher civil servant at the immigration department » on May 13, 1958. However, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, one of whose missions is to hunt down former Nazi war criminals before they die of old age, revived the dossier of Vladimir Katriuk so that he would appear in the federal court of Canada in 1996.

The attempts to revoke the Canadian citizenship of the former war veteran, represented by his Ukrainian lawyer, Orest Rudnik, finally turned out to be in vain. Last month, Moscow wanted to revive the pursuit by asking Canada to extradite the 93-year-old man who lived in Ormstown for over a half-century.

In the eyes of several experts, this consisted of a maneuver to make Canada and the Ukraine look bad in a particularly delicate political context where the Harper government does not hide its opposition to the intervention of Vladimir Putin's Russian administration. That is why Sonija Hart, the Ormstown resident who calls herself the adopted granddaughter of the man who died last May 29, denounced these actions which eventually  led to the  death of Vladimir Katriuk.

With the exception of a godchild of the church who came from Toronto for his funeral, celebrated at Ste. Sophie Orthodox Church in the district of Rosemount, the man had no family. Sonija Hart thus assured herself of keeping her « grandfather » company every day when he was hospitalized following his cerebrovascular accident.

 

« I am happy to have been with him in his last moments, » she said. « I did it because I was close to Vladimir and Maria. They needed help. I wanted his last requests to be done. I also want the truth to be told about him. »

A few days before his death, Vladimir entrusted to Sonija the care of going to look for some photos which were hidden under the mattress of a bed in an apartment which he continued to rent in Montreal. She discovered a collection of a great wealth of negatives that few people were able to see. Some photos dated back to the 1950s and were published in the current edition of this newspaper. 

« In his last days in hospital, we looked at the photos together and he told me things about the war, which he rarely had done since I've known him. These were moments which will remain precious memories, » Hart related. « Vladimir gave me his hens, the plants from his garden and his last pot of honey. He wanted me to take his bees and the last hives, but I am not familiar enough with bee-keeping, » she explained.

As for his wife Maria, with whom Vladimir shared his life for nearly 70 years, she took the loss of the love of her life badly and she had to leave the little house in Ormstown in order to go and live in a lodging centre in Vaudreuil-Dorion.