Sol Littman fonds [multiple media] Archives / Collections and Fonds
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Hierarchy 
Sol Littman fonds [multiple media]
Hierarchical level:FondsContext of this record:Fonds includes:8 lower level description(s)View lower level description(s) -
Finding aid Moving images: (Electronic) Please refer to MISACS for item-level descriptions.Textual records (Electronic) MSS2386 (90: Open)
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf001/p000001002.pdf -
Record information Sol Littman fonds [multiple media]
Date:1939-2002.Reference:R2958-0-1-EType of material:Textual material, Moving images, Sound recordings, PhotographsFound in:Archives / Collections and FondsItem ID number:160570Date(s):1939-2002.Place of creation:OntarioExtent:13.03 m of textual records.
164 photographs 132 b&w and 32 col.
19 videocassettes (8 h, 10 min, 30 s).
5 film reels (28 min, 30 s).
5 microfilm reels.
38 audio cassettes (36 h, 54 min).Language of material:EnglishAdded language of material:English, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, German, Slovak, RussianScope and content:Fonds consists of Sol Littman's personal papers containing correspondence, memoranda, briefs, submissions, publications, articles, speeches, microfilms, research notebooks and materials, videotapes, films and photographs pertaining to the Albert Helmut Rauca case; the hunt for World War Two era war criminals and collaborators living in Canada including members of the Croation Ustasha, Hungarian Arrow Cross, Romanian Iron Guard, Slovak Hlinka Guard and the Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS Volunteer Grenadier Division; the Deschênes Commission and Jewish-Ukrainian relations; suspected war criminal case files; Holocaust denial, historical revisionism, hate propaganda and the internet.Provenance:Additional name(s):Biography/Administrative history:Littman, Sol, 1920-2017 : Sol Littman was a sociologist, investigative journalist, author and an expert on Nazi war criminals. Born in Toronto, he received his B.A. (1945) and B.S.W. (1952) at the University of Toronto and his M.S. (1950) at the University of Wisconsin. He was director of B'nai Brith Youth Organization, Ontario 1950-1955. As a senior staff member of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in the United States 1955-1968 he did extensive research on American radical- right organizations and neo-Nazi groups. He was founder of and director of B'nai Brith Canada's Canadian League for Human Rights 1968-1971. He then turned to journalism and was managing editor of the Canadian Jewish News 1971-1973, an art critic for the Toronto Star 1973, a news documentary maker for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1973-1976 where his 1974 investigation into Canadian prisons won a news broadcasting award and a senior editorial writer for the Toronto Star 1976-1981 writing on many issues including justice and immigration.
He was the Canadian Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Toronto from 1983 until his retirement in 1999. He devoted his career there to investigating the presence of war criminals living in Canada. He and other Jewish community leaders provided the Justice Department with lists of suspects and other information required for procecution and denaturalization proceedings. They successfully lobbied the Canadian government to appoint the Royal Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada (Deschênes Commission) in 1985, amend the Criminal Code to allow for the prosecution of war criminals and establish the War Crimes Unit in the Justice Department in 1987.
While he was a CBC reporter, he covered the case of Albert Helmut Rauca, a war criminal who was responsible for the murder of more than ten thousand Jewish citizens of Kaunas Lithuania in 1941. Rauca immigrated to Canada after the war and became a Canadian citizen living a quiet life under his own name. Sought by West German authorities, he was arrested in the spring of 1982 by the RCMP and deported to West Germany in May 1983 where he died in jail while awaiting trial. Littman wrote an account of his arrest and trial in "War Criminal on Trial: The Rauca Case" (1982). A second edition was published in 1998.
Littman devoted considerable time and research on the history of the German-recruited Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS Volunteer Genadier Division and its conduct in occupied eastern Europe. Some two thousand members of that Division were were allowed to immigrate to Canada after the war. His book "The Halychyna Waffen-SS Division : Pure Soldiers or Sinister Legion" was published in 2003.
He was a visiting scholar in the Judaic Studies Department at the University of Arizona.
Sol Littman passed away on January 2, 2017.Additional information:General note:Received from Sol Littman in 2000, 2003, 2004 and 2005, 2016.Language note:Seventy-five percent of the material is in English and the remainder is in several central and eastern European languages including Croatian, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Ukrainian and Yiddish. Microfilms M-8842 to M-8846 are all in German.Accruals:Further accruals are not expected.Subject heading:Source:Private -
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