Spiting The Holocaust

"The recent act affecting the National Holocaust monument was deplorable and is counter to the values we seek to uphold in our community. We extend our deepest sympathies to members of our community impacted by this disgraceful act."

"The City can confirm that the individual implicated in this act was on leave at the time of the incident and is no longer employed by the City."

"As the matter is the subject of a police investigation and is before the courts, the City will provide no further comment." 

Ottawa interim city solicitor Stuart Huxley

 

"That person is no longer an employee at the City of Ottawa."

"The National Holocaust Monument is a sacred place in our city, an important place in our city."

"And I know that members of the Jewish community were very distraught and disturbed to see it vandalized."

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe  

The City of Ottawa has fired one of its lawyers after he was charged earlier this month with vandalizing the National Holocaust Monument. He was on leave at the time of the incident.       CBC News

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) has charged a 46-year-old Ottawa man, following an investigation of the June 9, 2025, vandalism of the National Holocaust Monument, located at 1918 Chaudière Crossing in Ottawa.

The monument was defaced with red paint.  The man has been charged with: 

• Mischief to a War Memorial
• Mischief exceeding $5000
• Harassment by threatening Conduct

The man is scheduled to appear in court on June 28, 2025. 

The Hate and Bias Crime Unit is leading the investigation and urges anyone with information to contact their tip line at 613-236-1222, extension 5625.

The OPS treats incidents of this nature seriously and recognizes their profound impact on the community.

We encourage anyone who witnesses or experiences such incidents to report them to police. Reporting hate-motivated incidents is an important step in stopping cycles of hatred.

Ottawa Police Service notice June 27, 2025 

The Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa was vandalized on June 09, 2025. Photo: Jean Levac/Postmedia

 

The man who was employed with the City of Ottawa as a city solicitor and who was arrested for a despicable hate crime of defacing the Ottawa Holocaust memorial was identified at Iain Aspenlieder. On his arrest he was placed in prison awaiting trial. He was charged by police with mischief to a war monument. The charge of harassment levied against the 46-year-old was related to threatening conduct on his part, with respect to the incident.

 

Set to appear in court on July 2nd for a bail hearing decision, that hearing took place as scheduled, and the decision was to not grant bail for the offence. The Holocaust memorial was officially opened in 2017 to commemorate the annihilation of six million of Europe's Jewish population from Nazi-occupied parts of Europe during World War Two, when Nazi Germany under its Führer Adolf Hitler embarked on the Final Solution to solving the problem of Jews sullying Europe with their non-Aryan presence. 

 

Matters did not unfold smoothly with the official opening of the monument. Although the dedication was to the extermination of six million European Jews sacrificed to the monumental antisemitism prevalent during the Third Reich, the plaque dedicated to the memory of those Jews somehow failed to mention the word 'Jew' at all. It was instead inscribed to the memory of the men, women and children whose lives were lost in the Holocaust. A typical oversight reflecting a polite version of  antisemitic sentiment courtesy of the Liberal government of the day in Canada.

 

Fittingly, not only was this man denied bail for his act of diminishing the mass extermination of Jews during an unspeakably inhumane era in human relations when the plight of Europe's Jews -- although the West became aware of the grotesque lethality of state-organized wholesale murder -- failed to move countries around the globe to act to challenge Germany, and to rescue the lives of Jews marked for death, at a time when rescue was possible before the machinery of death came to a halt with the end of the war.

 

Tellingly enough, his motivation stemmed from another mass atrocity whose intent was similar to that of the Holocaust; another 'final solution' scheduled to repeat the original on a smaller, but no less-shocking scale in its savagery, when a Palestinian death-cult swarmed into Israel and thousands of terrorists set out to pillage, rape, mutilate and murder as many Jews as their numbers and weaponry could accommodate to their purpose. A mini-Holocaust, if you like. And this man, Iain Aspenlieder, approving the mission, turned the event inside-out to portray Israel as the aggressor and the terrorists as the victims.

 

Undated photo of Iain Aspenlieder, 46, of Ottawa. He was charged after a man was arrested June 27, 2025 in connection with what Jewish leaders consider was anti-Israel vandalism on Canada's National Holocaust Monument. (Flickr)

 

 This man trained as a lawyer does the profession no favours. And the professional body he depends upon to practise -- the Law Society of Ontario -- decided to suspend him administratively. Such a suspension relates to a lawyer suspended for administrative reasons, no longer lawfully practicing law or providing legal services. His shameful act distinguished him as an individual incapable of recognizing right from wrong, and of exercising intelligent reasoning to reach a sound conclusion.

 

Having been refused bail, his next step would be to retain a lawyer to represent him in court during a trial. And until that trial takes place, he is destined to remain incarcerated for his decision to criminally deface a memorial dedicated to the memory of millions of men, women and children deemed by a barbaric decision to be unfit to live. The very same barbarity that launched the attack of October 7, 2023 from Gaza to Israel, an attack whose sadistic ferocious cruelty did its utmost to emulate the Final Solution of World War Two.

 

People gather at the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa on June 15 for a vigil held one week after the memorial was vandalized. (Benjamin Andrews/CBC)