[News] Canada hails Nazi SS veteran from Ukraine as "hero"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/canada-hails-nazi-ss-veteran-ukraine-hero>
Canada hails Nazi SS veteran from Ukraine as "hero"

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 24
September 2023
------------------------------
[image: Zelensky in a military shirt stands next to Trudeau who is wearing
a suit and clapping as others look on]

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau and other lawmakers in the Canadian parliament, Friday. During the
session, in which Zelenskyy spoke, Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of the Nazi
Waffen SS in Ukraine received a standing ovation. (via CBC News on YouTube
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m_QRRxG1Mk&t=4200s>)

Earlier this month, there was a storm of outrage
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-are-us-and-israel-sending-more-guns-holocaust-denier-abbas>
from Israel, its lobby and sponsors in the West over comments by
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas appearing to blame Jews for
their own murders by the German government headed by Adolf Hitler in the
1940s.

One of the most forceful denunciations came from Canada, whose
representatives in Ramallah asserted
<https://twitter.com/CanadaRepPA/status/1699871051839156605> that Abbas’
“remarks distort the historical truth of the Holocaust and promote classic
and contemporary tropes of Jew-hatred.”
One might think that the members of this chorus truly care about preserving
the memory of the victims of the Nazis, and even take seriously their
regular invocation of such slogans as “Never Again.”

But that would be a mistake.
Hero’s welcome

On Friday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was received as a hero in
Ottawa, where he addressed the Canadian parliament.

Following Zelensky’s speech, Anthony Rota, the speaker of the Canadian
House of Commons, paid tribute to another man from Ukraine.

“We have here in the chamber today … a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from
the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the
Russians, and continues to support the troops today, even at his age of
98,” Rota said
<https://www.youtube.com/live/7m_QRRxG1Mk?si=jghcdsoi2bi8rWXt&t=4200> to
raucous hoots and a standing ovation.

Rota added that he was “very proud” that the man, Yaroslav Hunka, lived in
his own Ontario electoral district.

“He’s a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his
service,” the speaker added to more boisterous applause.
In fact, Hunka is a veteran of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS
– part of Hitler’s notorious Schutzstaffel
<https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss>, the elite troops
who perpetrated some of the worst genocidal crimes of World War II.

As an article in *The Forward*
<https://forward.com/fast-forward/561927/zelenskyy-joins-canadian-parliaments-ovation-to-98-year-old-veteran-who-fought-with-nazis/>
points out, “this is the same unit that is honored by controversial
monuments in Canada, Australia, and, as the *Forward* recently exposed
<https://forward.com/news/558622/ss-galichina-ukraine-nazi-monument-memorial-detroit-elkins-park/>,
the suburbs of Philadelphia and Detroit. Jewish groups have called for
their removal.”

Formed in 1943 from recruits in Western Ukraine, the *The Forward* explains
that the Galician Waffen SS unit was “armed and trained by the Nazis and
commanded by German officers. In 1944, the division was visited by SS head
Heinrich Himmler, who spoke of the soldiers’ willingness to slaughter
Poles.”

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum holds a number of artifacts
<https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1002866> about the
division, including this newsreel film
<https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1002627> showing a lavish
Nazi ceremony bidding a fond farewell to the Waffen SS Galicia division as
its soldiers are sent off from the city of Lviv to receive training, before
joining Hitler’s war effort.

After the war, thousands of Waffen SS Galicia veterans were allowed to
resettle in the West, with several thousand going to Canada, *The Forward*
notes.
Whitewashing Nazis

In a sense, Friday’s horrifying spectacle in the Canadian parliament is the
culimination of decades of whitewashing
<http://espritdecorps.ca/history-feature/whitewashing-the-ss-the-attempt-to-re-write-the-history-of-hitlers-collaborators>
of the Ukrainian Waffen SS unit by members of the Ukrainian Canadian
diaspora and other Nazi apologists.

Ivan Katchanovski – a Ukrainian Canadian political scientist at the
University of Ottawa <https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/1150> who adamantly
refuses to whitewash
<https://truthout.org/articles/lies-about-ukraine-conflict-are-standing-in-the-way-of-a-peaceful-resolution/>
Ukrainian ultranationalism and its role in bringing his homeland to its
present disaster – wondered
<https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1705788466263413086>, “Did
anyone in parliament or Zelensky realize that [Hunka] served in Waffen SS
division?”
It’s likely many of those clapping had no idea or didn’t care, but there’s
little reason to believe that Canadian leaders, including Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau, did not know. And there’s no reason to think they would
care either.

It is well known that one of Trudeau’s top allies, Deputy Prime Minister
Chrystia Freeland, is the proud granddaughter
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/27/a-nazi-skeleton-in-the-family-closet/?print=print>,
of one of Hitler’s top Ukrainian propagandists
<https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/chrystia-freelands-granddad-was-indeed-a-nazi-collaborator-so-much-for-russian-disinformation>,
Michael Chomiak.
[image: An older man in round spectacles and Nazi uniform stands in a car
surrounded by young men in Nazi uniforms]

SS chief Heinrich Himmler addresses a group of Waffen SS soldiers in the
“eastern territories,” 1942. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum
<https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/ss-chief-heinrich-himmler-addresses-a-regiment-of-the-waffen-ss>
)

Instead of embracing historical truth about her grandfather’s role in
recruiting
for the SS and spreading anti-Semitic propaganda
<https://yasha.substack.com/p/chrystia-freeland-and-canadian-nazi> on
behalf of the Hitler regime, Freeland has tried to whitewash his role
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/09/canadas-foreign-minister-says-russia-is-spreading-disinformation-about-her-grandfather/>
.

And in 2018, when there was a public outcry about monuments in Canada
honoring the Ukrainian Nazis, Trudeau’s office went to work to deflect
attention from the matter.

Using freedom of information requests, a Canadian journalist discovered
<https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-government-comes-to-the-defence-of-nazi-ss-and-nazi-collaborators-but-why>
that “government officials were under a lot of pressure” from the prime
minister’s office “to counter the news about the monuments to Nazi
collaborators,” as *The Ottawa Citizen* reported.

While many Ukrainian nationalists always kept a flame burning for the
Waffen SS Galicia unit, its rehabilitation really took off following the 2014
US-backed coup
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/ukraine-crisis-highlights-wests-hypocrisy-over-israeli-land-theft>
in Ukraine that brought the current clique of ultranationalists to power.

As recently as 2021, Ukrainians held the first parade honoring the Waffen
SS Galicia division in the capital Kiev, prompting protests
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/hundreds-in-ukraine-attend-marches-celebrating-nazi-ss-soldiers/>
from Israel and even from President Zelensky.

But things change quickly.

Now much of the Western media and establishment, including Israel
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-helps-ukraine-whitewash-its-nazis/36911>
and its lobby groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, have been willing
to whitewash
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-lobby-group-adl-rehabilitates-hitlers-accomplices-ukraine/35021>
Ukrainian nationalists who helped Hitler exterminate Jews and Poles,
because that suits the politics of the West’s current proxy war
<https://www.aei.org/op-eds/russia-is-right-the-us-is-waging-a-proxy-war-in-ukraine/>
– using Ukrainians as cannon fodder – against Russia.
It is common to hear apologists for Hitler’s Ukrainian volunteers claiming
that the men of the Waffen SS Galicia division are remembered positively
today despite their association with the Nazis, because their true
motivation was fighting for Ukrainian independence, against the Soviet
Union.

Last year, however, Ellen Germain, the US special envoy on Holocaust
issues, called
<https://www.state.gov/why-confronting-holocaust-distortion-and-denial-matters/>
this kind of “rehabilitation” of Nazi collaborators a form of “Holocaust
distortion.” She was right.
Cynicism and hypocrisy

All of this goes to show how cynical all the pious condemnations of Mahmoud
Abbas have been.

As of this writing, the German ambassador in Tel Aviv
<https://twitter.com/GerAmbTLV/status/1699431139503411645>, the US
anti-Semitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt
<https://twitter.com/StateSEAS/status/1699771336631968048> and her EU
counterpart Katharina von Schnurbein
<https://twitter.com/kschnurbein/status/1699782321803784197>, as well
as Jonathan
Greenblatt <https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1699815304937828636>,
the head of Anti-Defamation League – among the countless others who
condemned Abbas – have said nothing about the celebration of Nazis by
Canada’s entire political establishment.

Frankly, it would be surprising if any of them ever do.

Among Western governments and elites, the Holocaust is no longer – if it
ever really was – treated as a historical crime with real victims whose
memories deserve to be truly honored.

It is simply a political club to be hypocritically wielded
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinians-have-had-enough-europes-holocaust-hypocrisy>
on behalf of Israel and against official enemies when useful and convenient.

In this context of such utter bad faith, the Palestinian academics and
activists who dutifully signed an open letter
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-are-us-and-israel-sending-more-guns-holocaust-denier-abbas>
condemning Abbas’s comments should reflect on the futility – at best – of
their gesture.
Meanwhile, students and educators
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/every-allegation-anti-semitism-was-found-be-false>,
writers and artists
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/palestine-writes-fights-censorship-calls>
– anyone standing up for Palestine – are regularly falsely accused of
anti-Semitism while living, breathing Nazis receive standing ovations from
Israel’s closest friends.

It’s just disgusting.
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