28 SEP 2023
The scandal surrounding the roaring applause for the former Waffen-SS man Jaroslaw Hunka in the Canadian parliament continues to make waves. Hunka was officially welcomed as a guest on Friday last week on the occasion of an appearance by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the parliament in Ottawa; the speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, paid tribute to him with the words that the 98-year-old was "a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from World War II" who had "fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians" "and continued to support the troops today." 1] Rota emphasized: "He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service." Hunka was then honored with standing ovations by the Canadian Parliament and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This happened, although no great historical knowledge is required to guess that a Ukrainian who fought against the Soviet Union ("Russians") in World War II did so alongside Nazi Germany. Hunka was a volunteer in 1943 in the 14th. Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS (Waffen-SS-Division Galicia) and had participated as a member of the unit in the German war of annihilation against the Soviet Union - including war crimes.
Hunka's appearance and the roarous applause for him are now leading to the first consequences - after protests by Jewish organizations, including the friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies and B'nai B'rith Canada. Parliament spokesman Rota resigned on Tuesday after a long period of reflection. Prime Minister Trudeau has so far been content with the statement that he was "deeply ashamed" about the incident. 2] In Poland, Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek announced on Tuesday that he had asked the Institute for National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) to "urgently check" whether Hunka was suspected of having committed crimes against Polish citizens, including Jewish faith, during World War II. If there are "signs of such crimes", then Warsaw will apply to the Canadian authorities for his extradition in order to be able to put him on trial. 3] The Waffen-SS Division Galicia has actually committed massacres of Polish civilians, among others, for example on the 28th. February 1944 in the village of Huta Pieniacka, where, according to different estimates, she murdered between 500 and 800 Poles. Their participation in several other massacres, in which countless Poles were killed, is historically proven.
The background for Hunka's appearance in parliament in Ottawa is not least that Canada has become a refuge for large parts of the Ukrainian Nazi collaboration after the Second World War. Although Canada officially refused entry to members of the Waffen-SS, it granted the Waffen-SS Division Galicia an exception in principle in 1950. 4] In 1986, an official investigation came to the remarkable conclusion that "accusations of war crimes" against the division were "never" adequately justified. Critics classified Canada as a safe "port for Nazi criminals" years ago. 5] The alleged war criminals who were never convicted also included Ukrainians, including Ukrainian members of the Waffen-SS.
The scandal surrounding the applause of the Canadian parliament for Hunka reminds us that members of different units of the Waffen-SS are still honored in various European countries - especially in Eastern Europe. In the west of Ukraine, for example, in the summer of 2013, a deputy of the later Kiev ruling party Swoboda took part in a commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the Waffen-SS Division Galicia.[ 6] After further commemorations for the division were held in Western Ukraine for several years - where the form of Ukrainian nationalism, shaped by the fascist and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, is particularly strongly anchored - marched on the 28th. April 2021 for the first time hundreds through Kiev to commemorate the founding of the Waffen-SS unit in 1943. 7]
Members of the Waffen-SS are also honored in the Baltic States. In Estonia, for example, a number of monuments have been erected since the 1990s, which are in praise of Estonian volunteers of the Waffen-SS. International attention was attracted, for example, by a memorial stone in the Estonian village of Mustla, to which Alfons Rebane is dedicated, an Estonian who rose to the standard leader of the Waffen-SS and continued the fight against the Soviet Union after the end of the Second World War, but now underground. In 1961 he fled to the Federal Republic. The daily newspaper Die Welt stated a few years ago that "in Estonia as in the other two Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia" "the fear of contact with the Waffen-SS ... is currently low": "Much more important" the joint positioning "against the big and aggressive neighbor Russia" appears to many activists on the ground today. 8] In Latvia, on the other hand, a public memorial march is held every year in honor of the Latvian members of the Waffen-SS; the youngest took place on the 16th. March of this year.[ 9] There, too, the Nazi collaborators enjoy appreciation as the most determined fighters against the Soviet Union or against Russia.
In Germany, this has been leading for some time to the fact that the federal government officially turns to a softer attitude towards organizations of the Nazi collaboration, including the Waffen-SS. This is reflected in the regular votes of the UN General Assembly on resolutions that speak out against any "glorification of Nazism" and in which also the honor or Include glorification, among other things, of the Waffen-SS. For years, the Federal Government could not bring itself to support the resolution, but abstained from the vote - on the grounds that the wording assumed "persons who campaigned for the independence of the Baltic states from the Soviet Union in the 1940s, a general connection to the National Socialist crimes." 10] In November last year, Berlin even explicitly refused to condemn the "glorification of Nazism." The background to this was the Ukraine war. A total of 52 states voted no - including almost all, which usually proudly stage themselves as champions for "Western values." 11]
[1] Isabel van Brugen: Who is Yaroslav Hunka? Ukrainian With Nazi Past Honored in Canada. newsweek.com 25.09.2023.
[2] Josh Kaplan: Justin Trudeau 'deeply embarrassed' after hosting Nazi in Canadian parliament. thejc.com 26.09.2023.
[3] Claudia Chiappa, Kyle Duggan: Poland seeks extradition of Ukrainian SS veteran who was applauded in Canada. politico.eu 26.09.2023.
[4] Tristin Hopper: Canada's long history of soft-pedalling the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Galicia Division. nationalpost.com 25.09.2023.
[5] Anthony Depalma: Canada Called Haven for Nazi Criminals. nytimes.com 03.02.1997.
[6] Nils Casjens: Deputy of Ukrainian governing party honors Waffen-SS. daserste.ndr.de 07.03.2014.
[7] Bernhard Clasen: With SS symbols and Hitler salute. taz.de 29.04.2021.
[8] Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Can an Estonian SS officer be honored? welt.de 25.06.2018. S. From perpetrators, victims and collaborators (III).
[9] March 16 parade takes place in Riga. eng.lsm.lv 16.03.2023. S. also The commemoration of the military.
[10] Written questions with the in the week of the 8th Responses received from the Federal Government in December 2014. German Bundestag, printed matter 18/3519. Berlin, 12.12.2014. S. The commemoration of the soldiers.
[11] Les Décodeurs: Why France and 51 other countries voted against UN resolution condemning Nazism. lemonde.fr 09.11.2022.