Canada’s Cover-up of Nazi Criminals
The Western world experienced an eerie moment in Canada, when the political leaders assembled in the Parliament stood in thunderous applause for an elderly WWII fighter against the Russians. The 98-year-old man, Yaroslav Hunka, had been trotted out for a “feel good” moment during the Sept. 22 welcome for Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. All of those present may not have known that he had been a soldier of the Nazi Waffen-SS “Galizien” Division, but all were eager to honor someone who had fought against the evil Russians.
But wait a minute: Didn’t over one million Canadians fight on the side of the Russians and against Nazi Germany in World War II? History is simply forgotten in today’s geopolitical frenzy to treat Russia as an enemy. This incident, at the same time, has focused attention on the West’s continuous support, even today, of neo-Nazis in Ukraine to fight against the Russians, especially since the elected government was overthrown in 2014. In Ukraine itself, the Zelenskyy government and its predecessors have officially and pompously glorified a number of Nazi fighters.
As for today’s “hero” Yaroslav Hunka, he was a member of the Waffen-SS Galicia unit created, organized and commanded by the Nazis, a unit standing accused of horrid war crimes, including the rounding up and burning alive of over 500 Polish civilians at Huta Pieniacka in Feb. 1944. (Afterwards, SS head Heinrich Himmler visited Hunka’s Waffen-SS unit and praised them for their “willingness to slaughter Poles”.) Their surrender in 1945 was handled by the British, who arranged for somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000 of their members, including Hunka, a safe haven in Canada out of the hands of angry Poles, Ukrainians and Russians. Every Canadian government since then has chosen to “look the other way”, never asking them to answer for their crimes.
A critical role in recruiting Hunka and others to the Galicia unit was played by the grandfather of none other than Canada’s current deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. In 2011, Hunka confirmed on a website for veterans of that unit that he and others had volunteered “at the call of the Ukrainian Central Committee”, an organization empowered by the Nazis. That call was published and circulated by the viciously anti-Semitic, Nazi-established newspaper Krakivski Visti (Krakow News), whose editor from 1939 to 1945 was Freeland’s grandfather Mykhailo Chomiak.
Chrystia Freeland was among those who gave Hunka a standing ovation, and she does not have the excuse of not knowing history. Her practice for years has been to describe her grandfather as a Ukrainian patriot and a fighter for democracy, and to dismiss charges to the contrary as “Russian disinformation”. In fact, that has been the general practice in the West, especially since the 2014 coup. Thus, the shootings on the Maidan, the overwhelming vote in Crimea to join Russia, the nine years of bombardment of Donbass residents, the swastika emblem of the Azov Brigade, the Nazi tattoos on display in various paramilitaries, Kyiv’s ‘hit lists,’ the assassinations of journalists and bloggers, etc. — all of this is labeled “Russian propaganda”. As a result, the apologies uttered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the other leaders, once the truth was known, ring hollow.
