Canadian Politicians Apologize After Applauding Nazi Veteran

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2022. (Wikimedia Commons)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized on September 22 on behalf of the Canadian parliament for applauding Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian man who fought for a Nazi unit during World War II. The now former speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, Anthony Rota, invited 98-year-old Hunka to the joint session of parliament after an address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to NPR. SkyNews reports that Zelensky and Trudeau both applauded Hunka, although they received no advance notice that Hunka would be attending the session.

CNN reports that after the session, many international organizations condemned their decision, noting that Hunka fought for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Nazi military unit. The backlash led Rota to resign as Speaker on September 26 and provoked Trudeau to issue an apology. 

The German-Polish historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe writes that the Germans formed the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, as an SS division made up of approximately eight thousand Ukrainians, many of whom were Ukrainian nationalists. According to CNN, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg declared the SS a criminal organization that had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

The division’s status as a part of the Nazi SS was not unknown to Canadians. For example, The Winnipeg Free Press reviewed Myroslav Shkandrij’s book In the Maelstrom: The Waffen-SS ‘Galicia’ Division and Its Legacy in June 2023. Shkandrij, a professor emeritus of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba, concluded that Ukrainians joined the division for various reasons, but that “[v]eterans frequently did not dwell on the killing of Jews, which they all knew about and had witnessed.”

The Canadian Parliament’s standing ovation for Hunka played into Russian propaganda in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, spread the Russian Foreign Ministry’s claim that the ovation was typical of the Russophobic government in Canada. The move also supported Russia’s narrative about its supposed denazification of Ukraine. According to NPR, Putin has engaged in historical revisionism by claiming that neo-Nazis run Ukraine in order to justify Russia’s invasion.

The scandal also ruffled feathers with Canada’s NATO ally Poland. Przemysław Czarnek, the country’s minister of education, said that his government was working toward Hunka’s extradition to Poland for crimes against Polish people of Jewish origin, according to Politico. 

There is a large Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and across the English-speaking world that has had a large impact on the discourse surrounding Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis. The group has, according to Rossoliński-Liebe, spread a narrative portraying Ukrainian nationalists as opposing the Soviets and not hurting Jews. Shkandrij agreed, writing that “a positive narrative of the [Galicia] Division developed in the postwar Ukrainian diaspora.” As of 2022, Canada had the world’s second largest Ukrainian diaspora behind Russia, according to The Guardian. The diaspora has been a strong political force that has consistently mobilized to spread pro-Ukrainian nationalist ideas, writes Professor Milana Nikolko of Carleton University.

This debacle is just the latest in a series of scandals regarding the legacy of Holocaust collaboration in Ukraine. Stepan Bandera, one of the leaders of the pro-Ukrainian independence Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) has a complex legacy, according to Euronews. Many in Ukraine see him as a nationalist hero, while others consider him a Nazi collaborator. Especially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bandera has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance and independence, according to Deutsche Welle.

However, Bandera’s wing of the OUN supported the Nazi side of the war until 1941. In 1941, Bandera’s faction of the OUN declared an independent Ukrainian state, from which point both the Nazis and Soviets attempted to vanquish the OUN. Nonetheless, members of the OUN, particularly members of Bandera’s wing, perpetrated pogroms and killed Jews in Ukraine, wrote John Himka in The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Ukraine. After 1941, thousands of members of the OUN and other nationalist groups joined the Ukrainian police forces that participated in the Holocaust. 

The Canadian parliament’s ovation for Hunka has raised questions surrounding Ukrainian participation in the Holocaust, and especially regarding Holocaust perpetrators and Nazi collaborators in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation says that the scandal led to calls for the Canadian government to release the Deschenes Commission report, which names alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada. Trudeau said his government was considering releasing the unpublished parts of the report, including the names of alleged war criminals. Even if the government elects not to release the report, Canada is facing a reckoning over the Holocaust collaborators now living in the country.