Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visited the US and Canada last week in search of additional billions to fund the Ukrainian War. This is relevant to the whole world due to the risk of this conflict escalating to WWIII.
Friday, 22# September, Zelenskyy visited the Canadian parliament and Speaker of the House Anthony Rota, introduced 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka — also reported as Yaroslav Hunk — as a “Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.” Hunka received 2 standing ovations from the 338 Members of Parliament.
The problem is that Hunka fought for the “First Ukrainian Division.” The First Ukrainian Division was formerly the “Galician Division” of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.
The SS — the Schutzstaffel — was the Nazi Party's paramilitary organisation and the “Waffen SS” was their combat branch. The brutal soldiers of the Waffen SS were responsible for the ~6 million deaths of the Holocaust and many other atrocities. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg declared the SS to be a criminal organization.
(National Post 24 September 2023)
(Wikipedia)
Zelenskyy appeared to support Hunka during the visit to parliament. There is some evidence that this Division was tasked to exclusively "fight Bolsheviks" during the war — and not other Allied countries.
By the end of 1941 the "Big Four" Allies were the United Kingdom, United States, China and the Soviet Union. (There were other concessions to the Galician Division also, such as allowing Christian chaplains into their units.)
The Germans Army were known to be especially brutal towards Russian soldiers: the Soviets lost ~20 million people during WWII.
(Click to Wikipedia)
As President and a Ukrainian Jew, Zelenskyy cannot be ignorant of the atrocities perpetrated by the SS in Ukraine. (The Ukrainian Holocaust was probably implemented by German Waffen SS units.)
One simple possibility is that the details of Hunka’s military service were lost in translation to Zelenskyy.
Another is that the action of the Galician Division are currently accepted because they were ‘only fighting against the Soviet Union.’ (This brings in complex possibilities, which could validate some of Putin’s claims.) There is obviously much more to be known about Hunka’s involvement and how this has lead into the current conflict.
As noted in the National Post: “The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies issued a statement Sunday saying the division “was responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable.” " There were calls from several Jewish organizations for an apology. The Speaker of the House did apologize to Canadian and World Jewish communities today, Sunday 24th.
The Speaker noted that he acted on his own when introducing Hunka to parliament — they live in the same riding. One wonders whether an apology alone is adequate.
Kevin Hay
