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Head of Canadian Ukrainian group defends man who fought for unit created by Nazis
(www.theglobeandmail.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The incident drew widespread international criticism after it was revealed Hunka was a member of a mostly volunteer unit created by the Nazis to fight the Soviet Union.
Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political science professor at the University of Ottawa, says the actions of Hunka’s Waffen-SS Galicia Division have been “whitewashed” in Canada.
In 1950, the federal cabinet decided to allow Ukrainians living in the United Kingdom to come to Canada “notwithstanding their service in the German army," as long as they went through a security screening.
In response to questions about Hunka, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said Thursday that the people of present-day Ukraine, including its Jewish population, suffered successive occupations by “foreign empires and colonizers” going back centuries.
John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta professor emeritus and the author of a book about Ukrainians and the Holocaust, said many of the young men who joined the Galicia division in 1943 were motivated by the atrocities they witnessed under Soviet occupation, including the murder of thousands of political prisoners and mass deportations to labour camps.
Klufas blames the branding of Hunka as a Nazi on “Russian disinformation,” adding, “the fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.” He also said there was nothing wrong with Parliament applauding a man “who fought for his country.” However, he conceded that it “maybe wasn’t correct” in the circumstances, given that the people there didn’t fully understand the issue.
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But he was a soldier that volunteered to fight for a Nazi unit. He literally chose to join the Nazis.
This might be a case of an expert being overly pedantic whereas the public doesn't really care because if it quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck
I mean, at least in this summary (the article is pay-gated) it sounds like his point is valid. The line, "The fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.", seems suspect, but I assume by "Nazi" he means the ideology or the political party directly, which could be true. Again, working purely off the summary. As Himka stated, those in Ukranian divisions may have been motivated to volunteer by fear of continued Soviet atrocities after witnessing the Holodomor and other crimes against humanity, or by vengence for these crimes.
If Yaroslav Hunka did join for these reasons, I think the matter is a lot more grey. If you watched your family and friends die to a violent, genocidal government, its not weird that you might be willing to work with another if you think they're a less immediately dangerous. Of course, if thats not the case, or he did support the Nazi party, the ideology, or if he was involved in any of the division's war crimes, then all of this is out the window and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. My point is that he should be proven guilty before being counted as a supporter of the Nazi ideology, and there is still room for error currently (unless there's social media posts or other evidence I don't know of).
Edit: And just to be extra clear in case it wasn't obvious, I think supporters of the Nazi ideology, its modern incarnations, facists, and racists are all terrible. I think anyone who supports these belefs should be denounced and avoided. I just also believe that it is important to be certain of the accusation of something so awful before condeming someone for them.