House Speaker apologizes after MPs honour man who fought with Nazi unit
Attachment 6810
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recognize Yaroslav Hunka, who was in attendance and fought with the First Ukrainian Division in Second World War before later immigrating to Canada, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, Sept. 22.
The Speaker of the House apologized Sunday for prompting standing ovations in the House of Commons for a man who served in a Nazi SS unit in Ukraine during the Second World War and was invited as a “Canadian hero” to hear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to parliamentarians.
Following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Parliament on Friday, House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota drew attention to a 98-year-old man from North Bay, Ont., named Yaraslov Hunka, who was seated in the chamber as an invited guest, and lauded him for “fighting for Ukraine independence against the Russians” during the Second World War.
“He is a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service,” Mr. Rota said. His comment prompted cheers and two standing ovations from the House of Commons, which included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mr. Zelensky.
But Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies said in a statement on the weekend that the man served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Nazi military unit with documented evidence of “crimes against humanity” crimes during the Holocaust. “The fact that a veteran who served in a Nazi military unit was invited to and given a standing ovation in Parliament is shocking,” the group said, calling on the government to publicly apologize.
In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Rota said had “become aware of more information” that made him regret the decision to invite Mr. Hunka, who is from his riding, saying the “initiative was entirely my own.”
“I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world. I accept full responsibility for my actions.”
A spokesperson from the Prime Minister’s Office said that “no advance notice was provided to the Prime Minister’s Office, nor the Ukrainian delegation, about the invitation or recognition.” The Speaker and the PMO operate independently, the spokesperson said, adding that Mr. Rota chose his own guests, and taking “full responsibility” was the “right thing to do.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, however, said Sunday that the prime minister also needed to “personally apologize” for what he called “an appalling error in judgement.” Mr. Poilievre pointed out that parliamentarians had no opportunity to vet the man’s past – a task for an important state visit that he said should have been handled by the Prime Minister’s Office. “Without warning or context, it was impossible for any parliamentarian in the room - other than Mr. Trudeau - to know of this dark past.”
The scene in Parliament will have potentially serious ramifications beyond Canada, said Ivan Katchanovski, a University of Ottawa political scientist who has published on the SS unit and is writing a book about the Ukraine war. He called the standing ovation “beyond comprehension.”
He pointed out that Russia has falsely used the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine as propaganda to gain support for its invasion of the country last year “This will be used by Russia in the war against Ukraine,” he said, suggesting that both Canadian politicians and Mr. Zelensky will need to quickly distance themselves from the scene in Parliament.
Dr. Katchanovski says that the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS was renamed the First Ukrainian Division at the end of the war - a move to distance the unit from Nazi ties, and depict its members as fighting to protect Ukraine from a Russia invasion. But he said the volunteer unit was originally formed in 1943, after Germany lost the Battle of Stalingrad, under the Waffen SS, the combat branch of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary. Mr. Katchanovski says the unit has been linked to massacres of civilians carried out in villages in Poland. It has been a source of ongoing controversy in Ukraine, he says, with Mr. Zelenksy, who is Jewish, publicly condemning a march celebrating the unit that was held in Kyiv a few months before Russia’s invasion.
In a blog post, written in Ukrainian, on a website dedicated to the First Ukrainian Division, a writer named Yaroslav Hunka, from Canada, describes volunteering for the unit in 1943, when he was 18, fearing a Russian invasion with the German army planning a retreat from western Ukraine. In two weeks, the blog says, 80,000 volunteers joined the division, many students from his hometown. “We felt our duty to our native land - and left,” the author writes. The unit surrendered to the British Army at the end of the war.
“I do not want the reader to understand that my entire generation was ideologically motivated and spiritually conscious,” the author writes. “In a bag of healthy apples, there are also rotten ones. It will depend on the relationship between those two qualities of apples in the course of a given generation.”
