The speaker has acknowledged his mistake and apologized.
September 26, 2023 5:14 AM Subscribe
Canada’s House speaker Anthony Rota sorry for honoring Nazi veteran [Washington Post] The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons has apologized for celebrating a man who served in a notorious Nazi military unit during World War II. Speaker Anthony Rota introduced 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka of North Bay, Ontario, to fellow lawmakers on Friday during Ukrainian President Volodymyr’s visit to Parliament. After Zelensky addressed the body, thanking Canada for supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia and urging it to stay committed, Rota pointed out Hunka and described him as a war hero “who fought [for] Ukrainian independence against the Russians, and continues to support the troops today.” But on Sunday, Jewish groups condemned the honor, saying Hunka had been a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, a Waffen-SS unit composed of ethnic Ukrainians.
• Here’s how a man who fought for the Nazis got honoured in the House of Commons [Toronto Star][Wayback Machine Non-Paywall Link]
• Here’s how a man who fought for the Nazis got honoured in the House of Commons [Toronto Star][Wayback Machine Non-Paywall Link]
“The Prime Minister’s Office said it had no advance knowledge that Hunka would be there. In a statement to the Star, PMO spokesperson Ann-Clara Vaillancourt said Trudeau’s office did not receive a list of people that Rota invited to attend Zelenskyy’s speech. The House of Commons protocol team — comprised of non-partisan bureaucratic staff — was responsible for collecting lists of invitees from various parties and the Speaker’s office, and sending them to the Parliamentary Protective Services (PPS), one government official explained. “The individual referenced was invited and recognized by the Speaker,” Vaillancourt’s statement said. “The government and the Ukrainian delegation had no prior knowledge of this.”The PPS did not respond to questions about the incident from the Star on Monday.”
This is what happens when you don't educate your populace and you weaponize anti-communist rhetoric.
posted by Fizz at 5:23 AM on September 26, 2023 [39 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 5:23 AM on September 26, 2023 [39 favorites]
You would think endorsing an actual member of the SS would be a career-ending sort of thing, yes.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:24 AM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:24 AM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
This smells like a right wing op where somebody knew exactly who this guy is and snuck him onto a list to discredit the government and create a Ukrainian-Nazi talking point. The house speaker is going to take the fall but he was probably just reading off a piece of paper. It's the protocol staff who either didn't catch it or are complicit.
posted by allegedly at 5:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [53 favorites]
posted by allegedly at 5:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [53 favorites]
Unfortunately, the current Liberal government has a history of not vetting people very carefully. They invited an Sikh separatist as a official delegate on a visit to India a few years ago too. It's all too believable that this was an error of ommission. An entirely avoidable error.
posted by bonehead at 5:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 5:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
God what a fuck up.
I think once you know the history of the Eastern front in WW2, it's hard to not realise that you need to check things carefully but if you don't know (and lots of people don't) then it's easy to get the wool pulled over your eyes.
Assuming that he genuinely did not realise I feel a bit sorry for the Speaker but mainly because surely that's the end of his career.
posted by plonkee at 5:50 AM on September 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
I think once you know the history of the Eastern front in WW2, it's hard to not realise that you need to check things carefully but if you don't know (and lots of people don't) then it's easy to get the wool pulled over your eyes.
Assuming that he genuinely did not realise I feel a bit sorry for the Speaker but mainly because surely that's the end of his career.
posted by plonkee at 5:50 AM on September 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
Considering Chrystina Freeland is still deputy PM, I'm not sure I completely buy the "aw shucks, we did a oopsy" response.
posted by Reyturner at 5:52 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Reyturner at 5:52 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
You would think endorsing an actual member of the SS would be a career-ending sort of thing, yes.
You'd be surprised. Here's for example Peter Savaryn, who "served as Chancellor of the University of Alberta from 1982 to 1986 and was involved with the university Board of Governors and Senate. Savaryn was awarded an honorary degree in 1987 from the University of Alberta, and was also named to the Order of Canada that year." And also: "During World War II, he belonged to the Waffen-SS Galician Division."
And probably there are many more such people, since we know for fact that a huge number of the 14th Waffen were offloaded by the British to Canada:
Some Jewish orgs are fighting for removal of these monuments, with varying degrees of success:
- Jewish groups call for removal of vandalized Ukrainian WWII memorial
- Church moves to cover Philadelphia monument to a Nazi military formation — temporarily
posted by kmt at 5:56 AM on September 26, 2023 [44 favorites]
You'd be surprised. Here's for example Peter Savaryn, who "served as Chancellor of the University of Alberta from 1982 to 1986 and was involved with the university Board of Governors and Senate. Savaryn was awarded an honorary degree in 1987 from the University of Alberta, and was also named to the Order of Canada that year." And also: "During World War II, he belonged to the Waffen-SS Galician Division."
And probably there are many more such people, since we know for fact that a huge number of the 14th Waffen were offloaded by the British to Canada:
As part of his efforts to have Canada accept the Ukrainian SS soldiers, Panchuk pushed a “positive narrative portraying the former Galicians as an anti-Soviet” German Army unit, noted Ukrainian historian Olesya Khromeychuk. She is the author of the book “Undetermined Ukrainians” which looks at the various narratives surrounding the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia.Even back in 1948, Ukrainian-Canadians already were highlighting the issue with the SS veterans coming in, offering reasons why these war criminals were brought over to Canada:
No mention was made of the SS. Instead, the Ukrainians were portrayed by Panchuk as being victims, having been forced into the division against their will.
If Canadian immigration officials had actually probed deeply into the background of the 14th Waffen-SS division they would have found few victims in its ranks. “The volunteers (of the Galician Division) committed themselves to German victory, the New European Order, and to Adolf Hitler personally,” explained Per Anders Rudling, a historian of Eastern European history and Associate Professor at the Department of History at Lund University, Sweden. The division not only fought the Polish Home Army but it took part in the crushing of the Slovak National Uprising and hunted down anti-Nazi partisans in Slovenia. There were also allegations of war crimes being committed by division members.
While some in the Canadian government didn’t probe deeply into the background of the Ukrainian “refugees,” British government bureaucrats knew who they were dealing with and were more than happy to dump the SS troops into Canada’s lap. “The Division was an SS division and technically all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals,” noted a report from Britain’s Under-Secretary of State. (The Rcaf Officer Who Brought Hitler’s Waffen SS to Canada, espritdecorps.ca)
Why were Ukrainian nazis allowed into Canada after WWII? Here's a very good explanation, from the 1 April, 1948 issue of The Ukrainian Canadian, the English-language newspaper of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians.Perhaps this incident highlight how wide this problem is. Perhaps some people check out this handy Wikipedia list (!) of: Memorials in Canada to Nazis and Nazi collaborators.
Some Jewish orgs are fighting for removal of these monuments, with varying degrees of success:
- Jewish groups call for removal of vandalized Ukrainian WWII memorial
- Church moves to cover Philadelphia monument to a Nazi military formation — temporarily
posted by kmt at 5:56 AM on September 26, 2023 [44 favorites]
This smells like a right wing op where somebody knew exactly who this guy is and snuck him onto a list to discredit the government and create a Ukrainian-Nazi talking point. The house speaker is going to take the fall but he was probably just reading off a piece of paper. It's the protocol staff who either didn't catch it or are complicit.
One would think so, but this is an own goal after a series of own goals by Trudeau and his government, so to me this just smells like incompetence.
posted by sid at 6:04 AM on September 26, 2023 [15 favorites]
One would think so, but this is an own goal after a series of own goals by Trudeau and his government, so to me this just smells like incompetence.
posted by sid at 6:04 AM on September 26, 2023 [15 favorites]
Poland may seek extradition of Ukrainian Nazi WW2 veteran Hunka from Canada
posted by bonehead at 6:06 AM on September 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 6:06 AM on September 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
The grossest part of all of this is how the CPC is trying to use this incident to present themselves as an alternative to the Liberal party as we head into an election. Fucking hypocrites. Like, yeah, I hate Trudeau too, but I also hate all the parties we have here in Canada. It's such a shit show.
posted by Fizz at 6:08 AM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 6:08 AM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
I liked it better when Canada was notable for not being in the news so often. Agreeing with bonehead; this seems like a bureaucratic fail, unfortunately something we seem to do a lot.
As already noted, the political situation in that area of Europe, mid-century, was pretty complex. The enemy of my enemy, etc.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:11 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
As already noted, the political situation in that area of Europe, mid-century, was pretty complex. The enemy of my enemy, etc.
[The division] had the support of both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.Regardless, giving a standing O in Parliament in 2023 to a member of a Nazi SS division is not a good look.
...In total an estimated c. 53,000 men enlisted for service in the division.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:11 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Regardless, giving a standing O in Parliament in 2023 to a member of a Nazi SS division is not a good look.
But is so on brand for 2023.
*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 6:12 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
But is so on brand for 2023.
*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 6:12 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Canadian Political Discourse (A Primer)
SNC-Lavalin: Justinjustice
We Charity: Justin the family
Rising Prices: Justinflation
Forrest Fires: Justinflammable
Marriage Breakdown: Justinfedelity
War in Ukraine: Justinazi
posted by sockpup at 6:13 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
SNC-Lavalin: Justinjustice
We Charity: Justin the family
Rising Prices: Justinflation
Forrest Fires: Justinflammable
Marriage Breakdown: Justinfedelity
War in Ukraine: Justinazi
posted by sockpup at 6:13 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
This is what happens when you don't educate your populace and you weaponize anti-communist rhetoric.
One of the rare cases where a Boomer perspective is actually called for: Rota is a Canadian born in 1961, with a BA in Political Science and an MBA. As a member of that same demographic with only a high school level understanding of history - the war cast a long enough shadow into popular culture that if the phrase “fought against the communists in WWII” didn't set off alarm bells, you're a special kind of dumb.
I hate that this benefits PP.
posted by brachiopod at 6:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [36 favorites]
One of the rare cases where a Boomer perspective is actually called for: Rota is a Canadian born in 1961, with a BA in Political Science and an MBA. As a member of that same demographic with only a high school level understanding of history - the war cast a long enough shadow into popular culture that if the phrase “fought against the communists in WWII” didn't set off alarm bells, you're a special kind of dumb.
I hate that this benefits PP.
posted by brachiopod at 6:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [36 favorites]
The speaker is pretty much toast. But since he's elected by a secret ballot amongst members, he can't be removed by the Prime Minister, the house has to move him out. The reasonable way out of this would be of course for Anthony Rota to resign, since there's no way he survives any such vote or that the Liberals try to protect him too hard.
I'll admit that considering Ukraine's history with Russia, the Holodomor was 1932-33 after-all, there might have been a lot of motivation to join with anybody fighting Russia. So maybe Hunka is no different than any young man and just had the bad luck of having the enemy of his other enemy be the literal fucking worst, but that doesn't matter, in the end we don't celebrate Nazi veterans. And in the 2nd World War if you were fighting Russia, you were with the Nazis. There's no need for screenings, background research, etc... this is basic 20th century history the speaker should know this.
Having slept through that very basic history lesson, will eventually cost the speaker of the house his 85K$ supplement, the official residence of the speaker of the house and the associated cottage.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:15 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
I'll admit that considering Ukraine's history with Russia, the Holodomor was 1932-33 after-all, there might have been a lot of motivation to join with anybody fighting Russia. So maybe Hunka is no different than any young man and just had the bad luck of having the enemy of his other enemy be the literal fucking worst, but that doesn't matter, in the end we don't celebrate Nazi veterans. And in the 2nd World War if you were fighting Russia, you were with the Nazis. There's no need for screenings, background research, etc... this is basic 20th century history the speaker should know this.
Having slept through that very basic history lesson, will eventually cost the speaker of the house his 85K$ supplement, the official residence of the speaker of the house and the associated cottage.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:15 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
One would think so, but this is an own goal after a series of own goals by Trudeau and his government, so to me this just smells like incompetence.
That one is really the house own goaling itself, since the this was done at the speaker initiative. He can invite anybody he wants at those things, the government or the protocol office have no say over it. There security checks, but those don't check if it'll embarrass the government.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:24 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
That one is really the house own goaling itself, since the this was done at the speaker initiative. He can invite anybody he wants at those things, the government or the protocol office have no say over it. There security checks, but those don't check if it'll embarrass the government.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:24 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
> The grossest part of all of this is how the CPC is trying to use this incident to present themselves as an alternative to the Liberal party as we head into an election. Fucking hypocrites. Like, yeah, I hate Trudeau too, but I also hate all the parties we have here in Canada. It's such a shit show.
People are falling for it hook, line and sinker, but can you blame them? I couldn't make much of a case for the Liberals beyond "they're better than the CPC," the NDP are seemingly content to be the RC Cola of Canadian federal politics, and every other party plays spoiler in individual ridings, at best. Most people don't really pay attention to politics at all and if they do it's at the most superficial level imaginable, so in a couple of years the Convoy Party of Canada will be running things up here alongside President Trump down south.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:25 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
People are falling for it hook, line and sinker, but can you blame them? I couldn't make much of a case for the Liberals beyond "they're better than the CPC," the NDP are seemingly content to be the RC Cola of Canadian federal politics, and every other party plays spoiler in individual ridings, at best. Most people don't really pay attention to politics at all and if they do it's at the most superficial level imaginable, so in a couple of years the Convoy Party of Canada will be running things up here alongside President Trump down south.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:25 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
My Canadian husband has often said that Canadian governments tend to run roughly a few years behind the US in terms of who's in power. (I mean, it's not a hard and fast rule.) The US recently did four years of Trump; by that metric, we would be in our last second term phase with Trudeau (parallel to the eight years of Obama), and primed for PP to get his own kick at the can.
I know CPC underestimates Trudeau constantly, but this doesn't look good for our next election. PP is running all surface level campaign tactics and the shittiest of Canadians--of which there is distressingly a lot--will swallow it whole.
posted by Kitteh at 6:35 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
I know CPC underestimates Trudeau constantly, but this doesn't look good for our next election. PP is running all surface level campaign tactics and the shittiest of Canadians--of which there is distressingly a lot--will swallow it whole.
posted by Kitteh at 6:35 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
This is a fascinating story because it's a little microcosm of one piece of fallout from the Russian invasion, and it's alleged casus belli, "de-Nazyfing Ukraine", which has made it very hard to point out that, in fact, there are still a lot of Ukrainian fascists and that the fact that they've long been some of the best fighters in the war has meant politely ignoring that yes they are in fact far-right, genuine neo-Nazis, or getting shouted down and painted as pro-Russian for pointing out the fact that they are, in fact, Nazis. There's no escaping this, and there's no way, when the war ends, they will just go away and become pro-democracy nice guys. War sucks.
Of course the real irony is that the effort to "de-Nazify" Ukraine has made the Ukrainian Nazis more powerful than they had been since the 2nd world war.
posted by dis_integration at 6:39 AM on September 26, 2023 [31 favorites]
Of course the real irony is that the effort to "de-Nazify" Ukraine has made the Ukrainian Nazis more powerful than they had been since the 2nd world war.
posted by dis_integration at 6:39 AM on September 26, 2023 [31 favorites]
People are falling for it hook, line and sinker, but can you blame them?
Yup.
I couldn't make much of a case for the Liberals beyond "they're better than the CPC,"
If that's not enough for a voter and they vote fuckingtory as some sort of asinine protest, that voter is a complete moron who deserves to have their health care system destroyed. Just like they voted for. As big a moron as all those fuckwits in the UK who voted for brexit and were then shocked about the inevitable results.
I mean honestly. "Don't vote for the fucking Tories, ever" is not some nine-dimensional chess thing.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
Yup.
I couldn't make much of a case for the Liberals beyond "they're better than the CPC,"
If that's not enough for a voter and they vote fuckingtory as some sort of asinine protest, that voter is a complete moron who deserves to have their health care system destroyed. Just like they voted for. As big a moron as all those fuckwits in the UK who voted for brexit and were then shocked about the inevitable results.
I mean honestly. "Don't vote for the fucking Tories, ever" is not some nine-dimensional chess thing.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
I think the chances of the Liberals pretty much hang on the NDP vote collapsing and going to them in the hope of avoiding a CPC win. With so much of the CPC base being in the west, small % movement can affect their chances by a lot. The election is in 2 years, lots can happen till them but it does not look good, the problems are structural have no easy/fast fix so the CPC can blame Trudeau all they want there's no way his government can fix it before the election. Not a Trudeau fan, but almost anything is better than the CPC.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
> I mean honestly. "Don't vote for the fucking Tories, ever" is not some nine-dimensional chess thing.
Agreed, and yet here we are. Same with Trump/Republicans; keeping people like that out of politics should be the simplest thing in the world, but we as a species cannot even clear that low, low bar, which doesn't lead me to believe that we will be able to effectively address, much less solve, the many serious problems barreling our way.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
Agreed, and yet here we are. Same with Trump/Republicans; keeping people like that out of politics should be the simplest thing in the world, but we as a species cannot even clear that low, low bar, which doesn't lead me to believe that we will be able to effectively address, much less solve, the many serious problems barreling our way.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
Part of the reason why hard right ultra-nationalism (and all the nastiness that comes with it) can be tolerated and metabolized, systemically speaking if not aesthetically, is that people with a lot of power and a lot of influence consider it a preferable expression of popular discontent to the poors having class consciousness.
Not a Trudeau fan, but almost anything is better than the CPC.
This is, and had always been, the Liberal party of Canada's only pitch.
posted by Reyturner at 7:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
Not a Trudeau fan, but almost anything is better than the CPC.
This is, and had always been, the Liberal party of Canada's only pitch.
posted by Reyturner at 7:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
or me, "Waffen SS" doesn't immediately conjure up the SS-run concentration camps and Operation Reinhard(t) extermination camps. Like their uniforms, there is a bit of gray here IMO.
What the fuck.
Don't come into this thread or this community to defend Nazis. There's no grey.
Jesus.
posted by Fizz at 7:21 AM on September 26, 2023 [58 favorites]
What the fuck.
Don't come into this thread or this community to defend Nazis. There's no grey.
Jesus.
posted by Fizz at 7:21 AM on September 26, 2023 [58 favorites]
Also, I really don't give a fuck if some tired ass Canadian politicians from 1986 made some hand-wavey decision to not categorize this group as nazis. That's a weak-sauce excuse.
posted by Fizz at 7:26 AM on September 26, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 7:26 AM on September 26, 2023 [15 favorites]
Like I'm shaking, there is absolutely no grey on this and I think there has been some uncomfortable apologia (not just on Metafilter) on behalf of far-right elements in Ukraine and I know Russia is terrible and the aggressor but it has been terrifying to me to see people who I have generally believed to be liberal and supportive allies elide some really bad stuff. I don't want to get in a fight about this so I will probably not post further in this thread but framing support for a literal Nazi as an area with "a bit of gray" is beyond the pale.
posted by an octopus IRL at 7:27 AM on September 26, 2023 [37 favorites]
posted by an octopus IRL at 7:27 AM on September 26, 2023 [37 favorites]
I don't believe the Liberals will be better than the Conservatives at this point. The CPC has been laser focused on addressing housing supply and housing demand issues, which should have been something that the left wing parties should have been making. The Liberals are now governing as a centrist/market liberal government and the NDP is silent on the housing supply crisis. I doubt that the CPC will address housing because they're a party subservient to employers, but they've been focused on keeping our housing supply as a political issue that the federal government should be focused on.
posted by DetriusXii at 7:29 AM on September 26, 2023
posted by DetriusXii at 7:29 AM on September 26, 2023
dis_integration: Of course the real irony is that the effort to "de-Nazify" Ukraine has made the Ukrainian Nazis more powerful than they had been since the 2nd world war.
You are wildly misinformed. In the last Ukrainian parliamentary election, far right parties received about two and half percent of the vote. The far-right candidate did no better in the last presidential election.
There’s currently one far-right deputy out of 450 seats in the Ukrainian parliament, and from what I can tell, she’s largely been sidelined. The far-right had some political success in Ukraine in the early years of the last decade, getting a bit over a tenth of the vote, but since then they’ve been on the slide. Ukraine has fascists, of course, every country does, but if anything the Russian invasion has pushed them to the margins.
posted by Kattullus at 7:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [38 favorites]
You are wildly misinformed. In the last Ukrainian parliamentary election, far right parties received about two and half percent of the vote. The far-right candidate did no better in the last presidential election.
There’s currently one far-right deputy out of 450 seats in the Ukrainian parliament, and from what I can tell, she’s largely been sidelined. The far-right had some political success in Ukraine in the early years of the last decade, getting a bit over a tenth of the vote, but since then they’ve been on the slide. Ukraine has fascists, of course, every country does, but if anything the Russian invasion has pushed them to the margins.
posted by Kattullus at 7:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [38 favorites]
I get how bad this looks. And it is a totally stupid, own-goal mistake of the kind that this government keeps making.
I'm not defending this man or excusing his war record (whatever it is he did or didn't do). I'm not defending the Speaker who was a complete idiot not to have completed a background check. I am in no way, shape or form denying any and all war crimes and atrocities committed by the Nazis, nor am I denying that there were horrible, brutal people wearing that uniform who got their kicks torturing and harming others.
All I know is that while it's simple for us to look back on WWII and say, of course Nazis are bad, and good people should have known better than to join up, it wasn't always that simple at the time.
I'm thinking of one particular person I know (or knew before he died). He was born in Ukraine. Family members (including his father) died in the Holodomor. Russian soldiers killed other members of his family. He was conscripted into the Russian army during the war, but hadn't reported for duty. He got word that soldiers were being sent to the village to round up all of the young men and teenagers, like himself, who hadn't complied with their orders. He fled the village and joined up with the German army in part because there was no other real alternative and in part because of that "enemy of my enemy" thinking mentioned above.
He ended up deserting the Germans, came to Canada as a displaced person, wound up essentially working as an indentured servant in the mines in northern Ontario for a number of years before finally buying out his contract and moving to another part of the country.
Do I know what division or unit of the army he was in? No. Do I know what his war experiences were? No. Like a lot of the veterans I know, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. Do I accept he could have done some horrible things while in uniform? Yes. Do I think he was forced into a situation that he had very little knowledge of or control over? Yes, absolutely. Do I fault him for that? No. Can I say I wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? No. I just think I'm so grateful never to have been forced into a similar position, and my heart goes out to every young person stuck in the middle of a war zone, with no education, no ability to escape and no ability to affect the international forces that put them in those positions.
posted by sardonyx at 7:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
I'm not defending this man or excusing his war record (whatever it is he did or didn't do). I'm not defending the Speaker who was a complete idiot not to have completed a background check. I am in no way, shape or form denying any and all war crimes and atrocities committed by the Nazis, nor am I denying that there were horrible, brutal people wearing that uniform who got their kicks torturing and harming others.
All I know is that while it's simple for us to look back on WWII and say, of course Nazis are bad, and good people should have known better than to join up, it wasn't always that simple at the time.
I'm thinking of one particular person I know (or knew before he died). He was born in Ukraine. Family members (including his father) died in the Holodomor. Russian soldiers killed other members of his family. He was conscripted into the Russian army during the war, but hadn't reported for duty. He got word that soldiers were being sent to the village to round up all of the young men and teenagers, like himself, who hadn't complied with their orders. He fled the village and joined up with the German army in part because there was no other real alternative and in part because of that "enemy of my enemy" thinking mentioned above.
He ended up deserting the Germans, came to Canada as a displaced person, wound up essentially working as an indentured servant in the mines in northern Ontario for a number of years before finally buying out his contract and moving to another part of the country.
Do I know what division or unit of the army he was in? No. Do I know what his war experiences were? No. Like a lot of the veterans I know, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. Do I accept he could have done some horrible things while in uniform? Yes. Do I think he was forced into a situation that he had very little knowledge of or control over? Yes, absolutely. Do I fault him for that? No. Can I say I wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? No. I just think I'm so grateful never to have been forced into a similar position, and my heart goes out to every young person stuck in the middle of a war zone, with no education, no ability to escape and no ability to affect the international forces that put them in those positions.
posted by sardonyx at 7:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
Mod note: The comment and link about the Waffen SS has been removed.
A few responses have been left up to point out the problematic elements of defending the Nazis.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:46 AM on September 26, 2023 [15 favorites]
A few responses have been left up to point out the problematic elements of defending the Nazis.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:46 AM on September 26, 2023 [15 favorites]
All I know is that while it's simple for us to look back on WWII and say, of course Nazis are bad, and good people should have known better than to join up, it wasn't always that simple at the time.
The man literally said the best years of his life were when he was serving with this unit. A Nazi unit. Not sure what's so complicated about it when the guy himself looks back fondly on his time committing war crimes.
posted by nightrecordings at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
The man literally said the best years of his life were when he was serving with this unit. A Nazi unit. Not sure what's so complicated about it when the guy himself looks back fondly on his time committing war crimes.
posted by nightrecordings at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
keeping people like that out of politics should be the simplest thing in the world
The Putin approach, now adopted by western oligarchs, is not to promote their own party platform (because they're full of stupid quislings beholden to the wealthy royalty, and actual policy is intellectually challenging) but to constantly attack any genuine opposition from all fronts, while propping up unelectable alternatives to create the appearance of democracy. Hence the non-stop campaigning between elections. Hence the hippies that now cheer for Russia because anti-US imperialism. Hence Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr.
It worked very well in Russia and it's working even better here.
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
The Putin approach, now adopted by western oligarchs, is not to promote their own party platform (because they're full of stupid quislings beholden to the wealthy royalty, and actual policy is intellectually challenging) but to constantly attack any genuine opposition from all fronts, while propping up unelectable alternatives to create the appearance of democracy. Hence the non-stop campaigning between elections. Hence the hippies that now cheer for Russia because anti-US imperialism. Hence Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr.
It worked very well in Russia and it's working even better here.
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
...if anything the Russian invasion has pushed them to the margins.
When the war ends and Ukraine needs to be rebuilt, the ones doing the rebuilding are going to want that process to be as profitable as possible, both in terms of material contracts in the ground and policies implemented on a national level.
Hopefully, when that happens, the hard right ultra-nationalists stay in the margins.
posted by Reyturner at 7:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
When the war ends and Ukraine needs to be rebuilt, the ones doing the rebuilding are going to want that process to be as profitable as possible, both in terms of material contracts in the ground and policies implemented on a national level.
Hopefully, when that happens, the hard right ultra-nationalists stay in the margins.
posted by Reyturner at 7:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
The world is complicated, a hero to some is a war criminal to others.
As Canadians, though, I think it's important to take a clear stand against war crimes and genocide. Inviting this guy to be celebrated by parliament was indefensible. It's not like the evidence of his past was in any way obfuscated. Of course CPC and others are going to weaponize this but that's sort of the rules of engagement at this point and is no excuse.
Rota should have been more careful.
posted by sid at 7:57 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
As Canadians, though, I think it's important to take a clear stand against war crimes and genocide. Inviting this guy to be celebrated by parliament was indefensible. It's not like the evidence of his past was in any way obfuscated. Of course CPC and others are going to weaponize this but that's sort of the rules of engagement at this point and is no excuse.
Rota should have been more careful.
posted by sid at 7:57 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
that if the phrase “fought against the communists in WWII” didn't set off alarm bells
Obviously not in this particular case, but this isn't necessarily true.
It's weird that in these discussions people seem to forget that the USSR signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 with the Nazis and spent the next two years attacking Finland in the Winter War and annexing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania and Poland. Those annexed elements remain parts of Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus to this day, and the parts taken from Romania formed the core of what is now Moldova.
I think this is in part an overcorrection to the "US single-handedly won WWII" narrative the US likes to push, but it's kind of important to remember that the Soviets used WWII as a pretext for their own European conquests.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
Obviously not in this particular case, but this isn't necessarily true.
It's weird that in these discussions people seem to forget that the USSR signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 with the Nazis and spent the next two years attacking Finland in the Winter War and annexing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania and Poland. Those annexed elements remain parts of Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus to this day, and the parts taken from Romania formed the core of what is now Moldova.
I think this is in part an overcorrection to the "US single-handedly won WWII" narrative the US likes to push, but it's kind of important to remember that the Soviets used WWII as a pretext for their own European conquests.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
The instinct to do horseshoe theory both sides-ing with communists and Nazis is exactly how you end up with these fuckups in the first place.
posted by Reyturner at 8:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Reyturner at 8:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
I think if most people were honest, they'd hear "Ukranian veteran of WWI" and say, "yeah, OK, whatever." We're not all World-War-Two-History-Guy. After all, PP presumably gave this guy a standing ovation along with everyone else. It's not like anyone knew the difference at the time.
The weird thing to me is, lots of people get introduced in the house for no reason -- shit, I've been introduced in the house -- but when it's a military person or a veteran, I'd assume they'd want to mention something about his/her rank, honours, theater, anything. It should have shaken out pretty quick at that point? Guess not.
This is so convenient for Putin, it's hard not to imagine that the speaker did this on purpose out of some hidden sense of loyalty to Russia, but I'm going to have to go with Occam's razor and just assume that he's simply a dumbass and should get kicked out of his chair.
Quick point:
The CPC has been laser focused on addressing housing supply and housing demand issues, which should have been something that the left wing parties should have been making.
I mean sure, but being laser focused on something doesn't mean your proposed solution isn't moronic, and PP's solution is pretty moronic. It's not designed to fix housing, it's designed to appeal to the kind of people who believe punitive measures against other levels of government work, even if they undercut the thing you're trying to achieve in the first place.
posted by klanawa at 8:23 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
The weird thing to me is, lots of people get introduced in the house for no reason -- shit, I've been introduced in the house -- but when it's a military person or a veteran, I'd assume they'd want to mention something about his/her rank, honours, theater, anything. It should have shaken out pretty quick at that point? Guess not.
This is so convenient for Putin, it's hard not to imagine that the speaker did this on purpose out of some hidden sense of loyalty to Russia, but I'm going to have to go with Occam's razor and just assume that he's simply a dumbass and should get kicked out of his chair.
Quick point:
The CPC has been laser focused on addressing housing supply and housing demand issues, which should have been something that the left wing parties should have been making.
I mean sure, but being laser focused on something doesn't mean your proposed solution isn't moronic, and PP's solution is pretty moronic. It's not designed to fix housing, it's designed to appeal to the kind of people who believe punitive measures against other levels of government work, even if they undercut the thing you're trying to achieve in the first place.
posted by klanawa at 8:23 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
Toronto Star: Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says House Speaker Anthony Rota should step down. She's joined by Minister of Fisheries (!?) Diane Lebouthillier, and Karina Gould (leader of government) says she can’t see Rota retaining support from Liberal MPs, and he should resign.
posted by maudlin at 8:23 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by maudlin at 8:23 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Walking around bilndfolded in a room full of rakes is not a good look for a politician.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yep. CBC: Senior Liberals join calls for Speaker to resign over inviting Ukrainian soldier with Nazi ties to Parliament
... Rota will resign as Speaker by tomorrow AM, I expect.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:38 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
... Rota will resign as Speaker by tomorrow AM, I expect.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:38 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think if most people were honest, they'd hear "Ukranian veteran of WWI" and say, "yeah, OK, whatever." We're not all World-War-Two-History-Guy. After all, PP presumably gave this guy a standing ovation along with everyone else. It's not like anyone knew the difference at the time.
Well, when I heard this I thought the weird thing is it didn't seem to ping anyone's alarm bells. "Fought the USSR in WWII" immediately puts you on the opposite side of Canada. That's at a start. Knowing a bit more about either eastern Europe or WWII would suggest a high probability of the worse parts.
I would assume in a room of five people where this came up, one or two would instantly flag it as a land mine without even a google search.
posted by mark k at 8:41 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
Well, when I heard this I thought the weird thing is it didn't seem to ping anyone's alarm bells. "Fought the USSR in WWII" immediately puts you on the opposite side of Canada. That's at a start. Knowing a bit more about either eastern Europe or WWII would suggest a high probability of the worse parts.
I would assume in a room of five people where this came up, one or two would instantly flag it as a land mine without even a google search.
posted by mark k at 8:41 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
Yeah, but things can pretty busy in the house. There's a lot of l'esprit de l'escalier going on here. My eyes probably would have popped open later that night: "whoa, waitaminnit!"
posted by klanawa at 8:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by klanawa at 8:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
>horseshoe theory both sides-ing with communists and Nazis
that's just it tho. Ukrainians in 1941-44 could throw in with either Hitler or Stalin. There was no third option except trying to sail to Turkey or something.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:50 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
that's just it tho. Ukrainians in 1941-44 could throw in with either Hitler or Stalin. There was no third option except trying to sail to Turkey or something.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:50 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
Unfortunately, Canada has a history of bringing former(?) Nazis and Nazi collaborators to this country in the name of anti-communism. It's a relatively known but hugely downplayed issue in the Ukrainian-Canadian community. I mean, we have literal monuments honouring some of these guys because they're considered heroes by some in the Ukrainian community.
It is (unfortunately) not actually surprising to me that this guy was publicly lauded, though it is somewhat baffling that Rota didn't think to actually look into the guy before announcing his presence in the House.
posted by asnider at 8:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
It is (unfortunately) not actually surprising to me that this guy was publicly lauded, though it is somewhat baffling that Rota didn't think to actually look into the guy before announcing his presence in the House.
posted by asnider at 8:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Minister of Fisheries (!?)
A real job, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, commonly known as DFO. The minister is also responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard.
They have tried (and still try) branding it as Fisheries and Oceans Canada, but it just doesn't stick.
posted by bonehead at 8:58 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
A real job, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, commonly known as DFO. The minister is also responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard.
They have tried (and still try) branding it as Fisheries and Oceans Canada, but it just doesn't stick.
posted by bonehead at 8:58 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think amongst my age group or younger (early 40s), our awareness of wars that ended 80 years ago is exponentially lower than the previous generation. It was not our parents who served and its taught at a very high level now.
Russia has been seen as an enemy our whole lives and so I could easily see someone not being aware of who the USSR, China, Switzerland, Finland or African nations fought for.
And given I work for gov and know our demographics and that, most likely, vetting is done by a junior staffer (who may have very little to say about WWII), sort of reviewed by a senior staffer, and then Rota probably glanced at it. These call outs are generally pretty innocuous and in a day of fires and so is almost assuredly not given much attention. It will now.
That is not said to excuse the mistake - its awful and there should be consequences. But the idea that the Speaker would consult Chrystia Freeland on the bio of who he is honoring to me is entirely politics trying to spread the infection - she has a lot, lot, lot of shit to do and one of those things is not being the vetting admin for the house.
posted by openhearted at 9:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
Russia has been seen as an enemy our whole lives and so I could easily see someone not being aware of who the USSR, China, Switzerland, Finland or African nations fought for.
And given I work for gov and know our demographics and that, most likely, vetting is done by a junior staffer (who may have very little to say about WWII), sort of reviewed by a senior staffer, and then Rota probably glanced at it. These call outs are generally pretty innocuous and in a day of fires and so is almost assuredly not given much attention. It will now.
That is not said to excuse the mistake - its awful and there should be consequences. But the idea that the Speaker would consult Chrystia Freeland on the bio of who he is honoring to me is entirely politics trying to spread the infection - she has a lot, lot, lot of shit to do and one of those things is not being the vetting admin for the house.
posted by openhearted at 9:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
TIL that there is a Waffen SS community in Canada, that there are apparently blogs etc. Like, completely mind-boggling that people holding a candle for the actual Third Reich are even allowed to see daylight.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:08 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:08 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
bonehead, thanks for the heads up re the name change. I was just a little surprised that with a stack of cabinet ministers THIS high, we're hearing from Fisheries early. Maybe it's deliberately an innocuous choice?
posted by maudlin at 9:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by maudlin at 9:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
that's just it tho. Ukrainians in 1941-44 could throw in with either Hitler or Stalin. There was no third option except trying to sail to Turkey or something.
if i'd had a comment deleted with a mod note for defending nazis i would simply not continue my line of argumentation in the thread
posted by Operation Papercut at 9:18 AM on September 26, 2023 [26 favorites]
if i'd had a comment deleted with a mod note for defending nazis i would simply not continue my line of argumentation in the thread
posted by Operation Papercut at 9:18 AM on September 26, 2023 [26 favorites]
I'm sorry openhearted, but I can't agree. I'm the same demographic, and I knew to be worried when they said "fought against russia in WWII". It's not a subtle thing. Also, for a liberal staffer to be unaware during the vetting (especially given the many controversies with Freeland's grandfather, posing with questionable flags, and the governments inaction on SS monuments that other groups have voice numerous complains on), it seems impossible that anyone in the liberal party would have no concept that this was maybe a sensitive topic. They would have to be completely insulated from the news. Whoever did this made an unforgivable mistake, regardless of their position, age, or anything else- it's either a degree of sheer unawareness of politics that would disqualify a junior staffer (or a house speaker for that matter), or else a deliberate oversight to pander to some of the less appealing parts of the Canadian populace. Either way, more than one resignation is in order.
posted by whm at 9:20 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by whm at 9:20 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Unfortunately, the current Liberal government has a history of not vetting people very carefully.
Yeah I don't think there is a conspiracy here as much as it is simply incompetence. The speakers of the house are usually pretty dull MPs (to be generous) and as one he had no oversight and someone likely said "hey one of your constituents who's Ukrainian fought against Russian communists why don't you bring him along." And they didn't bother to look into it beyond that. Northern Ontario (the speaker is the MP for a Northern Ontario riding) also has a history of having old Nazis hiding out and mixing with the general population unfortunately (for example notoriously INCO used SS members as strikebreakers in the 60s). While honouring a Nazi is a terrible low point as a Canadian but also being a tool of Russian propaganda in a war of aggression is horrific. Tory general opportunism is the cherry on top of the shit sundae here.
almost anything is better than the CPC.
They have the same set of issues they always have with this incarnation of Tories - unlikable leader, a crank base they have to appease, and questionable takes on social issues that people in Ontario and Quebec are not willing to compromise on. They can win 80% of the popular vote in an Albertan riding but its a different case in the Ontario big cities and Quebec. They lost several elections to a man who has a history of wearing black face so yeah... But that can change. A lot can happen in 2 years and maybe by that point all Canadians will be so tired of Trudeau they'd be willing to give the CPC a shot, PMs really only have an 8 to 10 year expiry date, so who knows. Whoever replaces Trudeau as leader is gonna be a sacrificial lamb for all the pent up rage.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:25 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yeah I don't think there is a conspiracy here as much as it is simply incompetence. The speakers of the house are usually pretty dull MPs (to be generous) and as one he had no oversight and someone likely said "hey one of your constituents who's Ukrainian fought against Russian communists why don't you bring him along." And they didn't bother to look into it beyond that. Northern Ontario (the speaker is the MP for a Northern Ontario riding) also has a history of having old Nazis hiding out and mixing with the general population unfortunately (for example notoriously INCO used SS members as strikebreakers in the 60s). While honouring a Nazi is a terrible low point as a Canadian but also being a tool of Russian propaganda in a war of aggression is horrific. Tory general opportunism is the cherry on top of the shit sundae here.
almost anything is better than the CPC.
They have the same set of issues they always have with this incarnation of Tories - unlikable leader, a crank base they have to appease, and questionable takes on social issues that people in Ontario and Quebec are not willing to compromise on. They can win 80% of the popular vote in an Albertan riding but its a different case in the Ontario big cities and Quebec. They lost several elections to a man who has a history of wearing black face so yeah... But that can change. A lot can happen in 2 years and maybe by that point all Canadians will be so tired of Trudeau they'd be willing to give the CPC a shot, PMs really only have an 8 to 10 year expiry date, so who knows. Whoever replaces Trudeau as leader is gonna be a sacrificial lamb for all the pent up rage.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:25 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is nothing less than a total own goal by the Canadian Parliament and the Trudeau government. A clownish, amateurish moment. Like, how can you possibly mess up the sight of every single MP rising to give Zelenskyy a standing ovation in Parliament, and Canada reaffirming its commitment to supporting Ukraine against its invasion? Well, we just found out.
Logically, I can see how this happens with the independent role of the Speaker. I'm sure the stated reasons for why this guy wasn't vetted or the PMO's office was informed are true. But I've been involved in important presentations and ceremonies and at a certain point, the reasons for a mistake do not matter. You still fucked up and any excuse making cannot wipe that out.
In this case, the Parliament of Canada applauded a man who put on the uniform of a Nazi SS soldier in WWII. That's it. That's what happened, reasons be damned. And again, I like to think I'm well informed and I understand why someone in Hunka's position would do what he did. But it's one thing to academically consider the actions of a young man in German occupied Ukraine in 1943 on an Internet message board, and another to put the guy at the centre of a standing O in Parliament in the middle of a world crisis. There's no excuse for it.
Pierre Poilievre and the CPC will absolutely use this as campaign fodder against the Liberals, and while I get the hate for him, I completely support them doing so. How could they not? It's a complete blunder by the Liberals.
posted by fortitude25 at 9:25 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Logically, I can see how this happens with the independent role of the Speaker. I'm sure the stated reasons for why this guy wasn't vetted or the PMO's office was informed are true. But I've been involved in important presentations and ceremonies and at a certain point, the reasons for a mistake do not matter. You still fucked up and any excuse making cannot wipe that out.
In this case, the Parliament of Canada applauded a man who put on the uniform of a Nazi SS soldier in WWII. That's it. That's what happened, reasons be damned. And again, I like to think I'm well informed and I understand why someone in Hunka's position would do what he did. But it's one thing to academically consider the actions of a young man in German occupied Ukraine in 1943 on an Internet message board, and another to put the guy at the centre of a standing O in Parliament in the middle of a world crisis. There's no excuse for it.
Pierre Poilievre and the CPC will absolutely use this as campaign fodder against the Liberals, and while I get the hate for him, I completely support them doing so. How could they not? It's a complete blunder by the Liberals.
posted by fortitude25 at 9:25 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
> mod note for defending nazis
These particular Waffen SS soldiers were "defended" by the former Quebec Supreme Court chief justice in 1986. Was he the typical (postwar conservative Roman Catholic) arch anti-communist willing to give fellow-travellers a break?
Was this guy shooting innocent civilians as part of his assignments? Maybe. I'm not defending him personally, or the Waffen SS organizationally. Like I said though, taking the situation of 1941 in context, especially what Moscow had done to Ukrainians the previous decade, black & white were not the colors available to people in his situation to choose; you had to pick a uniform, with all the future baggage and wartime moral compromises it would involve.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:31 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
These particular Waffen SS soldiers were "defended" by the former Quebec Supreme Court chief justice in 1986. Was he the typical (postwar conservative Roman Catholic) arch anti-communist willing to give fellow-travellers a break?
Was this guy shooting innocent civilians as part of his assignments? Maybe. I'm not defending him personally, or the Waffen SS organizationally. Like I said though, taking the situation of 1941 in context, especially what Moscow had done to Ukrainians the previous decade, black & white were not the colors available to people in his situation to choose; you had to pick a uniform, with all the future baggage and wartime moral compromises it would involve.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:31 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's no grey.
Yeah, last thing we would want to learn is that some people in this community have ancestors that were raped and murdered by the Russian Empire hundreds of years before the existence of Germany (to say nothing of the Germany controlled by the Nazi party). Having to know that some members of this community can tell you the name of a family member who was raped to death by a couple of Russian soldiers in the late 1910’s, would be real inconvenient to their black and white way of thinking of history. Knowing some members of this community honestly don’t give a fuck who ~20 years later liberated that raped-to-death woman’s village by killing every Russian/Soviet solider they could get their hands on might be even more inconvenient.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:34 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yeah, last thing we would want to learn is that some people in this community have ancestors that were raped and murdered by the Russian Empire hundreds of years before the existence of Germany (to say nothing of the Germany controlled by the Nazi party). Having to know that some members of this community can tell you the name of a family member who was raped to death by a couple of Russian soldiers in the late 1910’s, would be real inconvenient to their black and white way of thinking of history. Knowing some members of this community honestly don’t give a fuck who ~20 years later liberated that raped-to-death woman’s village by killing every Russian/Soviet solider they could get their hands on might be even more inconvenient.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:34 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm in my mid-30s and the second I hear "Ukraine" and "WW2" some alarm bells go off. It is subsequently impossible to hear "fought against Russia in WW2" and not realize that means being allied with the Nazis, and a cursory google search would show that Hunka was part of a unit mostly comprised of enthusiastic Nazi stormtroopers.
Heywood, this is an insanely flimsly argument you're putting forth. So the speaker didn't know Hunka was a Nazi but did consult the former Quebec Supreme Court Chief Justice's 1986 decision and decide he got a pass?
He was a member of the Waffen SS. That means that he is statistically more likely to have committed war crimes than any other active serving unit from any country active in WW2. Boohoo waah he had to be a Nazi to survive the worst war in recent history, an almost impossible-to-comprehend moral quandary for us in the 21st century, but he does not need to be fucking honoured in Canadian parliament.
Krispy, the tenor of your comment is almost entirely impossible for me to parse right now, I'm going to have another coffee and try to wrap my head around it.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:35 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Heywood, this is an insanely flimsly argument you're putting forth. So the speaker didn't know Hunka was a Nazi but did consult the former Quebec Supreme Court Chief Justice's 1986 decision and decide he got a pass?
He was a member of the Waffen SS. That means that he is statistically more likely to have committed war crimes than any other active serving unit from any country active in WW2. Boohoo waah he had to be a Nazi to survive the worst war in recent history, an almost impossible-to-comprehend moral quandary for us in the 21st century, but he does not need to be fucking honoured in Canadian parliament.
Krispy, the tenor of your comment is almost entirely impossible for me to parse right now, I'm going to have another coffee and try to wrap my head around it.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:35 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Ukrainians in 1941-44 could throw in with either Hitler or Stalin. There was no third option except trying to sail to Turkey or something.
one wishes we could all read Timothy Snyder's book Bloodlands. But then, I guess, we'd probably all be struck mute with horror.
From the wiki Synopsis
Snyder seeks to show that interaction between the Nazi and Soviet regimes is crucial to telling the story of this bloodshed. He posits that early Soviet support for the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation was followed by an unwillingness to aid the uprising because the Soviets were willing to have the Nazis eliminate potential sources of resistance to a later Soviet occupation. Snyder states that this is an example of interaction that may have led to many more deaths than might have been the case if each regime had been acting independently.[9]
posted by philip-random at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
one wishes we could all read Timothy Snyder's book Bloodlands. But then, I guess, we'd probably all be struck mute with horror.
From the wiki Synopsis
Snyder seeks to show that interaction between the Nazi and Soviet regimes is crucial to telling the story of this bloodshed. He posits that early Soviet support for the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation was followed by an unwillingness to aid the uprising because the Soviets were willing to have the Nazis eliminate potential sources of resistance to a later Soviet occupation. Snyder states that this is an example of interaction that may have led to many more deaths than might have been the case if each regime had been acting independently.[9]
posted by philip-random at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
> So the speaker didn't know Hunka was a Nazi but did consult the former Quebec Supreme Court Chief Justice's 1986 decision and decide he got a pass?
The commission he chaired on this did give a pass to this particular division at the organizational level. It could have been biased to reach this judgment, but what has changed in the 40 years since?
I do not wish to glorify Ukrainians in WW2, they were among the worst mass-murders when employed by the Nazis. But I also don't automatically vilify each and every one of them out-of-hand (the same judgment as the 1986 commission).
I am 25 years away by birth and thousands of miles from 1941 Ukraine. But what I do know is the Ukrainians then had a lot more bones to pick with the Russians and specifically the Moscow regime than the Nazis making their new Europa from Berlin.
The Germans had occupied all of Ukraine in the post Brest-Litovsk period, so there is some non-Nazi context here too.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
The commission he chaired on this did give a pass to this particular division at the organizational level. It could have been biased to reach this judgment, but what has changed in the 40 years since?
I do not wish to glorify Ukrainians in WW2, they were among the worst mass-murders when employed by the Nazis. But I also don't automatically vilify each and every one of them out-of-hand (the same judgment as the 1986 commission).
I am 25 years away by birth and thousands of miles from 1941 Ukraine. But what I do know is the Ukrainians then had a lot more bones to pick with the Russians and specifically the Moscow regime than the Nazis making their new Europa from Berlin.
The Germans had occupied all of Ukraine in the post Brest-Litovsk period, so there is some non-Nazi context here too.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
you know, there are an awful lot of awful people of varying degrees of awfulness who I don't necessarily think should be in jail for life but nevertheless should not be actively applauded in parliament
probably a majority of people, when you get right down to it
posted by allegedly at 9:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [28 favorites]
probably a majority of people, when you get right down to it
posted by allegedly at 9:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [28 favorites]
(I agree this guy should not have been presented for applause, unless he had some superhuman humanitarian-in-the-Waffen-SS backstory worthy of a Hollywood movie or something)
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
last thing we would want to learn is that some people in this community have ancestors that were...
In my case, it was my grandfather's brothers who were apparently incinerated in a locked boxcar. But this level of historical detail is way beyond the scope of this thread and largely irrelevant to the processes (or lack thereof) that led to present event.
Ukranians had difficult choices to make at the time and did the best they could under the circumstances, but guess what: circumstances have changed and we have difficult choices to make, too. This fuckup will give Russia license to kill even more Ukranians, which is presumably not what we want. Let's try to be rational about this.
posted by klanawa at 9:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
In my case, it was my grandfather's brothers who were apparently incinerated in a locked boxcar. But this level of historical detail is way beyond the scope of this thread and largely irrelevant to the processes (or lack thereof) that led to present event.
Ukranians had difficult choices to make at the time and did the best they could under the circumstances, but guess what: circumstances have changed and we have difficult choices to make, too. This fuckup will give Russia license to kill even more Ukranians, which is presumably not what we want. Let's try to be rational about this.
posted by klanawa at 9:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
We're not talking about Oskar Schindler or a press-ganged peasant haunted by the atrocities he was forced to commit at gunpoint. Yes he joined when he was 16, but he also described his time in the SS as the best of his life in this century.
You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to him.
posted by Reyturner at 9:51 AM on September 26, 2023 [22 favorites]
You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to him.
posted by Reyturner at 9:51 AM on September 26, 2023 [22 favorites]
I think even if we acknowledge that WW2 was rife with unsavory alliances of convenience, we should, at a bare minimum, be able to agree that individuals who allied themselves with the Nazis should not be applauded in the Parliament of a modern democratic country. End of story.
And while I can appreciate the various failures that could have lead to the decision to invite this man to Parliament, I do think the buck stops with the Speaker on this one and he should resign. And a detailed review of the policies and procedures around this kind of thing need reviewed so that it doesn't happen again.
And any party trying to score political points off of this need to stop and remember that there but for the grace of luck go they. As far as I know, in the moment, they all stood. That to me says that systemically there is a big problem with our politics in this country.
posted by eekernohan at 9:57 AM on September 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
And while I can appreciate the various failures that could have lead to the decision to invite this man to Parliament, I do think the buck stops with the Speaker on this one and he should resign. And a detailed review of the policies and procedures around this kind of thing need reviewed so that it doesn't happen again.
And any party trying to score political points off of this need to stop and remember that there but for the grace of luck go they. As far as I know, in the moment, they all stood. That to me says that systemically there is a big problem with our politics in this country.
posted by eekernohan at 9:57 AM on September 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
>Boohoo waah he had to be a Nazi to survive the worst war in recent history
my wider point here is fighting for the Nazis in a foreign legion type division of the Waffen SS could rationally look as a better long-term direction than welcoming or even joining the resistance fighting for the return of the Communists. (Excepting the situation of Ukrainian Jews of course, the mass-murder of this community by the Nazis and their collaborationists is clearly a stain that does not wash out).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:01 AM on September 26, 2023
my wider point here is fighting for the Nazis in a foreign legion type division of the Waffen SS could rationally look as a better long-term direction than welcoming or even joining the resistance fighting for the return of the Communists. (Excepting the situation of Ukrainian Jews of course, the mass-murder of this community by the Nazis and their collaborationists is clearly a stain that does not wash out).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:01 AM on September 26, 2023
that's just it tho. Ukrainians in 1941-44 could throw in with either Hitler or Stalin. There was no third option except trying to sail to Turkey or something.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:50 AM on September 26 [3 favorites +] [!]
History:
The Germans had occupied all of Ukraine in the post Brest-Litovsk period, so there is some non-Nazi context here too.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:42 AM on September 26 [+] [!]
In the minds of many Ukranians after world war 2, Jews had sided with the Soviet bolsheviks and communists and were considered a danger to Ukranians. Why? They're relgious and civil leaders told them.
posted by qi at 10:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [32 favorites]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:50 AM on September 26 [3 favorites +] [!]
History:
Between 1918 and 1921, two decades before the systematic mass killings carried out under the Nazi regime, more than 100,000 Jews were murdered in Ukraine and Poland by ordinary people in hundreds of separate incidents. “These were localized killings and localized pogroms,” says Veidlinger. “The killing wasn’t happening in remote mass killing centers, mechanized and bureaucratized. Instead, this more ‘intimate’ killing took place close to home and the local population actively participated. The population was willing to participate and recognized it as normal.”Also:
Peasants, townspeople and soldiers assaulted, robbed, raped and killed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burning down their houses and destroying their property. These pogroms (targeted violence aimed at massacring or expelling a specific ethnic, racial or religious group) sometimes took on a carnivalesque quality, not unlike lynchings in the United States. Such public spectacles were meant to terrorize their target communities while scapegoating them for social and economic woes. Though largely forgotten today, the pogroms in Ukraine constitute the largest anti-Jewish massacres prior to the Holocaust and paved the way for the Nazi “Holocaust-by-bullets.”
At the start of World War II, Ukraine had a history of anti-Semitism, from the pogroms of the czarist era to the silent discrimination of Soviet times. As Nazi troops and their Romanian allies began occupying western territories under Soviet rule, the ancient bigotry boiled over into cases of local residents robbing and killing their Jewish neighbors.More:
It was an early outburst of the savagery that became the Holocaust.
The Ukrainian historian Ivan Dereiko has calculated that in Reichskommissariat Ukraine alone, there were about 80,000 police auxiliaries, four times as many as German policemen. Yet generally, until recently even experts have tended to overlook the role the auxiliary police in the Holocaust in Ukraine, or have considered its role minor. The Nazis were so eager to murder the Jews, they stated or assumed, that had the auxiliaries (known at the time to locals by the Germanism politsaï) refused to participate, other ways would have been devised (e.g., Pohl, Holocaust, 133–134). Nowadays few scholars doubt that shooting so many people without the these auxiliaries would at the very least have been difficult.I am 25 years away by birth and thousands of miles from 1941 Ukraine. But what I do know is the Ukrainians then had a lot more bones to pick with the Russians and specifically the Moscow regime than the Nazis making their new Europa from Berlin.
The Germans had occupied all of Ukraine in the post Brest-Litovsk period, so there is some non-Nazi context here too.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:42 AM on September 26 [+] [!]
In the minds of many Ukranians after world war 2, Jews had sided with the Soviet bolsheviks and communists and were considered a danger to Ukranians. Why? They're relgious and civil leaders told them.
Statements from bishops of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine—or at least those published in German-sponsored Ukrainian-language newspapers and leaflets—present quite a different picture. Many leaders of the Orthodox Autonomous Church and, in particular, the Orthodox Autocephalous Church, deluded themselves that Communism was a Jewish matter. They condemned not the Holocaust, but “Jewish Bolshevism.”Also:
Still some mayors were antisemitic by conviction, such as Kiev’s third German-sponsored mayor, Leontii Forostivsky (d.1974). In the fall of 1942, he ordered all gramophone discs with “Jewish and Soviet content” to be handed in, and in May 1943, he wrote in the newspaper that when seeing the children who died as a result of a Soviet bombing on Kiev, “we recognize the face of Jewry that hates us Ukrainians so much.”And:
Many non-Jews looked at the conduct of Jews under Soviet rule from an anti-Jewish perspective and ignored evidence contradicting it. To them, the Jews could not be forgiven. Meanwhile, acts of revenge after the German arrival largely spared Ukrainians who had cooperated with the Soviet regime. The importance of antisemitism also reveals itself in the public humiliation of Jewish professionals in ritualistic spectacles, such as cleaning streets. They were observed by a vicious urban crowd: civilians who did not simply blame the Jews for NKVD murders but who demanded and relished robbery, sexual assault, beating, and murder.It is not as simple as "the Ukrainians had no third option." Many were willing participants.
posted by qi at 10:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [32 favorites]
>You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to him.
15-odd years ago my crawls though the internet exposed me to variations of this somewhat disturbing video of organized all-out brawls between soccer hooligans in Ukraine. (I'd seen ones of even larger formations and more violent, but that will do as an example).
I simply could not understand what I was seeing. But in the context of the Russia vs. Ukraine conflict this past decade, I can now understand, if the two sides were divided by nationality/nationalism.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:06 AM on September 26, 2023
15-odd years ago my crawls though the internet exposed me to variations of this somewhat disturbing video of organized all-out brawls between soccer hooligans in Ukraine. (I'd seen ones of even larger formations and more violent, but that will do as an example).
I simply could not understand what I was seeing. But in the context of the Russia vs. Ukraine conflict this past decade, I can now understand, if the two sides were divided by nationality/nationalism.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:06 AM on September 26, 2023
>"the Ukrainians had no third option." Many were willing participants.
Undoubtedly. But after the war there was going to be either the Communists or the Nazis running the country/colony out of Kiev, and every Ukrainian had to pick their poison, short of constructing a hot air balloon and trying to make for Tibet.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:09 AM on September 26, 2023
Undoubtedly. But after the war there was going to be either the Communists or the Nazis running the country/colony out of Kiev, and every Ukrainian had to pick their poison, short of constructing a hot air balloon and trying to make for Tibet.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:09 AM on September 26, 2023
Man, fuck "Didn't know." I'm a 43-year-old janitor with a high school diploma and unless the phrase "Killed Soviets in WWII" includes the name Simo Häyhä* my eyebrows are going to be raised through the ceiling.
*And even in the case of the Winter War, a lot of people seem to forget it was followed up by the Continuation War, which is, as the kids say, a lot more problematic
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:10 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
*And even in the case of the Winter War, a lot of people seem to forget it was followed up by the Continuation War, which is, as the kids say, a lot more problematic
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:10 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
clavdivs, my mind first went to the Bitburg folly as well. Now I'm not so certain on the similarity. While it is true that Ronald Reagan's mind had been mush for years at that point, his heart was genuinely in with the Nazis. He meant it, even if he didn't have the cognitive ability.
I very much doubt those responsible for this meant it. It's got to be incompetence or, as earlier suggested, a set-up.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:12 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I very much doubt those responsible for this meant it. It's got to be incompetence or, as earlier suggested, a set-up.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:12 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not sure why some folks here are saying this is bad for Trudeau and the Liberals specifically, as opposed to Parliament as a whole? Selecting and vetting this guy was the Speaker's responsibility, and the Speaker doesn't report to the PMO. The Liberals should have had someone vet him independently, but so should the Conservatives and the NDP.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
I was just a little surprised that with a stack of cabinet ministers THIS high, we're hearing from Fisheries early. Maybe it's deliberately an innocuous choice?
To stretch this litte diversion into Canadian Cabinet nerdery a little further, there's an order of precedence to the Ministries (by default that link should sort by precedence).
Fisheries is #8[1], Joly is #7, and Gould is #13. There are 40ish ministers. Those people are all quite senior. This is about as close to an open cabinet revolt as Liberals will get. Trudeau has really lost the plot if these folks are speaking freely.
[1]If you're wondering why Fisheries is so senior, you need to live in the Atlantic provinces or in BC for a while, and understand the Canadian electoral map.
posted by bonehead at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
To stretch this litte diversion into Canadian Cabinet nerdery a little further, there's an order of precedence to the Ministries (by default that link should sort by precedence).
Fisheries is #8[1], Joly is #7, and Gould is #13. There are 40ish ministers. Those people are all quite senior. This is about as close to an open cabinet revolt as Liberals will get. Trudeau has really lost the plot if these folks are speaking freely.
[1]If you're wondering why Fisheries is so senior, you need to live in the Atlantic provinces or in BC for a while, and understand the Canadian electoral map.
posted by bonehead at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
every Ukrainian had to pick their poison
What a lovely, sanitized way of saying that many of them, "supported and in some cases actively enabled the systemic massacre of nearly 1.5 million Jews."
posted by qi at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
What a lovely, sanitized way of saying that many of them, "supported and in some cases actively enabled the systemic massacre of nearly 1.5 million Jews."
posted by qi at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
But what I do know is the Ukrainians then had a lot more bone to pick with the Russians and specifically Moscow regime than the Nazis making their new Europa from Berlin.
That statement really depends on who gets to count as Ukrainian, doesn't it.
Yes, people in 1941 had difficult choices to make. I can see why someone might choose to join the Waffen-SS in Ukraine and still believe it to be a choice that reflects badly on the individual concerned and judge them accordingly.
posted by plonkee at 10:15 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
That statement really depends on who gets to count as Ukrainian, doesn't it.
Yes, people in 1941 had difficult choices to make. I can see why someone might choose to join the Waffen-SS in Ukraine and still believe it to be a choice that reflects badly on the individual concerned and judge them accordingly.
posted by plonkee at 10:15 AM on September 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
"supported and in some cases actively enabled the systemic massacre of nearly 1.5 million Jews."
~4M Ukrainians died in the Holodomor not 10 years earlier. And organized anti-semitism then was 10X to 100X of what we find in MAGA/Q-Anon now; no doubt what survives of the current Russian dezi campaign enjoys stirring it up now.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:18 AM on September 26, 2023
~4M Ukrainians died in the Holodomor not 10 years earlier. And organized anti-semitism then was 10X to 100X of what we find in MAGA/Q-Anon now; no doubt what survives of the current Russian dezi campaign enjoys stirring it up now.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:18 AM on September 26, 2023
>That statement really depends on who gets to count as Ukrainian, doesn't it.
yes, I saw that in my above. Again, there were only two bad sides here.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:19 AM on September 26, 2023
yes, I saw that in my above. Again, there were only two bad sides here.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:19 AM on September 26, 2023
Also the CPC can shut the fuck up because in 2019 they were the ones bragging they got him elected as speaker of the house to replace Geoff Regan...
Would have linked it sooner but it took me a while to find an article with the info.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:20 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Would have linked it sooner but it took me a while to find an article with the info.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:20 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
There are never only two sides to a conflict.
posted by eviemath at 10:28 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by eviemath at 10:28 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I agree this guy should not have been presented for applause, unless he had some superhuman humanitarian-in-the-Waffen-SS backstory worthy of a Hollywood movie or something)
Superhumanitarian is a bit much, but in the "history is strange" bucket, consider SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, who fought on the side of the Allies and German soldiers at the Battle of Castle Itter. The book has been optioned by Canal Plus. A bit off topic, but your comment triggered a memory.
posted by BWA at 10:30 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Superhumanitarian is a bit much, but in the "history is strange" bucket, consider SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, who fought on the side of the Allies and German soldiers at the Battle of Castle Itter. The book has been optioned by Canal Plus. A bit off topic, but your comment triggered a memory.
posted by BWA at 10:30 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
This f*-up is entirely on Speaker Rota and his office. And yes, he and his senior staff must resign.
As the OP and a few others have noted, the institution of the Speaker of the House of Commons operates independent of party and government. The Speaker is traditionally elected by a unanimous or near-unanimous vote of all Members of Parliament.
Again: the Speaker does not answer to the government, nor to the PM, nor to the party. For those wanting to make this into "another Trudeau disaster", please look elsewhere.
The true significance of this incompetence on the part of the Speaker was laid out well by Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which said this incident had "compromised all 338 Members of Parliament and has also handed a propaganda victory to Russia, distracting from what was a momentously significant display of unity between Canada and Ukraine...It has also caused great pain to Canada’s Jewish community, Holocaust survivors, veterans and other victims of the Nazi regime.”
posted by senor biggles at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
As the OP and a few others have noted, the institution of the Speaker of the House of Commons operates independent of party and government. The Speaker is traditionally elected by a unanimous or near-unanimous vote of all Members of Parliament.
Again: the Speaker does not answer to the government, nor to the PM, nor to the party. For those wanting to make this into "another Trudeau disaster", please look elsewhere.
The true significance of this incompetence on the part of the Speaker was laid out well by Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which said this incident had "compromised all 338 Members of Parliament and has also handed a propaganda victory to Russia, distracting from what was a momentously significant display of unity between Canada and Ukraine...It has also caused great pain to Canada’s Jewish community, Holocaust survivors, veterans and other victims of the Nazi regime.”
posted by senor biggles at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
>never only two sides to a conflict
Like I said, either Hitler or Stalin would be running the postwar Ukraine. The Canadians were not going to land at Fedosia and win their liberation like France '44.
That is the choice ALL Ukrainians had '41 - '44.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2023
Like I said, either Hitler or Stalin would be running the postwar Ukraine. The Canadians were not going to land at Fedosia and win their liberation like France '44.
That is the choice ALL Ukrainians had '41 - '44.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2023
"supported and in some cases actively enabled the systemic massacre of nearly 1.5 million Jews."
~4M Ukrainians died in the Holodomor not 10 years earlier.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:18 PM on September 26 [+] [!]
White supremacists who say this always seem to conveniently ignore that Jewish Ukrainians also died during the Holodomor. Like when: Far-right protesters in Ukraine demand Israel apologize for communism.
More history:
~4M Ukrainians died in the Holodomor not 10 years earlier.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:18 PM on September 26 [+] [!]
White supremacists who say this always seem to conveniently ignore that Jewish Ukrainians also died during the Holodomor. Like when: Far-right protesters in Ukraine demand Israel apologize for communism.
More history:
During the “Holodomor” of 1932-1933, the biggest victims were in Ukrainian villages. The famine did not bypass their neighbors, Jewish farmers. Many Jewish collective farms were included in the list of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine as the most affected by the famine. Among the areas with the highest mortality was the Kalinindorf Jewish National Region. Outside the collective farms, in the cities and towns of Ukraine, there lived a huge number of Jewish artisans who worked for the rural population — tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths, carpenters and blacksmiths; With the onset of famine, the orders of the surrounding farmers ceased, and the traditional delivery of products to the small-town bazaars also ceased. Now everyone was starving, and official documents of that time confirmed this.posted by qi at 10:42 AM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
I think we all understand what your thoughts and feelings are on this subject Heywood Mogroot III. If you don't have anything else to say, maybe just move the fuck on. Jesus. We get it. You think this is oh so very complicated because of history and certain hypotheticals you continue to raise in this thread regarding who did or didn't side with Nazis.
Noted.
posted by Fizz at 10:45 AM on September 26, 2023 [17 favorites]
Noted.
posted by Fizz at 10:45 AM on September 26, 2023 [17 favorites]
googling "nazi but very good reasons"
posted by Operation Papercut at 10:47 AM on September 26, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by Operation Papercut at 10:47 AM on September 26, 2023 [17 favorites]
QFT, because it bears constant repeating: Again: the Speaker does not answer to the government, nor to the PM, nor to the party. For those wanting to make this into "another Trudeau disaster", please look elsewhere.
I wish Canadians would learn more about how their system works because seriously, though he's a Liberal MP, as the speaker of the house he is independent and the PM doesn't vet the speaker's guests (regardless of the party they belong to). Regardless of why Hunka might have been a Nazi, he fought on the side of the Nazis that makes him a Nazi and as such should not be honoured in the Canadian Parliament. Rota and his staff need to resign and Hunka likely should stand trial.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
I wish Canadians would learn more about how their system works because seriously, though he's a Liberal MP, as the speaker of the house he is independent and the PM doesn't vet the speaker's guests (regardless of the party they belong to). Regardless of why Hunka might have been a Nazi, he fought on the side of the Nazis that makes him a Nazi and as such should not be honoured in the Canadian Parliament. Rota and his staff need to resign and Hunka likely should stand trial.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Again: the Speaker does not answer to the government, nor to the PM, nor to the party. For those wanting to make this into "another Trudeau disaster", please look elsewhere.
posted by senor biggles at 10:33 AM
The problem is that generally, Canadians have a limited understanding of how Parliament actually works and don't necessarily realize that the speaker is independent. This will be spun as a Liberal failing by the Tories, as other posters have mentioned, so we might as well accept that eventuality.
There is no good faith among certain political parties or the ability to acknowledge that there should be a process put in place to prevent this kind of situation from happening again, because that's too hard, requires too much co-operation and it deprives political animals of a cudgel to wield against their opponents.
posted by sardonyx at 10:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by senor biggles at 10:33 AM
The problem is that generally, Canadians have a limited understanding of how Parliament actually works and don't necessarily realize that the speaker is independent. This will be spun as a Liberal failing by the Tories, as other posters have mentioned, so we might as well accept that eventuality.
There is no good faith among certain political parties or the ability to acknowledge that there should be a process put in place to prevent this kind of situation from happening again, because that's too hard, requires too much co-operation and it deprives political animals of a cudgel to wield against their opponents.
posted by sardonyx at 10:53 AM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
"Both views have sometimes calcified into tropes or memes."
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:02 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
the Liberals should have had someone vet him independently, but so should the Conservatives and the NDP.
it's a bit unclear (I've seen conflicting information), but it sounds like Rota broke protocol with the introduction in the first place, so it's mostly on him but still embarrassing for the party of which he is a member, regardless of the independence of the Speaker.
Perhaps MPs from other parties shouldn't have given the guy a standing ovation, but they likely didn't have a chance to vet him ahead of time because they didn't know he was going to be recognized.
posted by asnider at 11:13 AM on September 26, 2023
it's a bit unclear (I've seen conflicting information), but it sounds like Rota broke protocol with the introduction in the first place, so it's mostly on him but still embarrassing for the party of which he is a member, regardless of the independence of the Speaker.
Perhaps MPs from other parties shouldn't have given the guy a standing ovation, but they likely didn't have a chance to vet him ahead of time because they didn't know he was going to be recognized.
posted by asnider at 11:13 AM on September 26, 2023
Mod note: Two comments deleted and the rest left for context (please refer to the mod note above). Can we please avoid turning the thread into a back-and-forth discussion between a few members? Please be willing to take a step back and let others move on with the conversation.
posted by loup (staff) at 11:26 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by loup (staff) at 11:26 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Rota resigned.
Thank God.
it's a bit unclear (I've seen conflicting information), but it sounds like Rota broke protocol with the introduction in the first place, so it's mostly on him but still embarrassing for the party of which he is a member, regardless of the independence of the Speaker.
Perhaps MPs from other parties shouldn't have given the guy a standing ovation, but they likely didn't have a chance to vet him ahead of time because they didn't know he was going to be recognized.
Everyone in the House chamber - Zelenskyy, the other parties' MPs including Pierre Poilievre, and even the backbencher Liberals were trusting that there was adequate vetting of the people being recognized during the speeches, which obviously wasn't done. The PMO should have had sufficient control of the process to prevent Rota from even considering breaking protocol to introduce this guy, and since Rota is a Liberal MP, it's not like he's a completely independent actor despite the nature of his role. There should have been no chance that Rota could have been able to do this. But like I said in the previous comment, it's irrelevant how this happened, it happened.
There's a tendency to get too caught up in splitting hairs about how something should be perceived because of X and Y and Protocol Z and Process B. Tut tutting that our uneducated population should know better is not a winning strategy. Abstractly, of course Trudeau is not to blame for this. But he's the leader, he is the public face of Canada, he's the guy standing beside Zelenskyy. Had this not happened, he'd rightfully take the credit for orchestrating the event. But it got screwed up, and because he's the leader, he owns it. Doesn't make it fair, but that comes with the territory. Pointing a finger at someone else for a screwup on your watch is the mark of a weak leader.
posted by fortitude25 at 11:37 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Thank God.
it's a bit unclear (I've seen conflicting information), but it sounds like Rota broke protocol with the introduction in the first place, so it's mostly on him but still embarrassing for the party of which he is a member, regardless of the independence of the Speaker.
Perhaps MPs from other parties shouldn't have given the guy a standing ovation, but they likely didn't have a chance to vet him ahead of time because they didn't know he was going to be recognized.
Everyone in the House chamber - Zelenskyy, the other parties' MPs including Pierre Poilievre, and even the backbencher Liberals were trusting that there was adequate vetting of the people being recognized during the speeches, which obviously wasn't done. The PMO should have had sufficient control of the process to prevent Rota from even considering breaking protocol to introduce this guy, and since Rota is a Liberal MP, it's not like he's a completely independent actor despite the nature of his role. There should have been no chance that Rota could have been able to do this. But like I said in the previous comment, it's irrelevant how this happened, it happened.
There's a tendency to get too caught up in splitting hairs about how something should be perceived because of X and Y and Protocol Z and Process B. Tut tutting that our uneducated population should know better is not a winning strategy. Abstractly, of course Trudeau is not to blame for this. But he's the leader, he is the public face of Canada, he's the guy standing beside Zelenskyy. Had this not happened, he'd rightfully take the credit for orchestrating the event. But it got screwed up, and because he's the leader, he owns it. Doesn't make it fair, but that comes with the territory. Pointing a finger at someone else for a screwup on your watch is the mark of a weak leader.
posted by fortitude25 at 11:37 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
"The PMO should have had sufficient control of the process to prevent Rota...Pointing a finger at someone else for a screwup on your watch is the mark of a weak leader"
Once again: The PM and PMO have NO control over the Speaker. That's by design. If the PM/PMO had the power to order the Speaker to do or not do things, Canada would no longer have a Westminster style of government.
The Speaker, not the PM, is the ultimate authority inside the Commons. What happens on the SPEAKER's watch is the Speaker's responsibility. The buck stops with him, not the PM.
It's not a difficult concept to understand.
posted by senor biggles at 11:45 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Once again: The PM and PMO have NO control over the Speaker. That's by design. If the PM/PMO had the power to order the Speaker to do or not do things, Canada would no longer have a Westminster style of government.
The Speaker, not the PM, is the ultimate authority inside the Commons. What happens on the SPEAKER's watch is the Speaker's responsibility. The buck stops with him, not the PM.
It's not a difficult concept to understand.
posted by senor biggles at 11:45 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
I think we can all agree, every sane Canadian is looking at this with regret
an avoidable mistake, we all look bad for it, and the storm of outrage will not likely lead to any good (if you're not Putin's Russia)
posted by elkevelvet at 11:49 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
an avoidable mistake, we all look bad for it, and the storm of outrage will not likely lead to any good (if you're not Putin's Russia)
posted by elkevelvet at 11:49 AM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Like I said, either Hitler or Stalin would be running the postwar Ukraine.
That is entirely unrelated to the fact that every conflict has more than two sides. Though people who act as if they have to side with one or the other of two powerful bullies certainly do make it vastly more likely that one or the other will end up in power.
posted by eviemath at 11:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
That is entirely unrelated to the fact that every conflict has more than two sides. Though people who act as if they have to side with one or the other of two powerful bullies certainly do make it vastly more likely that one or the other will end up in power.
posted by eviemath at 11:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
It has just occurred to me that this type of thing, cheering or whitewashing Ukrainian Nazis, is going to be inevitable because:
1. We have a hero narrative - we are on the Ukrainians' side because they are Good and Russia is Bad. This is not the same as "we are on the side of the rule of law, or self-determination or even stability in Europe"; it's specifically that we are on the side of the Good Ukrainians and not the Bad Russians. You can reverse this for tankie reasoning.
2. We must have a hero narrative because otherwise we'd either have to have a cynical realpolitik narrative ("don't want Russia to kick off some kind of territorial scramble in Europe, no matter what the morality of the issue") or else we'd have to have some kind of doctrinal thing, like "conquering unwilling people by force is bad", and once we say that, people start to ask about our support for other actively conquering regimes, even if we decide that we are bracketing, eg, conquest of indigenous peoples in the Americas.
So we end up with Plucky Ukraine, and Ukraine has to be 100% pure, which means the nazis can't be that bad, really, they must have had their reasons.
How much easier and more preferable it would be to say that we don't want Russia annexing people who substantially don't want to be annexed, regardless of how great those people are.
posted by Frowner at 12:02 PM on September 26, 2023 [25 favorites]
1. We have a hero narrative - we are on the Ukrainians' side because they are Good and Russia is Bad. This is not the same as "we are on the side of the rule of law, or self-determination or even stability in Europe"; it's specifically that we are on the side of the Good Ukrainians and not the Bad Russians. You can reverse this for tankie reasoning.
2. We must have a hero narrative because otherwise we'd either have to have a cynical realpolitik narrative ("don't want Russia to kick off some kind of territorial scramble in Europe, no matter what the morality of the issue") or else we'd have to have some kind of doctrinal thing, like "conquering unwilling people by force is bad", and once we say that, people start to ask about our support for other actively conquering regimes, even if we decide that we are bracketing, eg, conquest of indigenous peoples in the Americas.
So we end up with Plucky Ukraine, and Ukraine has to be 100% pure, which means the nazis can't be that bad, really, they must have had their reasons.
How much easier and more preferable it would be to say that we don't want Russia annexing people who substantially don't want to be annexed, regardless of how great those people are.
posted by Frowner at 12:02 PM on September 26, 2023 [25 favorites]
I'll admit that considering Ukraine's history with Russia, the Holodomor was 1932-33 after-all, there might have been a lot of motivation to join with anybody fighting Russia. So maybe Hunka is no different than any young man and just had the bad luck of having the enemy of his other enemy be the literal fucking worst, but that doesn't matter, in the end we don't celebrate Nazi veterans.
The Wehrmacht set up 4 different auxiliary units for Ukrainians over the course of the war. At least one was deliberately stationed in rear-guard locations where they would not have any combat to do. Another was stationed in France and switched sides.
This dude joined the SS.
Even without the war crimes, the SS was a military org formed to bypass civilian oversight of the German military, and military self-regulation. Nobody who joins such a body should ever, ever, be honored for it by the parliament of a civilized nation. Or honored ever.
posted by ocschwar at 12:04 PM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
Everyone in the House chamber [...] were trusting that there was adequate vetting of the people being recognized during the speeches
Of course. And it was reasonable for them to do so. And equally reasonable to be upset when it turned out that wasn't the case.
Now, since the Speaker is supposed to be independent this shouldn't reflect on anyone except for him and his staff. But politics being what it is, of course it ends up reflecting poorly on the Liberal party in particular, since he's a member of that party and politics is often about guilt by association.
posted by asnider at 12:07 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Of course. And it was reasonable for them to do so. And equally reasonable to be upset when it turned out that wasn't the case.
Now, since the Speaker is supposed to be independent this shouldn't reflect on anyone except for him and his staff. But politics being what it is, of course it ends up reflecting poorly on the Liberal party in particular, since he's a member of that party and politics is often about guilt by association.
posted by asnider at 12:07 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
But politics being what it is, of course it ends up reflecting poorly on the Liberal party in particular, since he's a member of that party and politics is often about guilt by association.
That's totally it - it is all optics. It will reflect on Trudeau regardless of the actual facts. But to say that the PM or the PMO should be vetting or controlling the Speaker's decisions? That's not how the system works nor is it designed to do so.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:16 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
That's totally it - it is all optics. It will reflect on Trudeau regardless of the actual facts. But to say that the PM or the PMO should be vetting or controlling the Speaker's decisions? That's not how the system works nor is it designed to do so.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:16 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
an avoidable mistake, we all look bad for it, and the storm of outrage will not likely lead to any good (if you're not Putin's Russia)
Putin also does not have control over who speaks in the Canadian Parliament.
I assure you, we're getting mad at the correct people.
posted by Reyturner at 12:30 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Putin also does not have control over who speaks in the Canadian Parliament.
I assure you, we're getting mad at the correct people.
posted by Reyturner at 12:30 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Remember when the earth was round, the moon landing happened, vaccines worked, and the nazis were always, I repeat always the bad guys?
WTF?
Just resign already.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:31 PM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
WTF?
Just resign already.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:31 PM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Looks like Anthony Rota has resigned as speaker (CBC News).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:17 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:17 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have to say, I was reading this thread on the bus on my way to work. The story (and thread) seemed incredible -- how did a major Canadian political figure end up honoring an SS soldier in front of the whole nation. When I finished work, I caught up on the thread, and I find myself with much the same question but also the weird experience of reading MeFites defend the idea of joining the SS. I'm utterly bewildered.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:43 PM on September 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:43 PM on September 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
"About the SS Officer in the Gallery: History is messy, horrible, complicated. All we can do is face it" from Justin Ling.
I found this piece thoughtful and helpful.
posted by mazola at 1:48 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
I found this piece thoughtful and helpful.
posted by mazola at 1:48 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
I find it extremely funny that conservatives voted down the motion to expunge the praise of Hunka. You shit your bed, now lie in it.
posted by supercres at 2:07 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by supercres at 2:07 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
The man literally said the best years of his life were when he was serving with this unit. A Nazi unit. Not sure what's so complicated about it when the guy himself looks back fondly on his time committing war crimes.From what I understand, he said the best years were 1941-43 when he was a teen and the German advance meant a Russian withdrawl. He joined the Galicia Division in 1943 when it was created.
posted by mazola at 2:20 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's astonishing that anyone read this thread and thought "what we need here is some #NotAllNazis discourse about anyone who isn't Oskar Schindler; in fact it needs it so much I won't even bring receipts." Fucking unbelievable.
posted by johnofjack at 2:29 PM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by johnofjack at 2:29 PM on September 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
mazola: I found this piece thoughtful and helpful.
Ling drew most of his conclusions about the activities of the Waffen-SS Galicia division from a book written by the son of a veteran of the unit. With the best will in the world, it’s hard not to think that a son is at least somewhat biased towards his father.
I went looking for more information about the book, which I’ll note was published by a reputable academic press, but didn’t find much. One paragraph from a review I could see a part of brought me up short though:
I don’t know if Hunka was present at any of the massacres it is known that units of the division participated in, but it’s well established historical fact that, at the very least, they took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles.
Ling makes a lot of the fact that Hunka was young when he joined, presumably to make it seem unlikely that he did much during the holocaust. But the Shoah was not the only atrocity that the Nazis committed, and Ling doesn’t seem to understand that.
Whether Hunka personally murdered civilians is presumably lost to history, but he served in a division which did. As messy and horrible that history is, the morality isn’t so complicated here.
posted by Kattullus at 2:38 PM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
Ling drew most of his conclusions about the activities of the Waffen-SS Galicia division from a book written by the son of a veteran of the unit. With the best will in the world, it’s hard not to think that a son is at least somewhat biased towards his father.
I went looking for more information about the book, which I’ll note was published by a reputable academic press, but didn’t find much. One paragraph from a review I could see a part of brought me up short though:
The book is divided into five sections; "Motives," "Actions," "Camps," "Stories," and "Reappraisals." The first two sections – on background and military history are relatively short (Pp. 15–158) and based mostly on literature published by the Waffen-SS veterans themselves. Of the subsections, chapter 7, on the Galician SS Volunteer regiments, counts among the strongest, though it closely follows the work of Michael Melnyk, a chronicler of the unit – and, like Shkandrij, the son of a Waffen-SS volunteer. Though well-written, this section offers little that is new. Particularly notable is the near-total absence of German-language sources; a handful of references, cited in secondary sources, are given as "Bundesarkhiv [End Page 220] [sic], Berlin" and "Budesarkhiv [sic] Aussenstelle Ludwigsberg [sic]" (Pp. xi, 389) and are both misspelled. Limited knowledge of German may offer a partial explanation for the book's imbalance in regard to sources. Jewish voices about the division's activities are absent.That doesn’t sound like the work of a scholar who was thorough about tracing the activities of the division during the war.
I don’t know if Hunka was present at any of the massacres it is known that units of the division participated in, but it’s well established historical fact that, at the very least, they took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles.
Ling makes a lot of the fact that Hunka was young when he joined, presumably to make it seem unlikely that he did much during the holocaust. But the Shoah was not the only atrocity that the Nazis committed, and Ling doesn’t seem to understand that.
Whether Hunka personally murdered civilians is presumably lost to history, but he served in a division which did. As messy and horrible that history is, the morality isn’t so complicated here.
posted by Kattullus at 2:38 PM on September 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
Thanks to my fellow Canadians for clarifying some Parliamentary knowledge I didn't have! I appreciate ya!
posted by Kitteh at 2:40 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 2:40 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kattullus: fair, thanks.
posted by mazola at 2:42 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mazola at 2:42 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
> they took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles.
from upthread sounds like this guy also wasn't a big fan of Poles to begin with.
This particular corner of the world is about as f-ed up as it gets . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:44 PM on September 26, 2023
from upthread sounds like this guy also wasn't a big fan of Poles to begin with.
This particular corner of the world is about as f-ed up as it gets . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:44 PM on September 26, 2023
Whole debacle seems a textbook case of "adequately explained by stupidity", therefore, as a Constitutional Peasant of the Lower Fraser, I call for all members of the federal parliament to undergo a remedial history lesson from Timothy Snyder. A test should follow and test results for each member made public.
I appreciate much of the historical knowledge dropped in the thread, but even if Hunka never committed a single war crime, he didn't just fight against Russians. He fought against the USSR, which means it's pretty much a certainty he fought against Ukrainians (and other non-Russians) during those "happiest years" of his life.
Anybody interested in the Castle Itter SS guy might also appreciate Johann Voss' book Black Edelweiss. Besides being a war memoir, the book was his attempt to deal with his joining the SS (as a noble crusade against communism) versus what he learned after the war while working for one of the Nuremberg prosecutors (among many other things, why the SS was declared a criminal organization). I don't think he managed to reconcile the conflict, but, unlike Hunka (at least, far as I can tell), he became an anti-nazi.
"From what I understand, he said the best years were 1941-43 when he was a teen and the German advance meant a Russian withdrawl. He joined the Galicia Division in 1943 when it was created."
Leaving aside the question of who Hunka was marching with during 1941-42, the Nazis didn't do much advancing during 1943 and Kiev was re-taken by the Red Army in early winter 1943. If I remember it right, according to Anatoly Kuznetsov's Babi Yar by the time the Red Army was getting close to Kiev in 1943 it was down to around 25% of its prewar population, largely due to people getting shipped to Germany to work (and die) as slaves. I seem to remember Kuznetosov writing the countryside was also stripped of many people for the same purpose. Maybe Hunka had no idea, maybe he condemned this in some of his post-war writings. I doubt it, but time (and maybe a trial in Poland) will tell.
Another thing, I long ago read that when there were partisan troubles the security forces preferred to get help from SS or elite units like the Grossdeutschland. So, I'd say it's very likely Hunka participated in some of that brutal aspect of the eastern front.
posted by house-goblin at 3:03 PM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I appreciate much of the historical knowledge dropped in the thread, but even if Hunka never committed a single war crime, he didn't just fight against Russians. He fought against the USSR, which means it's pretty much a certainty he fought against Ukrainians (and other non-Russians) during those "happiest years" of his life.
Anybody interested in the Castle Itter SS guy might also appreciate Johann Voss' book Black Edelweiss. Besides being a war memoir, the book was his attempt to deal with his joining the SS (as a noble crusade against communism) versus what he learned after the war while working for one of the Nuremberg prosecutors (among many other things, why the SS was declared a criminal organization). I don't think he managed to reconcile the conflict, but, unlike Hunka (at least, far as I can tell), he became an anti-nazi.
"From what I understand, he said the best years were 1941-43 when he was a teen and the German advance meant a Russian withdrawl. He joined the Galicia Division in 1943 when it was created."
Leaving aside the question of who Hunka was marching with during 1941-42, the Nazis didn't do much advancing during 1943 and Kiev was re-taken by the Red Army in early winter 1943. If I remember it right, according to Anatoly Kuznetsov's Babi Yar by the time the Red Army was getting close to Kiev in 1943 it was down to around 25% of its prewar population, largely due to people getting shipped to Germany to work (and die) as slaves. I seem to remember Kuznetosov writing the countryside was also stripped of many people for the same purpose. Maybe Hunka had no idea, maybe he condemned this in some of his post-war writings. I doubt it, but time (and maybe a trial in Poland) will tell.
Another thing, I long ago read that when there were partisan troubles the security forces preferred to get help from SS or elite units like the Grossdeutschland. So, I'd say it's very likely Hunka participated in some of that brutal aspect of the eastern front.
posted by house-goblin at 3:03 PM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I know what Rota was thinking, and I know what Zelensky and Trudeau were thinking. What I can't begin to guess at is what Hunka was thinking. He wants to spend his last couple of years being extradited to Poland and tried for war crimes?? Why the heck didn't he keep his head down? He came so close to flying under the radar. All he had to do was hold out for maybe another four years...
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:34 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:34 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is the real reason for Nazi hunters.
The SS veterans and. others would have loved the chance to step into the sunlight and speak in defense, no, in praise of what they did. If West Germany had done a statute of limitations on the war crimes, which they wanted to do, they would have had their chance to step forward in 1963. But an Israeli spy squad found and killed Herbert Kukurs, and West German got the message, and so all these SS veterans had to keep their heads down for the rest of their lives.
There was never a real chance that more than a handful would be found and brought to justice. But the threat kept their mouths shut.
posted by ocschwar at 4:42 PM on September 26, 2023 [16 favorites]
The SS veterans and. others would have loved the chance to step into the sunlight and speak in defense, no, in praise of what they did. If West Germany had done a statute of limitations on the war crimes, which they wanted to do, they would have had their chance to step forward in 1963. But an Israeli spy squad found and killed Herbert Kukurs, and West German got the message, and so all these SS veterans had to keep their heads down for the rest of their lives.
There was never a real chance that more than a handful would be found and brought to justice. But the threat kept their mouths shut.
posted by ocschwar at 4:42 PM on September 26, 2023 [16 favorites]
Look - something 7 million Ukrainians made the correct decision and fought for the Allies under the Soviets. Around ~200,000 fucking freaks made the unambiguously wrong decision to fight for the evil side (that's the Nazis. They're evil. Just a reminder since a disturbingly high amount of people on this thread and in Canada's parliament seem to be unclear about that.)
Many Ukrainian Nazis ended up in Canada, and some of them were so fucking evil and stupid that they didn't just put their heads down and refuse to talk about what role they played in the war and hope nothing ever came up about it but instead ran around talking about how great the war was and how much fun they had and put up statues to honor themselves and their fascist Ukrainian heroes. This guy is one of the evil, stupid, freaks. If he had just been caught between a rock and a hard place as a teen then he would have shut the fuck and thanked his lucky stars when he made it out of Europe and into Canada and DEFINITELY WOULD NOT put himself and his Nazi past in a highly publicized situation like I dunno - getting a standing ovation in parliament?!
Also, because it seems like some of the weirdos in this thread need reminding, Canada has a large Ukrainian Nazi problem (Luckily most of them are dead now. Ukraine has a large Ukrainian Neo Nazi problem (Hopefully more of them die sooner than later). Just because they didn't elect that many of them to either countries parliament doesn't mean there's not a whole bunch of Nazis in either country. The ones in Ukraine now have a tremendous amount of power - power like fire power. Guns, Grenades, Armored Vehicles, Rockets, etc... Much of that fire power provided by NATO countries! And when we (NATO / the EU / the USA) inevitably let them down (which we will, because we ALWAYS do - see the Taliban in Afghanistan and then later the Not Taliban in Afghanistan, the Kurds like 5 times in multiple countries, etc...)
Then the EU / NATO / Ukrainians / Maybe the
USA are going to have a serious blow back problem. Bringing this up as a scary fact does not make somebody a Putin supporter or apologist, just a realist.
posted by youthenrage at 5:52 PM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Many Ukrainian Nazis ended up in Canada, and some of them were so fucking evil and stupid that they didn't just put their heads down and refuse to talk about what role they played in the war and hope nothing ever came up about it but instead ran around talking about how great the war was and how much fun they had and put up statues to honor themselves and their fascist Ukrainian heroes. This guy is one of the evil, stupid, freaks. If he had just been caught between a rock and a hard place as a teen then he would have shut the fuck and thanked his lucky stars when he made it out of Europe and into Canada and DEFINITELY WOULD NOT put himself and his Nazi past in a highly publicized situation like I dunno - getting a standing ovation in parliament?!
Also, because it seems like some of the weirdos in this thread need reminding, Canada has a large Ukrainian Nazi problem (Luckily most of them are dead now. Ukraine has a large Ukrainian Neo Nazi problem (Hopefully more of them die sooner than later). Just because they didn't elect that many of them to either countries parliament doesn't mean there's not a whole bunch of Nazis in either country. The ones in Ukraine now have a tremendous amount of power - power like fire power. Guns, Grenades, Armored Vehicles, Rockets, etc... Much of that fire power provided by NATO countries! And when we (NATO / the EU / the USA) inevitably let them down (which we will, because we ALWAYS do - see the Taliban in Afghanistan and then later the Not Taliban in Afghanistan, the Kurds like 5 times in multiple countries, etc...)
Then the EU / NATO / Ukrainians / Maybe the
USA are going to have a serious blow back problem. Bringing this up as a scary fact does not make somebody a Putin supporter or apologist, just a realist.
posted by youthenrage at 5:52 PM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
To stretch this litte diversion into Canadian Cabinet nerdery a little further, there's an order of precedence to the Ministries (by default that link should sort by precedence).
But the order is basically just made up by the Prime Minister (historically it was by the date someone first became a minister, to simplify a little) and is essentially meaningless. It definitely is not reflective of the actual importance of the ministry (for one thing, being the Minister of Justice & Attorney General is very far from the bottom of any real ranking of importance, even though it is the very last on the precedence list).
That's not to say that being Fisheries Minister isn't somewhere in the middle of the pack (mostly because it's one area that the feds are unambiguously in charge of, while many other ministers effectively share their power with the respective provincial ministers).
posted by ssg at 6:12 PM on September 26, 2023
But the order is basically just made up by the Prime Minister (historically it was by the date someone first became a minister, to simplify a little) and is essentially meaningless. It definitely is not reflective of the actual importance of the ministry (for one thing, being the Minister of Justice & Attorney General is very far from the bottom of any real ranking of importance, even though it is the very last on the precedence list).
That's not to say that being Fisheries Minister isn't somewhere in the middle of the pack (mostly because it's one area that the feds are unambiguously in charge of, while many other ministers effectively share their power with the respective provincial ministers).
posted by ssg at 6:12 PM on September 26, 2023
the unambiguously wrong decision to fight for the evil side (that's the Nazis. They're evil. Just a reminder since a disturbingly high amount of people on this thread and in Canada's parliament seem to be unclear about that.)
I do think that if you dig into the history you tend to find that the Nazis were evil and so was Stalin's regime, in different ways, perhaps via different metrics. I linked to Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands above. He digs into all of this way deeper (and darker) than I would ever care to, with a big part of his thesis being that Hitler and Stalin enabled each other, as one pushed the limit of what was conceivable in terms of mechanized, 20th century savagery, the other stepped up and exceeded him. For me, what happened in Eastern Europe (the bloodlands) between 1932-45 (yes, this includes Holdomor) is beyond comprehension and that which is beyond comprehension cannot be unambiguous.
posted by philip-random at 6:39 PM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
I do think that if you dig into the history you tend to find that the Nazis were evil and so was Stalin's regime, in different ways, perhaps via different metrics. I linked to Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands above. He digs into all of this way deeper (and darker) than I would ever care to, with a big part of his thesis being that Hitler and Stalin enabled each other, as one pushed the limit of what was conceivable in terms of mechanized, 20th century savagery, the other stepped up and exceeded him. For me, what happened in Eastern Europe (the bloodlands) between 1932-45 (yes, this includes Holdomor) is beyond comprehension and that which is beyond comprehension cannot be unambiguous.
posted by philip-random at 6:39 PM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Yeah whatever dude - bloodlands has been pretty thoroughly critiqued and debunked. Plenty of more takes if you google a phrase like “Timothy Snyder bloodlands lies”. The Soviet Union, the USA, Britain, France, etc have all done horrible things, but they’re not Nazis. Joining the Waffen SS is indefensible.
posted by youthenrage at 7:03 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by youthenrage at 7:03 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
The Speaker committed a tragic error, and he is eating the consequences. Yet I can understand how this error was committed in haste. Federal officials work at a breakneck pace these days and there is only time for the most obviously salient issues.
I did not know that Nazis were welcomed into Canada for their strike-breaking potential, but that checks out. I did know kids in Canadian high school whose grandparents (living in Canada) were veterans of the German army, a description that might have been euphemistic. The kids were alright.
This debate causes me lot of unease. I am close to an immigrant community from a country that recently went through a region-wide civil and international war. Fundamentally, you do not ask them what they did during the wars. Almost everyone did terrible things, and many of them initially for craven reasons. Escaping to Canada provides an opportunity to put all of that in the past, for those who manage to keep their sanity. In my view, the key is to prevent the immigrants' children from picking up where their parents left off. These recent incidents involving India and Ukraine show the scale of the challenge for an open and democratic society.
posted by SnowRottie at 7:05 PM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I did not know that Nazis were welcomed into Canada for their strike-breaking potential, but that checks out. I did know kids in Canadian high school whose grandparents (living in Canada) were veterans of the German army, a description that might have been euphemistic. The kids were alright.
This debate causes me lot of unease. I am close to an immigrant community from a country that recently went through a region-wide civil and international war. Fundamentally, you do not ask them what they did during the wars. Almost everyone did terrible things, and many of them initially for craven reasons. Escaping to Canada provides an opportunity to put all of that in the past, for those who manage to keep their sanity. In my view, the key is to prevent the immigrants' children from picking up where their parents left off. These recent incidents involving India and Ukraine show the scale of the challenge for an open and democratic society.
posted by SnowRottie at 7:05 PM on September 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Funny to see people in here use Bloodlands for the exact thing that it's been criticized for.
From the wiki link above:
> In a summer 2011 article for the Slavic Review, Omer Bartov wrote that while Bloodlands presents an "admirable synthesis", it nonetheless "presents no new evidence and makes no new arguments", and stating that the book is "permeated by a consistent pro-Polish bias", eliding darker aspects of Polish–Jewish relations, and that Snyder's emphasis on German and Soviet occupation policies glosses over interethnic violence, commenting: "By equating partisans and occupiers, Soviet and Nazi occupation, Wehrmacht and Red Army criminality, and evading interethnic violence, Snyder drains the war of much of its moral content and inadvertently adopts the apologists' argument that where everyone is a criminal no one can be blamed."
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 7:37 PM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
From the wiki link above:
> In a summer 2011 article for the Slavic Review, Omer Bartov wrote that while Bloodlands presents an "admirable synthesis", it nonetheless "presents no new evidence and makes no new arguments", and stating that the book is "permeated by a consistent pro-Polish bias", eliding darker aspects of Polish–Jewish relations, and that Snyder's emphasis on German and Soviet occupation policies glosses over interethnic violence, commenting: "By equating partisans and occupiers, Soviet and Nazi occupation, Wehrmacht and Red Army criminality, and evading interethnic violence, Snyder drains the war of much of its moral content and inadvertently adopts the apologists' argument that where everyone is a criminal no one can be blamed."
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 7:37 PM on September 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
Snowrottie- I appreciate the idea, and I've had friends from (former) countries that underwent civil wars, but I'm not sure the 'never talk about it and put it in the past' is the same as 'now that people have forgotten, let's claim we were the good guys'. I'm willing to believe that there are people who joined a side, unaware of who they were fighting with (but I don't think it's a large fraction). But anybody who fought with the Nazis, knowing now what the side they chose was doing, who can still claim 'I chose the lesser of two evils and should be considered a freedom fighter', rather than 'holy shit, I didn't know that's what we were doing, and I'm so fucking sorry' isn't someone I need to hear anything more from, ever again. Yes, hindsight can be 20-20, but since we are in the present, that 20-20 hindsight really should prevent anybody from saying 'looking back, I was right to join the SS'. Anything short of an apology, given what we know now is pretty damn bad.
posted by whm at 7:50 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by whm at 7:50 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
bloodlands has been pretty thoroughly critiqued and debunked.
I've met Snyder. He is a very good and (to me, more importantly) a very careful historian in an academic world where careful research is not always rewarded. I haven't read Bloodlands because I can't emotionally handle it. But I would trust Snyder's expertise and first hand knowledge of the evidence over anyone writing for Jacobin.
I also happen to be married with someone who did his graduate work on war and conflict in the 20th century, and friends with a political scientist with expertise in the USSR. They have both told me stories of how horrifically murderous Stalin was. It doesn't undermine Hitler's evil to point out that Stalin was as equally murderous (and even more unpredictably so).
Anyways, back to the original topic: what a stupid stupid thing to do. What the heck? Maybe Rota got confused and thought that the man was a Ukrainian Canadian veteran who served in the Canadian army? That's the only plausible thing I can think. But yeah somebody should have checked.
posted by jb at 8:35 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
I've met Snyder. He is a very good and (to me, more importantly) a very careful historian in an academic world where careful research is not always rewarded. I haven't read Bloodlands because I can't emotionally handle it. But I would trust Snyder's expertise and first hand knowledge of the evidence over anyone writing for Jacobin.
I also happen to be married with someone who did his graduate work on war and conflict in the 20th century, and friends with a political scientist with expertise in the USSR. They have both told me stories of how horrifically murderous Stalin was. It doesn't undermine Hitler's evil to point out that Stalin was as equally murderous (and even more unpredictably so).
Anyways, back to the original topic: what a stupid stupid thing to do. What the heck? Maybe Rota got confused and thought that the man was a Ukrainian Canadian veteran who served in the Canadian army? That's the only plausible thing I can think. But yeah somebody should have checked.
posted by jb at 8:35 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
Some here keep #notallSS, saying that people were "forced" to join the SS. But would those kind of forced recruits keep bringing up in interviews that they thought the early 1940's were the best years of their life?
This whole thing feels like Chrystina Freeland probably just got ahead of herself. She has long tried to whitewash her Nazi collaborator grandfather. She could just not bring him up, but she can't seem to help herself.
posted by Iax at 10:10 PM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
This whole thing feels like Chrystina Freeland probably just got ahead of herself. She has long tried to whitewash her Nazi collaborator grandfather. She could just not bring him up, but she can't seem to help herself.
posted by Iax at 10:10 PM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
This whole thing feels like Chrystina [sic] Freeland probably just got ahead of herself.
Given that the Deputy Prime Minister has zero power over the Speaker, what's your theory? That she kidnapped his family and forced him to do this against his will?
posted by senor biggles at 10:48 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Given that the Deputy Prime Minister has zero power over the Speaker, what's your theory? That she kidnapped his family and forced him to do this against his will?
posted by senor biggles at 10:48 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
She could have just asked Rota? Watching the video it looks like Rota is just reading something someone just handed him, he seemed a bit surprised when he read he fought against the Russians.
posted by Iax at 10:58 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Iax at 10:58 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Perhaps some other people need to resign as well (bodes nicely what we know about the previous leadership of U Alberta):
posted by kmt at 11:28 PM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yaroslav and Margaret Hunka Ukrainian Research Endowment Fund (2019): $30,097As far as I know this fund was running for 4 years in name of this Nazi.
Established in 2019 to support research related to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, with preference given to investigations of the lives and work of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and Metropolitan (Cardinal) losyf Slipyj and the history of the underground church. (ualberta.ca)
posted by kmt at 11:28 PM on September 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
This thread was of great interest to me as I have been binging on documentaries of WW II and Nazism -- in particular the captures, the trials and the inner circles, of which there seem to have been many.
I wonder has there ever been a Nazi who expressed regret for their involvement in any way? I would be pleased to be pointed in that direction assuming it has ever occurred. I suspect there has not. Misdirection and "I was only following orders" seem to be the norm.
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 11:32 PM on September 26, 2023
I wonder has there ever been a Nazi who expressed regret for their involvement in any way? I would be pleased to be pointed in that direction assuming it has ever occurred. I suspect there has not. Misdirection and "I was only following orders" seem to be the norm.
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 11:32 PM on September 26, 2023
She could have just asked Rota?
So could any of the other MPs present. Why would it be her special responsibility to clairvoyantly understand what the Speaker has decided to do, and head him off at the pass?
Watching the video it looks like Rota is just reading something someone just handed him.
That's quite possible, but the simple explanation is that he asked one of his officials to write up an intro. It requires big leaps of logic and imagination to conclude instead that Freeland or someone else tricked him into doing this.
posted by senor biggles at 12:05 AM on September 27, 2023
So could any of the other MPs present. Why would it be her special responsibility to clairvoyantly understand what the Speaker has decided to do, and head him off at the pass?
Watching the video it looks like Rota is just reading something someone just handed him.
That's quite possible, but the simple explanation is that he asked one of his officials to write up an intro. It requires big leaps of logic and imagination to conclude instead that Freeland or someone else tricked him into doing this.
posted by senor biggles at 12:05 AM on September 27, 2023
It doesn't undermine Hitler's evil to point out that Stalin was as equally murderous
Eh, no, that's exactly one of the main refrains used by past and current nazis and fascists from all over to try to justify their history and redeem themselves. It's exactly one of the refrains exploited by the far right in order to be able to reassert itself across Europe. That assertion of equivalence has been used precisely to support a far right agenda. The postwar history of entire countries has been shaped by the manipulation of that assertion of equivalence. It's ridiculous to ignore that and claim otherwise. Please.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:47 AM on September 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
Eh, no, that's exactly one of the main refrains used by past and current nazis and fascists from all over to try to justify their history and redeem themselves. It's exactly one of the refrains exploited by the far right in order to be able to reassert itself across Europe. That assertion of equivalence has been used precisely to support a far right agenda. The postwar history of entire countries has been shaped by the manipulation of that assertion of equivalence. It's ridiculous to ignore that and claim otherwise. Please.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:47 AM on September 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
The best excuse for the median member of Parliament standing up and clapping when they heard "fought against Russia in WWII" is a combination of high school being a long time ago, just going along with the crowd, and Russia hysteria being amped up to 11 since 2016.
Freeland has a master's degree in Slavonic studies. She has no such excuse. When she clapped, she knew exactly what she was clapping for.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:55 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Freeland has a master's degree in Slavonic studies. She has no such excuse. When she clapped, she knew exactly what she was clapping for.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:55 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's exactly one of the refrains exploited by the far right in order to be able to reassert itself across Europe. That assertion of equivalence has been used precisely to support a far right agenda.
The flip side of the coin is the assertion of non-equivalence that is repeatedly used by Putin in Russia and by his enablers in the West to point to Ukraine as a non-country full of fascists that needs to be eliminated. But Russia is not innocent: it was not in WW2, and it is not today as it fights a genocidal war against Ukraine. Ukraine is not a fascist country. Russia, however, is.
Somehow, we have to live with and deal with both of these concurrent realities. It’s possible to acknowledge both, and we should.
The extreme right is a problem that must be spoken about in any country where it is present — and there are few that are innocent. But, in the context of a genocidal fight for survival today — not 70+ years ago — pointing out Ukraine’s faults ad nauseam is victim blaming.
It’s disturbing that a former Waffen SS member can live happily and freely in Canada. It’s a problem for Canada to deal with, and they should deal with it.
posted by UN at 2:16 AM on September 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
The flip side of the coin is the assertion of non-equivalence that is repeatedly used by Putin in Russia and by his enablers in the West to point to Ukraine as a non-country full of fascists that needs to be eliminated. But Russia is not innocent: it was not in WW2, and it is not today as it fights a genocidal war against Ukraine. Ukraine is not a fascist country. Russia, however, is.
Somehow, we have to live with and deal with both of these concurrent realities. It’s possible to acknowledge both, and we should.
The extreme right is a problem that must be spoken about in any country where it is present — and there are few that are innocent. But, in the context of a genocidal fight for survival today — not 70+ years ago — pointing out Ukraine’s faults ad nauseam is victim blaming.
It’s disturbing that a former Waffen SS member can live happily and freely in Canada. It’s a problem for Canada to deal with, and they should deal with it.
posted by UN at 2:16 AM on September 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
But Russia is not innocent: it was not in WW2, and it is not today as it fights a genocidal war against Ukraine.
Absolutely, yes, no disagreement there, that wasn't my point though, it was that the context and history of saying "nazis bad but Stalin equally as murderous" matters a lot, it is not a statement that can be uttered so matter of fact as if it was a neutral statement. It's not. It is an equivalence with its own manipulative history.
(NB to be clear I'm talking about the equivalence, the very fact of bringing up Stalin/communist dictatorships in that kind of "just as bad" comparison. Obviously yes Stalinism was murderous in its own ways and obviously yes dictatorships are all awful in their own ways - that should be so painfully obvious and taken for granted - but that precise equivalence has been used so dishonestly by the far right for decades that it can't be trotted out today in 2023 like some kind of neutral statement of fact, like "ohhh hmmm perhaps we should consider this too", as if no one had thought of it before, when it's been banged upon relentlessly ever since the defeat of nazis. This, regardless of the current situation with Ukraine. What's happening now should not have any bearing on how we look back to the past.)
posted by bitteschoen at 4:11 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Absolutely, yes, no disagreement there, that wasn't my point though, it was that the context and history of saying "nazis bad but Stalin equally as murderous" matters a lot, it is not a statement that can be uttered so matter of fact as if it was a neutral statement. It's not. It is an equivalence with its own manipulative history.
(NB to be clear I'm talking about the equivalence, the very fact of bringing up Stalin/communist dictatorships in that kind of "just as bad" comparison. Obviously yes Stalinism was murderous in its own ways and obviously yes dictatorships are all awful in their own ways - that should be so painfully obvious and taken for granted - but that precise equivalence has been used so dishonestly by the far right for decades that it can't be trotted out today in 2023 like some kind of neutral statement of fact, like "ohhh hmmm perhaps we should consider this too", as if no one had thought of it before, when it's been banged upon relentlessly ever since the defeat of nazis. This, regardless of the current situation with Ukraine. What's happening now should not have any bearing on how we look back to the past.)
posted by bitteschoen at 4:11 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
I don’t agree with the equivalence statements either — but I can understand when people get defensive when Ukraine = nazi or anti-communist = pro-nazi gets repeated, which it does at least once pretty much in every single Ukraine related thread and a dozen times in this one.
When someone is a victim of a murderous regime, they’re a victim. My primary interest in that moment isn’t to win a battle against extreme right propagandists in Canada or the United States or elsewhere. Ukrainians aren’t a screen to project our own old battles*.
It doesn’t help Ukrainians who are in an actual battle with actual fascists in their country. Dissecting their historical faults at every step throws them under the bus. There’s nothing new we’re learning from it. It weakens support for their cause — and we are interested in fighting fascism, right?
Ukrainians don’t need to be perfect heroes, nor do they need to be perfect victims. I get it. But right now, a Canadian problem has turned into a Ukrainian one, and that should not be happening.
A (Jewish) Ukrainian President getting ambushed by an SS officer in a western country, and much of the outrage and finger-pointing is at Ukraine ... it’s pretty much the best and saddest symbol of a lack of current and historical understanding of the struggle Ukraine faces.
* I am at fault for this as much as anyone else, I’ll admit to that.
posted by UN at 4:44 AM on September 27, 2023 [13 favorites]
When someone is a victim of a murderous regime, they’re a victim. My primary interest in that moment isn’t to win a battle against extreme right propagandists in Canada or the United States or elsewhere. Ukrainians aren’t a screen to project our own old battles*.
It doesn’t help Ukrainians who are in an actual battle with actual fascists in their country. Dissecting their historical faults at every step throws them under the bus. There’s nothing new we’re learning from it. It weakens support for their cause — and we are interested in fighting fascism, right?
Ukrainians don’t need to be perfect heroes, nor do they need to be perfect victims. I get it. But right now, a Canadian problem has turned into a Ukrainian one, and that should not be happening.
A (Jewish) Ukrainian President getting ambushed by an SS officer in a western country, and much of the outrage and finger-pointing is at Ukraine ... it’s pretty much the best and saddest symbol of a lack of current and historical understanding of the struggle Ukraine faces.
* I am at fault for this as much as anyone else, I’ll admit to that.
posted by UN at 4:44 AM on September 27, 2023 [13 favorites]
Saddam Hussein was a terrible person. His regime was terrible. His sons were murderous nihilist rapemonsters.
Yet the second Iraq war was deeply and profoundly amoral. It's perpetrators have never faced justice. It was the most heavily protested event, world-wide, in human history, because we all could plainly see the context for invasion was pure smash-and-grab bullshit. A context which, btw, provides twisted moral justification for Putin's current war crime.
A country can be terrible in many ways and still not deserve invasion and occupation.
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:59 AM on September 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
Yet the second Iraq war was deeply and profoundly amoral. It's perpetrators have never faced justice. It was the most heavily protested event, world-wide, in human history, because we all could plainly see the context for invasion was pure smash-and-grab bullshit. A context which, btw, provides twisted moral justification for Putin's current war crime.
A country can be terrible in many ways and still not deserve invasion and occupation.
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:59 AM on September 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
The Red Army beat my grandfather within an inch of his life and my grandmother fled because, and my family is very cagey about it this stuff, it wasn't "safe" to have three teenage girls in that village, but somehow I don't feel the need to back Nazis
posted by Audreynachrome at 5:37 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Audreynachrome at 5:37 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Saddam Hussein was a terrible person. His regime was terrible. His sons were murderous nihilist rapemonsters.
On a scale from 1 to 10, how similar are Ukrainians to Saddam Hussein and his sons?
posted by UN at 6:32 AM on September 27, 2023
On a scale from 1 to 10, how similar are Ukrainians to Saddam Hussein and his sons?
posted by UN at 6:32 AM on September 27, 2023
Whether Hunka personally murdered civilians is presumably lost to history, but he served in a division which did. As messy and horrible that history is, the morality isn’t so complicated here.
100% agree and the fact that 80 years have passed and, at least publicly, he has expressed no remorse for who he fought for.
Like early in the Russia - Ukraine war, there were stories of extremely young Russian soldiers who were captured and had no idea where they were or who they were fighting against. And you might say in those instances you could forgive being naïve/duped/brainwashed/forced into war and the choice they made without the facts.
But one, two, three, eight decades later if you were one of those soldiers who had more information and continue to refer to the period as the best in your life - you no longer get the benefit of doubt that you were naïve, duped or forced into a bad choice - you were and are actively a part of the atrocity. Nuremburg declared the Wafflen a criminal organization and that did not deter Hunka from being proud of his time there.
Hunka may have volunteered in 1943 to fight Bolsheviks and for Ukranian freedom (or whatever his reason was), but he's had decades knowing that he fought for the SS. His original choice is irrelevant, as is what his actual beliefs are - he has not renounced being part of a criminal organization created and led by Nazis, and remains connected to the SS, and for that reason he is unequivocally a NAZI.
posted by openhearted at 7:17 AM on September 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
100% agree and the fact that 80 years have passed and, at least publicly, he has expressed no remorse for who he fought for.
Like early in the Russia - Ukraine war, there were stories of extremely young Russian soldiers who were captured and had no idea where they were or who they were fighting against. And you might say in those instances you could forgive being naïve/duped/brainwashed/forced into war and the choice they made without the facts.
But one, two, three, eight decades later if you were one of those soldiers who had more information and continue to refer to the period as the best in your life - you no longer get the benefit of doubt that you were naïve, duped or forced into a bad choice - you were and are actively a part of the atrocity. Nuremburg declared the Wafflen a criminal organization and that did not deter Hunka from being proud of his time there.
Hunka may have volunteered in 1943 to fight Bolsheviks and for Ukranian freedom (or whatever his reason was), but he's had decades knowing that he fought for the SS. His original choice is irrelevant, as is what his actual beliefs are - he has not renounced being part of a criminal organization created and led by Nazis, and remains connected to the SS, and for that reason he is unequivocally a NAZI.
posted by openhearted at 7:17 AM on September 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
I posted an blog piece yesterday with little framing, so I want to apologize for that. This was in the lead to piece but I should have made more clear in the post:
posted by mazola at 8:51 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
"With that background, let’s get a few things out of the way, before we embark any further. I’m putting them in bullet points so they’re abundantly clear:So maybe that's all that needed to be said anyway.While you can play with words — does one need to be a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party to be a Nazi? Is fighting with the Nazis the same as fighting for the Nazis? — it doesn’t change the material reality that Hunka was under the command of the Schutzstaffel and in the Nazi chain of command.
While you can have complicated feelings about those who were pressed into service to fight for the Nazis, or those who volunteered for complicated reasons, we should agree that it’s wrong to applaud any veteran of the SS for their service.
The Russian accusation that the Ukrainian state is stuffed with Nazis is disinformation — but, like all good narratives, it contains kernels of truth. This scandal is not Russian disinformation, but it sure helps those Kremlin narratives."
posted by mazola at 8:51 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
meanwhile, if you want to see how fascism actually works, gets its claws into the truth and bends it to its malevolent ends, we now have ...
Tribute to Nazi veteran worst 'diplomatic embarrassment' in Canadian history: Poilievre
Is Pierre Poilievre actually a fascist? Does he wake up every morning with a hard-on for a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader (himself) over the individual citizen, and violent force will be utilized to achieve all of this? I doubt it. But when he plays this cynical, divisive, abusive of facts, he's definitely taking steps down that road.
So yeah, pre-Fascist demagogue twists deep and rightfully ingrained anti-fascist convictions in the general population to his own deceptive ends. That's your headline.
posted by philip-random at 9:13 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Tribute to Nazi veteran worst 'diplomatic embarrassment' in Canadian history: Poilievre
Is Pierre Poilievre actually a fascist? Does he wake up every morning with a hard-on for a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader (himself) over the individual citizen, and violent force will be utilized to achieve all of this? I doubt it. But when he plays this cynical, divisive, abusive of facts, he's definitely taking steps down that road.
So yeah, pre-Fascist demagogue twists deep and rightfully ingrained anti-fascist convictions in the general population to his own deceptive ends. That's your headline.
posted by philip-random at 9:13 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
PP is just happily joining in on the pile-on, and trying to make some of the mess stick to Trudeau as well. If someone could post video of PP applauding along with every other MP... maybe he might make his own apology?
So more just shameless opportunist than fascist -in-waiting, I think, in this case.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:16 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
So more just shameless opportunist than fascist -in-waiting, I think, in this case.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:16 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I sense more heat than light in this discussion. But I do feel for this comment (to reiterate):
Do I know what division or unit of the army he was in? No. Do I know what his war experiences were? No. Like a lot of the veterans I know, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. Do I accept he could have done some horrible things while in uniform? Yes. Do I think he was forced into a situation that he had very little knowledge of or control over? Yes, absolutely. Do I fault him for that? No. Can I say I wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? No. I just think I'm so grateful never to have been forced into a similar position, and my heart goes out to every young person stuck in the middle of a war zone, with no education, no ability to escape and no ability to affect the international forces that put them in those positions.
posted by ovvl at 10:31 AM on September 27, 2023
Do I know what division or unit of the army he was in? No. Do I know what his war experiences were? No. Like a lot of the veterans I know, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. Do I accept he could have done some horrible things while in uniform? Yes. Do I think he was forced into a situation that he had very little knowledge of or control over? Yes, absolutely. Do I fault him for that? No. Can I say I wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? No. I just think I'm so grateful never to have been forced into a similar position, and my heart goes out to every young person stuck in the middle of a war zone, with no education, no ability to escape and no ability to affect the international forces that put them in those positions.
posted by ovvl at 10:31 AM on September 27, 2023
chose was doing, who can still claim 'I chose the lesser of two evils and should be considered a freedom fighter', rather than 'holy shit, I didn't know that's what we were doing, and I'm so fucking sorry' isn't someone I need to hear anything more from, ever again.
When one chooses the lesser of two evils, even if forced or ignorant, one is still choosing evil. Do what you have to do but live with the fact that you chose evil. FFS don't be accepting awards for the evil.
Out on the margins I kinda feel bad for the Speaker's office. This sort of blunder is exactly what happens when budgets are cut or frozen for years leading to overworked staff. And yet the people pushing for austerity will complain the loudest about the mistake.
posted by Mitheral at 10:48 AM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
When one chooses the lesser of two evils, even if forced or ignorant, one is still choosing evil. Do what you have to do but live with the fact that you chose evil. FFS don't be accepting awards for the evil.
Out on the margins I kinda feel bad for the Speaker's office. This sort of blunder is exactly what happens when budgets are cut or frozen for years leading to overworked staff. And yet the people pushing for austerity will complain the loudest about the mistake.
posted by Mitheral at 10:48 AM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
So more just shameless opportunist than fascist -in-waiting, I think, in this case.
He is both.
posted by Fizz at 11:04 AM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
He is both.
posted by Fizz at 11:04 AM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Out on the margins I kinda feel bad for the Speaker's office. This sort of blunder is exactly what happens when budgets are cut or frozen for years leading to overworked staff. And yet the people pushing for austerity will complain the loudest about the mistake.
The office employs about 2000 staffers and has a budget north of 400 M$, they could still be overworked but that's a sizable team right there. As far as we know, they all keep their job the buck stopped at the speaker.
Also nobody asked the speaker to bring forward a guest. He could have done nothing, he could have simply invited his constituent to be there in the gallery and we'd probably have been none the wiser. But he decided to have the house applause him, if his office is too overworked to vet somebody, he has the option of not doing anything and it's all ok.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:07 AM on September 27, 2023
The office employs about 2000 staffers and has a budget north of 400 M$, they could still be overworked but that's a sizable team right there. As far as we know, they all keep their job the buck stopped at the speaker.
Also nobody asked the speaker to bring forward a guest. He could have done nothing, he could have simply invited his constituent to be there in the gallery and we'd probably have been none the wiser. But he decided to have the house applause him, if his office is too overworked to vet somebody, he has the option of not doing anything and it's all ok.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:07 AM on September 27, 2023
ovvl:
I sense more heat than light in this discussion. But I do feel for this comment (to reiterate):
Do I know what division or unit of the army he was in? No. Do I know what his war experiences were? No. Like a lot of the veterans I know, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. Do I accept he could have done some horrible things while in uniform? Yes. Do I think he was forced into a situation that he had very little knowledge of or control over? Yes, absolutely. Do I fault him for that? No. Can I say I wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? No. I just think I'm so grateful never to have been forced into a similar position, and my heart goes out to every young person stuck in the middle of a war zone, with no education, no ability to escape and no ability to affect the international forces that put them in those positions.
So then many decades later would you refer to your time in the SS as the best years of your life?
The years where the population of jews in your town went from over 8000 to 0?
posted by Iax at 11:28 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
I sense more heat than light in this discussion. But I do feel for this comment (to reiterate):
Do I know what division or unit of the army he was in? No. Do I know what his war experiences were? No. Like a lot of the veterans I know, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. Do I accept he could have done some horrible things while in uniform? Yes. Do I think he was forced into a situation that he had very little knowledge of or control over? Yes, absolutely. Do I fault him for that? No. Can I say I wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? No. I just think I'm so grateful never to have been forced into a similar position, and my heart goes out to every young person stuck in the middle of a war zone, with no education, no ability to escape and no ability to affect the international forces that put them in those positions.
So then many decades later would you refer to your time in the SS as the best years of your life?
The years where the population of jews in your town went from over 8000 to 0?
posted by Iax at 11:28 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
This sort of blunder is exactly what happens when budgets are cut or frozen for years leading to overworked staff.
That's too kind. I think that this debacle was more just a lazy mistake by bureaucrats who don't have a suitable grasp of history. I would have thought that somewhere in government is a person or group who is/are well-versed in Ukrainian history, given the high number of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, and of course the current war. But no... someone just winged it, it seems.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:37 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's too kind. I think that this debacle was more just a lazy mistake by bureaucrats who don't have a suitable grasp of history. I would have thought that somewhere in government is a person or group who is/are well-versed in Ukrainian history, given the high number of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, and of course the current war. But no... someone just winged it, it seems.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:37 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Feel like this @heerjeet tweet needs to be reiterated here:
Canada stumbles into a confrontation with its own Nazi complacency:
Most Ukrainians who fought in World War II fought in the Red Army. Conflating the Nazi-loving Bandera-ite faction with all Ukrainians is both an apologia for fascism and a slur on UkrainiansAlso Nora Loreto has a good Substack post that reminds us of all the other victims of the Nazis that all the clamouring to apologize are leaving out:
Canada stumbles into a confrontation with its own Nazi complacency:
In his first remarks since the controversy broke, Justin Trudeau said this, “I think particularly of Jewish MPs and all members of the Jewish community across the country who are celebrating, commemorating Yom Kippur today, I think it’s going to be really it’s important for all of us to push back against Russian propaganda, Russia disinformation and continue our steadfast and unequivocal support of Ukraine.”posted by Space Coyote at 12:17 PM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Trudeau did something wildly cynical here, linking the “Jewish community” with Russian propaganda, as if to say that the attack on them is … what … Russian propaganda? Made worse by Russian propaganda? It’s unclear. But Trudeau tying support for Ukraine to the need to resist Russian propaganda (presumably the kind that denied that Freeland’s grandfather was very much involved in the Holocaust) and that this is something he thinks of, in particular, when he thinks of Jewish MPs and the Jewish community, is especially disgusting. Especially considering that practicing Jews are right in the middle of the High Holidays.
None of what Trudeau says here is genuine and you can see this in the various associations that he’s made and, especially, in what he hasn’t said. Yes, seeing the entire House of Commons jump to their feet to honour a former member of the SS is harmful to the Jewish community. But Nazism didn’t solely concern itself with the eradication of Jews. It was disabled people as well. It was homosexuals. It was, as Singh ought to be aware, trade unionists and socialists. It was the many thousands of members of resistance movements. And critically, it was also Trans people. Nazism is an attack on humanity in all of our glorious diversity. Jewish people across Europe were devastated by the Nazis, but the Nazis’ death machine and its impacts cannot be summed up by apologizing to “the Jewish community” alone. Especially when attacks on another one of the Nazis’ target groups, transgender people, are growing in severity and reach.
But again, this is where the lack of intellectual rigor is on full display. There’s no sense among our politicians of how broad and far-reaching Nazi hatred was. We fight Nazis because they were anti-semitic tells only a part of the story and frankly, it’s the part of the story that has been most instrumentalized by non-Jewish politicians. Anti-semitism is on the rise in Canada but as rallies held in Canada literally promoting child abuse remind us that these things are all connected. And when political parties are trying to score points off the culture wars, and it becomes inconvenient to talk about what, historically, attacks from fascists, Nazis and other far-right groups look like, well, we simply repeat the same brand of black and white history that led us here in the first place.
This story didn’t start and end on Friday. It was only made possible thanks to a years-long campaign intended to make us forget that more than 20,000,000 million Russians died fighting Nazism. Or that Canada enthusiastically invited Nazis to immigrate to Canada. Or that our own colonialism was (and is) so brutal that it inspired Hitler himself. And Canadians, in our smug ignorance, hear that this nice old man “fought Russians in WW2” and our leaders instantly assume that, as Rota said, he is a true Canadian hero.
"It was only made possible thanks to a years-long campaign intended to make us forget that more than 20,000,000 million Russians died fighting Nazism."
20 million million Russians?
Anyway, the 20 million number she was reaching for was not all Russians, it was people of the Soviet Union--who were not all Russians.
posted by house-goblin at 1:42 PM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
20 million million Russians?
Anyway, the 20 million number she was reaching for was not all Russians, it was people of the Soviet Union--who were not all Russians.
posted by house-goblin at 1:42 PM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
But again, this is where the lack of intellectual rigor is on full display.
we are a society of screen addicts
discussion is largely reduced to gotchas and outrage
history is useful only to the extent it can be used to score points
well done, us
posted by elkevelvet at 2:02 PM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
we are a society of screen addicts
discussion is largely reduced to gotchas and outrage
history is useful only to the extent it can be used to score points
well done, us
posted by elkevelvet at 2:02 PM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
no, that's exactly one of the main refrains used by past and current nazis and fascists from all over to try to justify their history and redeem themselves
Saying that Stalin was equally murderous isn't an exculpation of the Nazis, it's a condemnation of Stalin.
If we include perhaps unintended deaths due to starvation, Mao is also in the running (an estimated 35-40 million people died during the Great Leap Forward). But Stalin got more pleasure out of starving people.
posted by jb at 5:17 PM on September 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
Saying that Stalin was equally murderous isn't an exculpation of the Nazis, it's a condemnation of Stalin.
If we include perhaps unintended deaths due to starvation, Mao is also in the running (an estimated 35-40 million people died during the Great Leap Forward). But Stalin got more pleasure out of starving people.
posted by jb at 5:17 PM on September 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
(I'm also a queer, socialist Jew who has taught Holocaust history. I'm not downplaying the Shoah at all.
Speaking of queer Jews, Masha Gessen's book Where the Jews aren't because a fascinating story of Yiddish culture and nationalism in eastern Europe and (sort of) in Siberia.)
posted by jb at 5:22 PM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Speaking of queer Jews, Masha Gessen's book Where the Jews aren't because a fascinating story of Yiddish culture and nationalism in eastern Europe and (sort of) in Siberia.)
posted by jb at 5:22 PM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Another irony in this whole discussion: I happen to know that there have been people begging some major Canadian Jewish lobby groups trying to get them to do anything about the contemporary far right. So far, crickets. As long as the convoy types attack Trudeau, they can tolerate them and their platforming of holocaust deniers.
The Canadian anti-hate network is an amazing and tiny, underfunded organization. They are on the front lines of countering antisemitism and far right. hate in Canada. They do not get a fraction of the support of other groups that continue to ignore the far right threat in Canada.
[Names have been redacted as I am not privy to give more details. Anyone in the Canadian Jewish community should know exactly which groups I'm talking about, but I didn't say it publicly, even if it is a shande.]
posted by jb at 5:29 PM on September 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
The Canadian anti-hate network is an amazing and tiny, underfunded organization. They are on the front lines of countering antisemitism and far right. hate in Canada. They do not get a fraction of the support of other groups that continue to ignore the far right threat in Canada.
[Names have been redacted as I am not privy to give more details. Anyone in the Canadian Jewish community should know exactly which groups I'm talking about, but I didn't say it publicly, even if it is a shande.]
posted by jb at 5:29 PM on September 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized on behalf of Canada's Parliament.
PP shits on it, of course.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:03 PM on September 27, 2023
PP shits on it, of course.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:03 PM on September 27, 2023
Deschenes Commission in the 1980s was just to cover up for people like Hunka
If they found that being a member of the Galician SS made you a war criminal, it would have had ramifications for Canadian academia.
Volodymyr Kubijovyč who founded the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), was the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta/University of Toronto who published his magnum opus, the Encyclopedia of Ukraine.
Acknowledging the Galician SS as war criminals would mean acknowledging that the bulk of Ukrainian history written in the west during the Cold War was written by actual Nazi's.
Chrystia Freeland contributed to the 2nd volume of this Encyclopedia of Ukraine.
posted by Iax at 6:57 PM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
If they found that being a member of the Galician SS made you a war criminal, it would have had ramifications for Canadian academia.
Volodymyr Kubijovyč who founded the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), was the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta/University of Toronto who published his magnum opus, the Encyclopedia of Ukraine.
Acknowledging the Galician SS as war criminals would mean acknowledging that the bulk of Ukrainian history written in the west during the Cold War was written by actual Nazi's.
Chrystia Freeland contributed to the 2nd volume of this Encyclopedia of Ukraine.
posted by Iax at 6:57 PM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
John-Paul Himka also contributed to the 2nd volume as did dozens of others, I'm not sure what your point is there.
posted by mazola at 8:20 PM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mazola at 8:20 PM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Jewish groups were working relentlessly to uncover this area of Canada's history. Their story indicates that this was not an accidental slip of one overworked office staffer. There's also some more backstory to the Deschenes commission report which was used as a defense of the 14th Waffen in this thread. Liberal government called on to release still-secret documents on Nazi war criminals living in Canada (Ottawa Citizen):
- a plucky Jewish investigator from New York posing as a faculty member of a fake university interviewing these Nazis on tape which you can hear in the segment about the killing of the village Jews
- how hysterical anti-communism after the war led to this situation
- Pierre Trudeau's explanation of why they didn't go after these criminals
- Canadian neighbors "not believing the accusations about these nice people" saying, "it was long time ago".
Also for reference, this is the insignia of the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) in case you were to spot them.
posted by kmt at 4:33 AM on September 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
The federal government has withheld a second part of a 1986 government commission report about Nazis who settled in Canada. In addition, it has heavily censored another 1986 report examining how Nazis were able to get into Canada. More than 600 pages of that document, obtained by this newspaper and other organizations through the Access to Information law, have been censored.By the way, there was a 60 minutes segment in 1997 about Nazis in Canada which features
David Matas, the honorary counsel for B’nai Brith, said the Jewish advocacy organization was also pushing for the release of RCMP and Department of Justice files on alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada. “We’ve run up against a brick wall,” he said of the government’s decision to continue withholding the records.
[...]
Matas said Canada’s track record in dealing with alleged Nazi criminals was poor. In a February submission to the House of Commons committee on Access to Information, B’nai Brith pointed out that the Canadian government’s approach to Nazi war criminals had been marked with “intentional harboring of known Nazi war criminals” as well as “deliberate inaction.”
- a plucky Jewish investigator from New York posing as a faculty member of a fake university interviewing these Nazis on tape which you can hear in the segment about the killing of the village Jews
- how hysterical anti-communism after the war led to this situation
- Pierre Trudeau's explanation of why they didn't go after these criminals
- Canadian neighbors "not believing the accusations about these nice people" saying, "it was long time ago".
Also for reference, this is the insignia of the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) in case you were to spot them.
#/media/File:Dyvizia_Galychyna-rukav.svg){kind=link}
posted by kmt at 4:33 AM on September 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
Long video interview with the above-linked American-Canadian historian, John-Paul Himka about the current scandal and its wider context.
posted by kmt at 5:03 AM on September 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by kmt at 5:03 AM on September 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Mod note: One comment removed, for several reasons. Please remember to be considerate and respectful to others, and avoid name calling, per the Guidelines and Content Policy. If you feel a comment is problematic, just flag it and, if necessary, leave a note with the flag.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:34 AM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:34 AM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
On a scale from 1 to 10, how similar are Ukrainians to Saddam Hussein and his sons?
That's the exact point of my post. If a regime as terrible as Hussein's was undeserving of occupation under false pretense, then Ukraine with it's sporadic corruption and handfuls of fascist sympathizers is even more underserving of invasion.
I'm greatly disturbed by the number of people sharing China/Russia-enabling isolationist talking points in this thread. They've been fooled.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:41 AM on September 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
That's the exact point of my post. If a regime as terrible as Hussein's was undeserving of occupation under false pretense, then Ukraine with it's sporadic corruption and handfuls of fascist sympathizers is even more underserving of invasion.
I'm greatly disturbed by the number of people sharing China/Russia-enabling isolationist talking points in this thread. They've been fooled.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:41 AM on September 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
The words Ukraine and fascism and corruption are used side by side to build a stereotype propagated by those trying to annihilate the country.
Nobody here, I hope, would say this kind of thing or make these kinds of comparisons about other groups of people in a fragile position.
It's generally a problem when anyone says "well not all [insert a race, sex, religion] are [insert vile criminal activity]".
The comparison isn't helping. It's eternally frustrating to me how widely accepted this is on this site.
Fascism used against someone who is not fascist is a slur. Using it indirectly ("I mean the other kind of _____, not you") is an indirect slur — especially when that person is facing death by fascists.
posted by UN at 7:08 AM on September 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
Nobody here, I hope, would say this kind of thing or make these kinds of comparisons about other groups of people in a fragile position.
It's generally a problem when anyone says "well not all [insert a race, sex, religion] are [insert vile criminal activity]".
The comparison isn't helping. It's eternally frustrating to me how widely accepted this is on this site.
Fascism used against someone who is not fascist is a slur. Using it indirectly ("I mean the other kind of _____, not you") is an indirect slur — especially when that person is facing death by fascists.
posted by UN at 7:08 AM on September 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
University of Alberta returning $30,000 donation to Yaroslav Hunka's family, closing endowment in his name.
Also, thanks KMT for that video.
posted by mazola at 8:52 AM on September 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, thanks KMT for that video.
posted by mazola at 8:52 AM on September 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm not downplaying the Shoah at all.
I totally believe that you aren't doing that but that's irrelevant, that comparison brought up as it was in this thread -- this thread about a nazi celebrated as a hero -- was still a comparison with a heavy history.
Specifically, at least in Germany and in Italy, in the postwar period, the "just as bad as the nazis" false equivalence was at the heart of many political and historical debates intended precisely to downplay the collective responsibility for nazism and fascism. There's a whole entry on Wikipedia just on that comparison, and take a look at even just the summary about the debate in Germany among historians. In Italy I can't find a quick summary reference but oh dear I can tell you thanks to first hand experience it was much much worse than in Germany, because Italy never reckoned with its fascist past in the same way as the Germans, and -- to make this short and not too much of a derail hopefully -- that "just as bad as nazis" refrain was a prime factor in how we ended up with a far right government today.
I am not accusing anyone here of being sneakily pro-nazi or a Holocaust denier, just pointing out that you simply cannot bring up that equivalence as a response to comments on how an actual literal SS member ended up accidentally cheered as as hero, you cannot ignore the history of that equivalence, you cannot bring it up in isolation as if you were an alien landed on earth today. That's all
posted by bitteschoen at 9:23 AM on September 28, 2023 [12 favorites]
I totally believe that you aren't doing that but that's irrelevant, that comparison brought up as it was in this thread -- this thread about a nazi celebrated as a hero -- was still a comparison with a heavy history.
Specifically, at least in Germany and in Italy, in the postwar period, the "just as bad as the nazis" false equivalence was at the heart of many political and historical debates intended precisely to downplay the collective responsibility for nazism and fascism. There's a whole entry on Wikipedia just on that comparison, and take a look at even just the summary about the debate in Germany among historians. In Italy I can't find a quick summary reference but oh dear I can tell you thanks to first hand experience it was much much worse than in Germany, because Italy never reckoned with its fascist past in the same way as the Germans, and -- to make this short and not too much of a derail hopefully -- that "just as bad as nazis" refrain was a prime factor in how we ended up with a far right government today.
I am not accusing anyone here of being sneakily pro-nazi or a Holocaust denier, just pointing out that you simply cannot bring up that equivalence as a response to comments on how an actual literal SS member ended up accidentally cheered as as hero, you cannot ignore the history of that equivalence, you cannot bring it up in isolation as if you were an alien landed on earth today. That's all
posted by bitteschoen at 9:23 AM on September 28, 2023 [12 favorites]
"Opposition, disinfo experts push government to fight Russian propaganda in wake of Hunka incident" [CBC].
I was interested to find out there is a government website designed to collate/counter Russian disinformation.
posted by mazola at 10:56 AM on September 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was interested to find out there is a government website designed to collate/counter Russian disinformation.
posted by mazola at 10:56 AM on September 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think that this debacle was more just a lazy mistake by bureaucrats who don't have a suitable grasp of history. I would have thought that somewhere in government is a person or group who is/are well-versed in Ukrainian history, given the high number of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, and of course the current war. But no... someone just winged it, it seems.
I have no doubt that there are many such well-informed people in the Canadian government. But that is moot, since ex-speaker Rota and his erstwhile employees are not part of government, because Parliament is not part of the government.
posted by senor biggles at 11:35 AM on September 28, 2023
I have no doubt that there are many such well-informed people in the Canadian government. But that is moot, since ex-speaker Rota and his erstwhile employees are not part of government, because Parliament is not part of the government.
posted by senor biggles at 11:35 AM on September 28, 2023
Sorry, what?
Regardless of what hair you're trying to split, "government" would still be a resource available to the Speaker and his staff for consultation and advice.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:57 AM on September 28, 2023
Regardless of what hair you're trying to split, "government" would still be a resource available to the Speaker and his staff for consultation and advice.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:57 AM on September 28, 2023
Oh my god.
German ambassador to Canada also applauded SS Galician Division veteran in Canadian parliament
posted by Space Coyote at 12:34 PM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
German ambassador to Canada also applauded SS Galician Division veteran in Canadian parliament
posted by Space Coyote at 12:34 PM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is there a reason the German ambassador to Canada wouldn't applaud someone introduced in Parliament? I'm just wondering what we're supposed to assume of people, and how far the social media ripples are going to keep our focus on all these incredibly pertinent details.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:37 PM on September 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by elkevelvet at 1:37 PM on September 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
German ambassador gets tricked into applauding an SS member is kind of a big deal. Yes it is.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:07 PM on September 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 6:07 PM on September 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wouldn't characterise that as being "tricked." They like the rest of parliament applauded someone they had low information about and trusted that the Speaker had vetted them correctly. The Speaker failed at his duty, hence his resignation, it was not their intent to trick. It was a mistake, a big one but one that was done without a conspiracy to commit deception.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:20 AM on September 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:20 AM on September 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
What's up with the SS guy showing up anyway? Is it arrogance? Did he feel so confident and at ease living openly as a former SS member that he just assumed, yeah this is fine? Not that I really care what his personal thoughts are... I just don't understand the environment that allowed this to happen. Like, how can you be so open about your happy SS times for so many decades and not be completely ostracized by the rest of society...
posted by UN at 12:45 PM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by UN at 12:45 PM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
I appreciate trying to understand what motivates people, but if you think people (here) are ready to engage in a nuanced discussion given some of the back-and-forth in this thread, not to mention the tenor of the MetaTalk discussion, I just don't think that's feasible.
The past week has revealed the absolute folly in trying to engage in discussion on certain topics.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:30 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
The past week has revealed the absolute folly in trying to engage in discussion on certain topics.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:30 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Eh, elkvelvet, I think the problem is less with MetaFilter and more that there is no reason that Hunka would want to explain himself. Unless someone talks him into an interview, and he decides to tell the truth, how would we know?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:24 PM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:24 PM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
fair enough, GP
I think two things can be accurate at the same time
posted by elkevelvet at 2:25 PM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think two things can be accurate at the same time
posted by elkevelvet at 2:25 PM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
"What's up with the SS guy showing up anyway?"
Yeah, I'd like to know what exactly went down too, but don't expect details about how he was picked for the gallery to be immediately forthcoming. As for Hunka's thinking, guy is 98. Could be some dementia. Not sure what to say about his openness about his good old SS days, that stuff could have been an open secret in some circles, while others were unaware, or people heard hints but denied them because they knew him as a local pillar of society or some such crap. For now, we get the media feeding frenzy.
Actually... to add fuel to the speculation and hot-takes, thinking about what Hunka was thinking brought to mind a scene from the documentary Hotel Terminus where they secretly filmed an interview with an SS diehard who, when questioned about his role in war, says something like, "Listen, if it wasn't for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd SS divisions all of Europe would be under the soviets."
posted by house-goblin at 2:34 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I'd like to know what exactly went down too, but don't expect details about how he was picked for the gallery to be immediately forthcoming. As for Hunka's thinking, guy is 98. Could be some dementia. Not sure what to say about his openness about his good old SS days, that stuff could have been an open secret in some circles, while others were unaware, or people heard hints but denied them because they knew him as a local pillar of society or some such crap. For now, we get the media feeding frenzy.
Actually... to add fuel to the speculation and hot-takes, thinking about what Hunka was thinking brought to mind a scene from the documentary Hotel Terminus where they secretly filmed an interview with an SS diehard who, when questioned about his role in war, says something like, "Listen, if it wasn't for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd SS divisions all of Europe would be under the soviets."
posted by house-goblin at 2:34 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
The Speaker's home town is North Bay and North Bay lies in his riding.
Hunka lives in North Bay.
Apparently Hunka's son asked the North Bay constituency office if his father could attend Zelensky's speech.
So the comedy of errors begins.
Some one at the local office tells the speaker who is in Ottawa we got a 98 year old Ukrainian here who wants to sit in the gallery. Speaker says sure bring him down.
Speaker of the House runs the house , so if he wants someone to sit in the gallery it gets done.
If all the guy did was sit in the gallery nobody would know,
But the Speaker wings it by introducing him to the House. Stand up take a bow type of thing.
Big mistake,
There's a bit about it here
posted by yyz at 3:16 PM on September 29, 2023 [15 favorites]
Hunka lives in North Bay.
Apparently Hunka's son asked the North Bay constituency office if his father could attend Zelensky's speech.
So the comedy of errors begins.
Some one at the local office tells the speaker who is in Ottawa we got a 98 year old Ukrainian here who wants to sit in the gallery. Speaker says sure bring him down.
Speaker of the House runs the house , so if he wants someone to sit in the gallery it gets done.
If all the guy did was sit in the gallery nobody would know,
But the Speaker wings it by introducing him to the House. Stand up take a bow type of thing.
Big mistake,
There's a bit about it here
posted by yyz at 3:16 PM on September 29, 2023 [15 favorites]
Thanks yyz! I stand corrected. It seems most, if not all, the details are already available.
Anyway, not related to Hunka, but here's an interview with a Ukrainian socialist, historian and armed forces member: The far right in Ukraine: An interview with Taras Bilous.
His answers to questions like "Let’s turn to the question of the Azov regiment. How significant are they? Are they an independent military force? Do they have their own far-right symbols? And, to ask about an issue that’s been raised on the US left, is US military aid to Ukraine actually arming neo-Nazi units?" seem pertinent to some of the comments in here.
I liked this bit:
Anyway, not related to Hunka, but here's an interview with a Ukrainian socialist, historian and armed forces member: The far right in Ukraine: An interview with Taras Bilous.
His answers to questions like "Let’s turn to the question of the Azov regiment. How significant are they? Are they an independent military force? Do they have their own far-right symbols? And, to ask about an issue that’s been raised on the US left, is US military aid to Ukraine actually arming neo-Nazi units?" seem pertinent to some of the comments in here.
I liked this bit:
"I have encountered cases where people wore patches with far-right symbols but had absolutely no understanding of its origin and meaning. One guy took off the Black Sun symbol when an anarchist from my former unit explained to him what it signified and showed him the Wikipedia article."posted by house-goblin at 3:49 PM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
He probably felt it was going to go fine. There are several monuments/memorials to the SS in Canada, so maybe he didn't think it was a problem anymore?
There is evidence that the Galician 14th SS Division worked alongside the Dirlewanger Brigade at some points.
posted by Iax at 8:36 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
There is evidence that the Galician 14th SS Division worked alongside the Dirlewanger Brigade at some points.
posted by Iax at 8:36 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
"The Hunka affair has embarrassed Canada — how bad is it, historically speaking?" [CBC].
posted by mazola at 6:49 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mazola at 6:49 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I guess it's yet to be see where this officially ranks tbh)
posted by mazola at 7:09 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mazola at 7:09 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
There is one bright spot in all this: Former "comedian" Rob Schneider cancelled his Canadian tour (though TBH it is likely for other reasons).
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:43 AM on October 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:43 AM on October 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
Ukrainian SS In Britain - Postwar SS-Galizien Division Refugees
Ukrainian SS Memorials UK (both links Mark Felton YT, very detailed historical background)
posted by Meatbomb at 10:51 AM on October 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ukrainian SS Memorials UK (both links Mark Felton YT, very detailed historical background)
posted by Meatbomb at 10:51 AM on October 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
"University of Alberta facing calls to return thousands more in donations connected to Waffen SS veterans" [Globe and Mail].
posted by mazola at 12:30 PM on October 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mazola at 12:30 PM on October 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's a very good summary of the state of historical evidence on the Waffen-SS 14th Division "Galicia" in "They Defended Ukraine" (2012) by Rudling. Some of the incidents have been discussed upthread but Rudling includes documentation of how we know what we know (and of what grounds there are to suspect what we don't quite know). He also discusses the role of the Division in subsequent nationalist discourses.
posted by grobstein at 3:20 PM on October 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by grobstein at 3:20 PM on October 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Liberal MP Greg Fergus elected Speaker of the House of Commons" [CBC].
posted by mazola at 11:02 AM on October 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mazola at 11:02 AM on October 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
"Canada has a large Ukrainian Nazi problem (Luckily most of them are dead now)"
Not so luckily the Mackenzie King government in the 1940s created organizations to manage the hundreds of SS soldiers imported into Canada, helping them to recreate their ideology, as well as to perform 'anticommunism' efforts, including attacks on earlier, left leaning waves on Ukrainian immigrants. These organizations, particularly the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, still exist as registered charities performing the same ideological project.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 7:19 PM on October 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Not so luckily the Mackenzie King government in the 1940s created organizations to manage the hundreds of SS soldiers imported into Canada, helping them to recreate their ideology, as well as to perform 'anticommunism' efforts, including attacks on earlier, left leaning waves on Ukrainian immigrants. These organizations, particularly the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, still exist as registered charities performing the same ideological project.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 7:19 PM on October 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's like a bad news / good news joke - some very welcome news indeed, i.e. "The representative of King Charles III in Canada expressed ‘deep regret’ for giving elite awards to Peter Savaryn, the former chancellor of the University of Alberta who served with SS Galichina during World War II."
It took me moment to figure out who this "Charles III" was, it looked funny.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:22 PM on October 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
It took me moment to figure out who this "Charles III" was, it looked funny.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:22 PM on October 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
The role of Ukrainians who fought in a division of the SS in the Second World War: The University of Alberta is reviewing its donations policy after returning $30,000 from the family of Yaroslav Hunka. He's the Ukrainian- Canadian man whose appearance in Parliament sparked international headlines after it was revealed he served in the 14th Waffen Division of the SS. Here to tell us more about the historical context of the 14th Waffen, and how to reconcile those past actions with the present, is Henry Abramson. He's a dean at Touro University in Brooklyn and a specialist in the history of the Jews of Ukraine.
Short (12 min) segment covering context and fallout.
posted by mazola at 11:50 AM on October 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Short (12 min) segment covering context and fallout.
posted by mazola at 11:50 AM on October 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
A detailed summary of the Nazi situation at UAlberta. Names and backstories of individual Waffen SS members as well as the history of previous fights over this very issue (honoring war ciminals, that is). The University of Alberta’s $1.4 million-dollar Nazi problem (Progress Report):
posted by kmt at 5:53 AM on October 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
By examining this list and old issues of the annual CIUS newsletter, with assistance from concerned scholars and the University of Alberta Students’ Union (UASU), the Progress Report was able to identify an additional $1,424,700 in endowments and donations dedicated to 11 Waffen-SS veterans and one member of the Nazi-collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Alberta government under Premier Don Getty contributed the bulk of funds for two of these endowments in 1986.(emphasis mine)
An Oct. 3 UASU news release called on the university to return all endowments associated with the Waffen-SS, publicly account for its history of accepting donations from Nazi fighters, conduct a review of remaining endowments and “meaningfully apologize for how its fundraising and memorial practices have contributed to obscuring history.”
“If the university is willing to close one memorial for a 14th Waffen-SS soldier as a matter of principle, it should be willing to close them all,” UASU president Christian Fotang said.
A day earlier, U of A political scientist Laurie Adkin penned a letter to administration, noting that “there were much earlier revelations that should have caused the university to investigate the CIUS’s funding and activities.”
Adkin cited scholarship by colleagues John-Paul Himka, Karyn Ball and David Marples, as well as U of A alumnus Per Anders Rudling, into the “obfuscation of the history of the Holocaust” by Ukrainian nationalist organizations, who in turn attempted to delegitimize their work.
posted by kmt at 5:53 AM on October 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
These people had a 4 step plan to whitewash their past.
They need people to believe:
1) The communists were almost as bad as the nazis
2) The communists and Nazis were equally bad
3) The communists were actually worse than the Nazis
4) Actually only the communists were bad
posted by Iax at 9:16 AM on October 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
They need people to believe:
1) The communists were almost as bad as the nazis
2) The communists and Nazis were equally bad
3) The communists were actually worse than the Nazis
4) Actually only the communists were bad
posted by Iax at 9:16 AM on October 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Who are 'these people'? What evidence do you have for this?
posted by mazola at 9:34 AM on October 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mazola at 9:34 AM on October 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
The Nazis are better in one key respect: they were soundly defeated, and their country fully rejected their anti-human ideology. One of the biggest problems we are having now is the result of Stalin winning WW2 alongside the allies, and the Russians never seriously confronting and dealing with the crimes of the past regime.
Maybe we will get another chance when they lose this war.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:07 AM on October 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Maybe we will get another chance when they lose this war.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:07 AM on October 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
The waffen-ss members that ended up in alberta and their supporters? the people kmt and not_that_epiphanius were talking about?
Here's a documentary about the systematic whitewashing of Fascism in the media and within the halls of our governments by the OUN
posted by Iax at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here's a documentary about the systematic whitewashing of Fascism in the media and within the halls of our governments by the OUN
posted by Iax at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Footage from a secret meeting held in May 1989 in Calgary, Canada. The man seen speaking in the footage is Walter A. Zaryckyj, the Executive Director of the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations.
Walter A. Zaryckyj openly talks about pursuing Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and claims to have the address and phone number of Charlie Allen, the Nazi hunter who exposed these war criminals finding refuge in the United States in the 1960s!
He asks his audience, 'What do you think should happen to him?' to the sick laughter of his audience.
posted by Iax at 11:25 AM on October 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Walter A. Zaryckyj openly talks about pursuing Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and claims to have the address and phone number of Charlie Allen, the Nazi hunter who exposed these war criminals finding refuge in the United States in the 1960s!
He asks his audience, 'What do you think should happen to him?' to the sick laughter of his audience.
posted by Iax at 11:25 AM on October 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Putin ridicules Canada's former Speaker over Nazi incident" [cbc]: "When asked about Putin's comments, Chrystia Freeland, Canada's deputy prime minister and minister of finance, acknowledged the 'terrible mistake' of honouring Hunka, but urged Canadians to be aware of how effective 'Vladimir Putin is at weaponizing that mistake' and to understand that 'Russian propaganda is real.'"
posted by mazola at 2:32 PM on October 5, 2023
posted by mazola at 2:32 PM on October 5, 2023
Who are 'these people'? What evidence do you have for this?
I'll take a run at this: it is an excellent question which deserves a detailed and complete answer. It will not get one.
First I would like to acknowledge to some primary (for me) sources:
1. The well written end very well sourced, but horrifyingly designed COAT website, which was the entrance to the rabbit hole I found myself in, following the revelation that the House of Commons, as well as its guest Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a standig ovation to a (former) member of the Waffen SS, Yaroslav Hunka. I have endeavoured to find contact information for the COAT website in order to beg them to at least change the gaudy header for the site, but failed to find contact information
2. The much more relaxed and truly informative series of the videos so far which has called itself the Bandera Lobby. I suggest trying to take in each of the one hour video interview interviews uploaded here so far, but the one with Dr. John-Paul Hinka is, I feel, essential to finding an answer to your question. The interview with Lev Golinkin is a close second. The third might be of particular interest to our American friends.
After spending some time with these sources I spent almost all of the past week (or two?) following citations and reading related articles, some of which were written by avowed Marxists, for example, but all of which maintained their integrity with regards to sources. Others were written with less of an ideological bent. These include:
THE RCAF OFFICER WHO BROUGHT HITLER’S WAFFEN SS TO CANADA (sic, who can argue with all caps on Metafilter), Canadian Journalists Are Worried A Nazi’s Feelings May Be Hurt, and others by the very readable Davide Mastracci, as well as How Canada Helped Whitewash The Nazi SS Galicia Division by Davide's colleague Alex Cosh, about the futile Deschenes Commission.
See also: Canada’s History of Promoting Anti-Russian Ukrainian Nationalism.
Lastly I will note this image of an article from the Toronto Star which a correspondent has found the original of, but I cannot, and which really lit a fire under me.
I will note that I had zero sense of this history prior to recent events at the House of Commons, and I also had zero familiarity with Twitter until now, which ignorance included a terrible effort at a 'stunt' post to Metafilter for which I again offer my apologies (mercifully deleted now).
I will offer a chronology, based on these articles:
'In 1940, McKenzie King’s Liberal government facilitated the creation of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) to undercut more socialist and internationalist elements within the community. In “The Ukrainian Canadian Congress and its Fascist Roots,” Richard Sanders writes, “Their explicit goal in orchestrating the creation of this umbrella organisation was to rally all anti-communist Ukrainians into one body in order to squash the then-powerful influence of left-wing Ukrainians whose forebears had come to Canada during earlier waves of migration.” '
This organization, the UCC, thrives today with tax exempt status, funding through the United Way and epitomizes the answer to the question 'who are these people'. As a Canadian, I might say that the answer is: They are us. Its branches redistribute funding from the governments of Alberta and of Canada. The UCC has programs which include summer camps, where children can learn of the importance of Ukranian nationalism and the evils of communism. There are "Saturday School" programs where children can gather round the bust of UPA commander Roman Shukhevychr and join in the chants of Ukrainian Nationalist slogans such as '“Slava Ukraini!”.
In the early 1950s, a group of 'these people', members of several different divisons of the Waffen SS, but not of the Galicia Division, were invited by the government of Canada to settle here, and join unions with the intention of breaking a strike at breaking a strike at Cominco. Note that at least some of the workers engaged in the strike are likely to have been Ukrainian immigrants from prior to WW2. Sorry for the terrible image, I am working on a replacement.
I don't think there is a way of answering the question of who these people are that does not include the Minister of Finance for Canada, Chrystia Freeland, born August 2, 1968 who epitomizes who 'these people' are. Like the 2,000 thousand members of the Galicia division who came to Canada, Freeland's family settled in Alberta, where she was indoctrinated into the Ukranian Nationalist ideology that is at the heart of the answer to the question of 'who these people are'. The organization that made the request to import these individuals of Canadian Prime Minister and noted anti-semite was the CCCRR whose handiwork is still featured on the website of the private Ambrose University.
Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a propagandist for the Nazi occupation in Ukraine during World War Two. He wrote for Krakiv’ski visti, an anti-semitic pro-occupation newspaper. She’s publicly tried to deny Michael Chomiak’s legacy many times (calling it ‘Russian propaganda’), and even edited Krakiv’ski visti apologia for the newspaper to redeem her grandfather (Krakiv’ski visti and the Jews), but it’s come to naught.
Photos have resurfaced of Michael Chomiak accompanying Nazis in the highest levels of government during the occupation of Soviet Ukraine, leaving no remaining doubt that Michael Chomiak was in fact a Nazi.
Freeland’s great uncle, Borys Shkandrij, served in the Ukrainian Galicia Division (14th Waffen SS division) after July 1944. He was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp, after being defeated in Italy, up until 1949.
Chomiak and Yaroslav Hunka made it to Canada, because successive governments (starting in 1947), sought to import European Nazis including 2000 Ukrainian 14th Waffen SS division members.
The present-day Canadian government, in which Freeland serves as Deputy Prime Minister, continues to issue public apologia for the Galicia Division, which to this day has to justify the harbouring of these war criminals and the erection of fascist-honouring monuments throughout the country. Freeland is good friends with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which has been caught honouring Hunka as early as 2007. Freeland was clearly nervous when a journalist asked if Canada “should reopen an investigation into the Nazi war criminals living in the country.” It’s easy to understand her nervousness, but there should be no pity had for her stress.
The UCC and other organizations have been extremely successful in promoting their ideology and its adherents into senior postions in government, academia and business. As mentioned above, one of these individuals, Peter Savaryn, also a member of the SS Galician Division had received the Order of Canada:
"Savaryn was the president of the Ukrainian World Congress, at the time called the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, from 1983 to 1988. He was also president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and vice-president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada."
Perhaps the most notorious ideologues of the Ukrainian nationalist projects, Stepan Bandera, had a grandson who was a journalist at CTV...reporting on Ukrainian news. Another apposite name for a large segment of 'these people', the Ukrainian Nationalists in Canada is "Banderite".
I will note again that many many other Ukrainian Canadians have fought against this ideology via dedicated careers in academia, in opposition to their Waffen SS apologist counterparts, as part of community assocations and just being freaks like me, with a tendency to fall down hard in rabbit holes.
The program of settling 'anticommunists' in Canada included a number of ethnic groups besides Ukrainians, who are part of the answer to the question of who 'these people' are, but the thought of working through the history and contemporary practice of the members of these other groups is almost terrifying. To be sure, each of these groups had and have members of their ethinicity who strive agains the right wing extremist project.
I have learned that the process of learning about these dark parts of Canada's soul never ends, so I will just end it here.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 6:21 PM on October 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'll take a run at this: it is an excellent question which deserves a detailed and complete answer. It will not get one.
First I would like to acknowledge to some primary (for me) sources:
1. The well written end very well sourced, but horrifyingly designed COAT website, which was the entrance to the rabbit hole I found myself in, following the revelation that the House of Commons, as well as its guest Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a standig ovation to a (former) member of the Waffen SS, Yaroslav Hunka. I have endeavoured to find contact information for the COAT website in order to beg them to at least change the gaudy header for the site, but failed to find contact information
2. The much more relaxed and truly informative series of the videos so far which has called itself the Bandera Lobby. I suggest trying to take in each of the one hour video interview interviews uploaded here so far, but the one with Dr. John-Paul Hinka is, I feel, essential to finding an answer to your question. The interview with Lev Golinkin is a close second. The third might be of particular interest to our American friends.
After spending some time with these sources I spent almost all of the past week (or two?) following citations and reading related articles, some of which were written by avowed Marxists, for example, but all of which maintained their integrity with regards to sources. Others were written with less of an ideological bent. These include:
THE RCAF OFFICER WHO BROUGHT HITLER’S WAFFEN SS TO CANADA (sic, who can argue with all caps on Metafilter), Canadian Journalists Are Worried A Nazi’s Feelings May Be Hurt, and others by the very readable Davide Mastracci, as well as How Canada Helped Whitewash The Nazi SS Galicia Division by Davide's colleague Alex Cosh, about the futile Deschenes Commission.
See also: Canada’s History of Promoting Anti-Russian Ukrainian Nationalism.
Lastly I will note this image of an article from the Toronto Star which a correspondent has found the original of, but I cannot, and which really lit a fire under me.
I will note that I had zero sense of this history prior to recent events at the House of Commons, and I also had zero familiarity with Twitter until now, which ignorance included a terrible effort at a 'stunt' post to Metafilter for which I again offer my apologies (mercifully deleted now).
I will offer a chronology, based on these articles:
'In 1940, McKenzie King’s Liberal government facilitated the creation of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) to undercut more socialist and internationalist elements within the community. In “The Ukrainian Canadian Congress and its Fascist Roots,” Richard Sanders writes, “Their explicit goal in orchestrating the creation of this umbrella organisation was to rally all anti-communist Ukrainians into one body in order to squash the then-powerful influence of left-wing Ukrainians whose forebears had come to Canada during earlier waves of migration.” '
This organization, the UCC, thrives today with tax exempt status, funding through the United Way and epitomizes the answer to the question 'who are these people'. As a Canadian, I might say that the answer is: They are us. Its branches redistribute funding from the governments of Alberta and of Canada. The UCC has programs which include summer camps, where children can learn of the importance of Ukranian nationalism and the evils of communism. There are "Saturday School" programs where children can gather round the bust of UPA commander Roman Shukhevychr and join in the chants of Ukrainian Nationalist slogans such as '“Slava Ukraini!”.
In the early 1950s, a group of 'these people', members of several different divisons of the Waffen SS, but not of the Galicia Division, were invited by the government of Canada to settle here, and join unions with the intention of breaking a strike at breaking a strike at Cominco. Note that at least some of the workers engaged in the strike are likely to have been Ukrainian immigrants from prior to WW2. Sorry for the terrible image, I am working on a replacement.
I don't think there is a way of answering the question of who these people are that does not include the Minister of Finance for Canada, Chrystia Freeland, born August 2, 1968 who epitomizes who 'these people' are. Like the 2,000 thousand members of the Galicia division who came to Canada, Freeland's family settled in Alberta, where she was indoctrinated into the Ukranian Nationalist ideology that is at the heart of the answer to the question of 'who these people are'. The organization that made the request to import these individuals of Canadian Prime Minister and noted anti-semite was the CCCRR whose handiwork is still featured on the website of the private Ambrose University.
Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a propagandist for the Nazi occupation in Ukraine during World War Two. He wrote for Krakiv’ski visti, an anti-semitic pro-occupation newspaper. She’s publicly tried to deny Michael Chomiak’s legacy many times (calling it ‘Russian propaganda’), and even edited Krakiv’ski visti apologia for the newspaper to redeem her grandfather (Krakiv’ski visti and the Jews), but it’s come to naught.
Photos have resurfaced of Michael Chomiak accompanying Nazis in the highest levels of government during the occupation of Soviet Ukraine, leaving no remaining doubt that Michael Chomiak was in fact a Nazi.
Freeland’s great uncle, Borys Shkandrij, served in the Ukrainian Galicia Division (14th Waffen SS division) after July 1944. He was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp, after being defeated in Italy, up until 1949.
Chomiak and Yaroslav Hunka made it to Canada, because successive governments (starting in 1947), sought to import European Nazis including 2000 Ukrainian 14th Waffen SS division members.
The present-day Canadian government, in which Freeland serves as Deputy Prime Minister, continues to issue public apologia for the Galicia Division, which to this day has to justify the harbouring of these war criminals and the erection of fascist-honouring monuments throughout the country. Freeland is good friends with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which has been caught honouring Hunka as early as 2007. Freeland was clearly nervous when a journalist asked if Canada “should reopen an investigation into the Nazi war criminals living in the country.” It’s easy to understand her nervousness, but there should be no pity had for her stress.
The UCC and other organizations have been extremely successful in promoting their ideology and its adherents into senior postions in government, academia and business. As mentioned above, one of these individuals, Peter Savaryn, also a member of the SS Galician Division had received the Order of Canada:
"Savaryn was the president of the Ukrainian World Congress, at the time called the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, from 1983 to 1988. He was also president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and vice-president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada."
Perhaps the most notorious ideologues of the Ukrainian nationalist projects, Stepan Bandera, had a grandson who was a journalist at CTV...reporting on Ukrainian news. Another apposite name for a large segment of 'these people', the Ukrainian Nationalists in Canada is "Banderite".
I will note again that many many other Ukrainian Canadians have fought against this ideology via dedicated careers in academia, in opposition to their Waffen SS apologist counterparts, as part of community assocations and just being freaks like me, with a tendency to fall down hard in rabbit holes.
The program of settling 'anticommunists' in Canada included a number of ethnic groups besides Ukrainians, who are part of the answer to the question of who 'these people' are, but the thought of working through the history and contemporary practice of the members of these other groups is almost terrifying. To be sure, each of these groups had and have members of their ethinicity who strive agains the right wing extremist project.
I have learned that the process of learning about these dark parts of Canada's soul never ends, so I will just end it here.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 6:21 PM on October 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
…some of which were written by avowed Marxists, for example, but all of which maintained their integrity with regards to sources.
The article from your multi-paragraph link used a page from a LaRouche Movement site as a source.
Elsewhere in the article there’s an Ignatieff quote that does not support the author’s claim that Chrystia Freeland believes the only real Ukrainians are the ones forced to flee Ukraine after fighting for the Nazis.
…even edited Krakiv’ski visti apologia for the newspaper to redeem her grandfather (Krakiv’ski visti and the Jews)
It looks like author considers “Krakow’ski visti and the Jews” to be Nazi apologia. It is an article by John-Paul Himka.
The author doesn’t even bother to support their assertion that inflation in Canada is caused by sanctions on Russia.
It’s shoddy work, but does make for an exemplary modern day demonstration of why Marx himself found it necessary to say words to the effect of if that’s Marxism, then I am not a Marxist.
posted by house-goblin at 4:33 AM on October 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
The article from your multi-paragraph link used a page from a LaRouche Movement site as a source.
Elsewhere in the article there’s an Ignatieff quote that does not support the author’s claim that Chrystia Freeland believes the only real Ukrainians are the ones forced to flee Ukraine after fighting for the Nazis.
…even edited Krakiv’ski visti apologia for the newspaper to redeem her grandfather (Krakiv’ski visti and the Jews)
It looks like author considers “Krakow’ski visti and the Jews” to be Nazi apologia. It is an article by John-Paul Himka.
The author doesn’t even bother to support their assertion that inflation in Canada is caused by sanctions on Russia.
It’s shoddy work, but does make for an exemplary modern day demonstration of why Marx himself found it necessary to say words to the effect of if that’s Marxism, then I am not a Marxist.
posted by house-goblin at 4:33 AM on October 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mod note: Friendly and general reminder that these events and history affected, and continue to affect, real people. Treating those events and history as a mostly historical discussion that doesn't grapple with the emotional effects of said events and history can come off as forgetful or uncaring of the impact they've had on people. Please take care to make comments that recognize this and don't treat this situations as a high level discussion that can be off putting to people, thanks.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:38 AM on October 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:38 AM on October 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
The article from your multi-paragraph link used a page from a LaRouche Movement site as a source.
I am mortified, and apologize for this. Thanks for pointing this out.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:15 AM on October 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am mortified, and apologize for this. Thanks for pointing this out.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:15 AM on October 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I will note that I had zero sense of this history prior to recent events at the House of Commons, and I also had zero familiarity with Twitter until now
I say this in the spirit of goodwill, now is not the time to start getting familiar with Twitter.
posted by mazola at 8:38 AM on October 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I say this in the spirit of goodwill, now is not the time to start getting familiar with Twitter.
posted by mazola at 8:38 AM on October 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
The well written end very well sourced, but horrifyingly designed COAT website…
Given the author’s opinions on the Hitler-Stalin Pact, that link should come with a content warning. And it should probably be a trigger warning for anybody in, or with family from, the countries that pact put into the Soviet “sphere.”
Because when the author isn’t pretty much declaring any mention of the pact as “fake history” or a “fallacy” or a distraction from the Munich Agreement, he’s going way out on a limb to excuse, and even justify, it. And while he’s willing to go into great detail about the suffering inflicted by the Nazis and their collaborators, he is silent about the horrors visited upon various nations by the USSR.
There’s some kind of terminal irony in how this author’s fixation on exposing the propaganda and historical distortions of Chrystia Freeland et al has led him to swallow and promote equally terrible propaganda and distortions of history. He reminds me of people I’ve met who told me they don’t watch the state run CBC but do watch Russia Today.
posted by house-goblin at 11:16 AM on October 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
Given the author’s opinions on the Hitler-Stalin Pact, that link should come with a content warning. And it should probably be a trigger warning for anybody in, or with family from, the countries that pact put into the Soviet “sphere.”
Because when the author isn’t pretty much declaring any mention of the pact as “fake history” or a “fallacy” or a distraction from the Munich Agreement, he’s going way out on a limb to excuse, and even justify, it. And while he’s willing to go into great detail about the suffering inflicted by the Nazis and their collaborators, he is silent about the horrors visited upon various nations by the USSR.
There’s some kind of terminal irony in how this author’s fixation on exposing the propaganda and historical distortions of Chrystia Freeland et al has led him to swallow and promote equally terrible propaganda and distortions of history. He reminds me of people I’ve met who told me they don’t watch the state run CBC but do watch Russia Today.
posted by house-goblin at 11:16 AM on October 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
After spending some time with these sources I spent almost all of the past week (or two?) following citations and reading related articles,
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 6:21 PM on October 5
Look, I'd never dissuade anybody from learning more about history. I try not to dissuade people from sharing what they've learned in an effort not to stomp down on their enthusiasm of a new subject, but please keep in mind Brandon Blatcher's comment: Friendly and general reminder that these events and history affected, and continue to affect, real people. Treating those events and history as a mostly historical discussion that doesn't grapple with the emotional effects of said events and history can come off as forgetful or uncaring of the impact they've had on people.
While I quoted one posted in my opening, this isn't a message directly to that person. It's plea to everybody reading this. Take that reminder to heart.
There are people here who have been living with this "history" for a lifetime--for decades--and struggled with it for the same amount of time. There are people here whose families were torn apart by the Nazis, by the Stalinists/Marxists/Communists/the Soviet Union and by both of those dictatorships. There are people who are still trying to deal with the fallout of those horrible, evil regimes.
I realize it may be unfathomable to people living in this modern day and age--an age where people even in the middle of war zones are able to access social media and contact their friends and loved ones via cell phone, but I know plenty of people who were cut off from their families, their friends and their communities for decades--or for the rest of their lives--because the people they cared about were on the opposite side of the Berlin Wall or were living in one of the countries that were invaded and swept up into the USSR and weren't permitted outside contact. The people in those countries also weren't permitted to speak or learn their own language or history. Sometimes, they weren't even allowed to live if they caused trouble for the authorities.
Maybe it matters to some people on the Internet who was the worst, most evil monster in history, but personally, I can't be bothered ranking them. Once a person gains enough [political] power and demonstrates enough evil, I don't need to bracket them and have them face off against each other or put them into a tiered list. That's a game for teenage boys arguing if Darkseid is worse than Lex Luthor or if Galactus is a bigger bad guy than Ultron. It literally doesn't matter. Sure, Stalin was "our guy" during World War II. It was an alliance of convenience, nothing more. It certainly wasn't an alliance based on principles. He was evil. What he wrought was evil. And, just in case somebody decides my allegiances aren't clear enough: Hitler was evil. He wrought evil.
So again, good on you, not_that_epiphaniu, for learning. Keep on learning. Maybe, however, just maybe, be a bit more careful of your sources. Maybe, just maybe, actually talk to people who have lived experience dealing with the evil or who are still experiencing the fallout from the evil. Academic understanding of a topic is wonderful, but it's not worth more than sympathetic understand of peoples' realities.
posted by sardonyx at 7:56 PM on October 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 6:21 PM on October 5
Look, I'd never dissuade anybody from learning more about history. I try not to dissuade people from sharing what they've learned in an effort not to stomp down on their enthusiasm of a new subject, but please keep in mind Brandon Blatcher's comment: Friendly and general reminder that these events and history affected, and continue to affect, real people. Treating those events and history as a mostly historical discussion that doesn't grapple with the emotional effects of said events and history can come off as forgetful or uncaring of the impact they've had on people.
While I quoted one posted in my opening, this isn't a message directly to that person. It's plea to everybody reading this. Take that reminder to heart.
There are people here who have been living with this "history" for a lifetime--for decades--and struggled with it for the same amount of time. There are people here whose families were torn apart by the Nazis, by the Stalinists/Marxists/Communists/the Soviet Union and by both of those dictatorships. There are people who are still trying to deal with the fallout of those horrible, evil regimes.
I realize it may be unfathomable to people living in this modern day and age--an age where people even in the middle of war zones are able to access social media and contact their friends and loved ones via cell phone, but I know plenty of people who were cut off from their families, their friends and their communities for decades--or for the rest of their lives--because the people they cared about were on the opposite side of the Berlin Wall or were living in one of the countries that were invaded and swept up into the USSR and weren't permitted outside contact. The people in those countries also weren't permitted to speak or learn their own language or history. Sometimes, they weren't even allowed to live if they caused trouble for the authorities.
Maybe it matters to some people on the Internet who was the worst, most evil monster in history, but personally, I can't be bothered ranking them. Once a person gains enough [political] power and demonstrates enough evil, I don't need to bracket them and have them face off against each other or put them into a tiered list. That's a game for teenage boys arguing if Darkseid is worse than Lex Luthor or if Galactus is a bigger bad guy than Ultron. It literally doesn't matter. Sure, Stalin was "our guy" during World War II. It was an alliance of convenience, nothing more. It certainly wasn't an alliance based on principles. He was evil. What he wrought was evil. And, just in case somebody decides my allegiances aren't clear enough: Hitler was evil. He wrought evil.
So again, good on you, not_that_epiphaniu, for learning. Keep on learning. Maybe, however, just maybe, be a bit more careful of your sources. Maybe, just maybe, actually talk to people who have lived experience dealing with the evil or who are still experiencing the fallout from the evil. Academic understanding of a topic is wonderful, but it's not worth more than sympathetic understand of peoples' realities.
posted by sardonyx at 7:56 PM on October 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
I appreciate your fleshing out Brandon's comment, sardonyx, and will take yours to heart. My poorly disciplined passion for trying to put this together was to assess the present, not the past. You have helped me understand the need to be more reticent than I have been in discussing this topic even outside of Metafilter. I will explain that the first link mentioned by house-goblin was a late addition, its inclusion was sloppy to say the least, and not excusable.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 7:01 AM on October 10, 2023
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 7:01 AM on October 10, 2023
I should clarify that my quote cited by Iax in this comment is not from the individual central to this controversy. I took it out of context from this comment. I should have been more clear.
My family lived under Nazi-occupied Western Europe, so of course we hate Nazis. But I know people whose families lived under Stalin-occupied Baltic/Eastern Europe. In that brutal cauldron, black and white morality turned into dark verses dark morality. So I'm not always quick to judge.
posted by ovvl at 4:39 PM on October 10, 2023
My family lived under Nazi-occupied Western Europe, so of course we hate Nazis. But I know people whose families lived under Stalin-occupied Baltic/Eastern Europe. In that brutal cauldron, black and white morality turned into dark verses dark morality. So I'm not always quick to judge.
posted by ovvl at 4:39 PM on October 10, 2023
If it's any consolation, I think the "How Canada Helped Whitewash The Nazi SS Galicia Division" news article by Alex Cosh is a valuable addition to the thread.
Among other items, it points to research out of the Wiesenthal Centre saying that before joining the the 14th SS most of its members were in auxiliary police units that were "operating as part of Nazi einsatzgruppen". More specifically, it claims: "The Galicia Division... was drawn from two Ukrainian-staffed battalions, Roland and Nachtigall, that followed German forces into the Soviet Union and took part in pogroms against Jewish civilians."
posted by house-goblin at 2:45 PM on October 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Among other items, it points to research out of the Wiesenthal Centre saying that before joining the the 14th SS most of its members were in auxiliary police units that were "operating as part of Nazi einsatzgruppen". More specifically, it claims: "The Galicia Division... was drawn from two Ukrainian-staffed battalions, Roland and Nachtigall, that followed German forces into the Soviet Union and took part in pogroms against Jewish civilians."
posted by house-goblin at 2:45 PM on October 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
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I tried explaining this to my mom back home in the US and just sort of got tripped up on, "Yeah, I don't know how this passed officials."
Edited to add: the speaker needs to step down full stop.
posted by Kitteh at 5:19 AM on September 26, 2023 [11 favorites]