Nazis in Canada? The truth behind the demonization of Yaroslav Hunka

I don't know Yaroslav Hunka personally, but I know... or knew... many like him. Most of them are dead, now. I know their stories. And I know where their bodies are buried.

Mr Hunka is a Canadian citizen, who lives near North Bay, Ontario. More specifically, he is a Ukrainian-Canadian, born 98 years ago in what was then a part of Poland known to some as "Galicia", but to its natives as Ukraine.

Last Friday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was addressing the Canadian Parliament, the Hon. Anthony Rota, Speaker of the House of Commons, introduced Mr Hunka as "a Ukrainian hero, [and] a Canadian hero", prompting MPs and dignitaries in the House to offer a standing ovation.

Today, Mr Rota resigned from his lofty position, saving the already embarrassed Prime Minister McBlackface from having to fire him. Why? Because, the lickspittle Canuck media told a shocked nation over the weekend, Mr Hunka was actually a "Nazi" (add: racist, anti-Semite, monster, yada yada yada) who served in the First Ukrainian Division, also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis. [Don't say "Germans". Ed.]

The 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division (also known as the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army) was formed in 1943/1944, when a determined group of young men and women in Galicia volunteered to serve in a combat division destined for eastern front combat. Their goal: to engage and destroy the Soviet hordes menacing their homeland and to counter Nazi Germany's subjugation of their country. 

Although initially Galicia's Volunteers would serve in a German sponsored military formation, in actuality the volunteers of the Galicia division wanted to engage all hostile ideologies -- from both the East and West -- in order to secure a free independent Ukraine. Source: Logusz, Michael O.: Galicia Division: The Waffen-SS 14th grenadier Division 1943-1945, part of the Schiffer Military History series.

Why would Yaroslav Hunka have joined the Ukrainian National Army, voluntarily or otherwise? Doing so doesn't make him a Nazi or a German, any more than having been born in Poland makes him Polish. 

Consider the times, and the nature of the adversaries. For Ukrainians, the 1930s was the time of the Holodomor (Ukrainian for "death by hunger"), when millions of Ukrainians died of starvation (or, sometimes, execution) as a result of the Soviet Russian state's genocidal assault on the Ukrainian peasantry.

Mr Hunka and his compatriots lived through the Holodomor, only to be caught in the middle when the Russians decided to meet the invading Germans in the same land that is being fought over today. What should they do? Join the Russians who were determined to wipe them out, or with the Germans, who promised to liberate them from Soviet Communist oppression. It was a choice between the devil you know and the devil you don't know. Many, like Mr Hunka, chose the latter. But doing so didn't make him a Nazi!

After the fall of the Third Reich, 1000s of Ukrainians found themselves in Germany, in prison camps or, later, in refugee camps. Members of my own family, who had been taken to Germany as slave labourers, were forced to make another hard choice.

Many Ukrainian prisoners had no choice. They were handed over to the Russians, "repatriated" to the Soviet Union, where large numbers of them were shot for being "contaminated" by their experiences in the West. 

Those who wanted to live, and had the choice, asked to go instead to other countries with established Ukrainian communities, like Argentina, Australia, and (of course) Canada. I say "of course" because Canada had been welcoming "Galicians" since 1905, when the famous "men in sheepskin coats" had flocked to the fertile lands of western Canada as the Austro-Hungarian empire started to disintegrate.

That, I would guess, is why Yaroslav Hunka chose to come to Canada -- "a good place for Ukrainians", then and now. I would guess, too, that Mr Hunka didn't receive any government handouts -- housing, food, medical care or anything else. 

I imagine he got off the boat in Halifax with the clothes he stood up in and perhaps a few dollars in his pocket, and had to make his own way after that. That's how it was with people very near and dear to me. Some of them, like Mr Hunka, may have fought with the Germans against the Russians. Some of their descendants are in Ukraine right now, fighting against the Russians. But that's ot because they were or are Nazis. They were Ukrainians, and are now Ukrainian-Canadians. End of story!

Слава Україні! Героям слава!

Footnote: Shown above is the cenotaph featuring the emblem of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), at Saint Volodymyr's Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.