"The past is never dead. It is not even past." - William Faulkner
On Friday, September 22, Canada's parliament had as an honored guest Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. Canada has been an unwavering supporter of Ukraine since that country was invaded by neighboring Russia in February 2022. Zelenskyy's address to the House of Commons was a perfectly choreographed event until Anthony Rota, Speaker of the House, went off-script. Unbeknownst to the prime minister and everyone else, Rota invited an elderly Ukrainian man from his constituency to sit in the gallery for the speech. Rota introduced Yaroslav Hunka as a World War II veteran who had fought the Russians thinking this would be a nice surprise addition to the event. Everyone applauded and even gave Hunka a standing ovation. Then later, it all blew up. It hadn't occurred to Rota or his staff, apparently, that fighting the Russians in Ukraine during the Second World War meant you were in Hitler's army. As it turns out, the unit Hunka was with was an indigenous SS unit that was responsible for the persecution and death of Jews.
The optics were horrible from a number of angles. First, Canadian lawmakers and President Zelenskyy and his delegation applauded an ex-Nazi. Second, Zelenskyy himself is Jewish. Third, the issue bubbled over the weekend and erupted globally the following Monday which just happened to be Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the most solemn day in the Judaist calendar. Fourth, the Russians pounced on the incident as a propaganda tool to justify its invasion of Ukraine, a country Russia said at the beginning was a country of neo-Nazis. Fifth, this public relations disaster sullied the career of an otherwise stalwart (so we've been told) Canadian public servant, embarrassed Canadians and made Canada's elected leaders look like egregious fools. Rota resigned as Speaker the next day at the urging of his fellow parliamentarians.
Canada is home to more Ukrainians than any other country except Ukraine itself and Russia and this event has brought some unflattering attention to Ukraine's war time exploits. There are monuments in Canada commemorating Ukraine's military battles with the Russians who badly mistreated them before the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 (Ukraine was part of Russia at the time). All these years later nobody, except Canadian Jewish groups, seems to care that these Ukrainian "freedom fighters" were homegrown Waffen-SS volunteers who committed many atrocities. Hunka himself didn't seem the least bit bothered by the accolades he received. In fact, he reveled in the adulation and considers himself a hero. The sad part is, Hunka is far from being alone in this delusion. Many former Nazis just moved on with their lives after the war as if nothing happened and rose to various levels of respectability. Here are some examples:
The most infamous case (in my view) was that of Kurt Waldheim. Waldheim served as Secretary General of the United Nations from 1972-1981. After that he was elected president of his native Austria in 1986 and remained in office until 1992. Throughout his diplomatic and political career there had been allegations about his war time activities in Greece and the former Yugoslavia. By 1987, the U.S. had enough hard evidence that showed Waldheim was a war criminal. The Office of Special Investigations proved that Waldheim had participated in condemning innocent civilians to slave labor and in deporting Jews to extermination camps. Thus Waldheim was deemed persona non grata by all nations, except Arab countries, during his presidency.
There was also the story of Valerian (aka Viorel) Trifa, a Romanian Orthodox bishop in the United States who became a naturalized American citizen in 1951. During the war, however, Trifa was responsible for the murder of hundreds of Jews as a member of Romania's Iron Guard, a pro-Nazi group, from 1936-1942. In 1955 this man of the cloth was invited by then U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon to recite the prayer at the opening of the United States Senate. Allegations of Trifa's war crimes fell on deaf ears for about 20 years before finally being addressed in 1975. In 1983, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and later moved to Portugal where he died of natural causes in 1987. He was later buried in Grass Lake, Michigan.
Scores of Nazis escaped justice by getting in touch with so-called "ratlines", escape routes that helped them reach various countries in North, Central and South America where they were welcomed by governments and began new lives. These ratlines were supported by Germany, Spain, the International Committee of the Red Cross, prominent clergymen in the Vatican and even by members of British and American intelligence services. Why? Mainly because the post-war enemy was communism and Nazis were anti-communist, therefore worthy of help regardless of what they had done. The U.S. in particular used ratlines to obtain the services of Nazi scientists and engineers some of whom ended up working at NASA. Google search "Operation Paperclip".
On September 25, Poland's ambassador to Canada, Witold Dzielski tweeted on X, "Poland is the best ally Ukraine has. We will never allow a situation in which such villains are being whitewashed." And yet, Poland itself is guilty of whitewashing. In 2018, the Polish government passed the Holocaust Law making it a crime to publicize information about Polish responsibility in persecuting Jews during the war as well as in the pre- and post-war years. Several Polish anti-Semitic groups carried out pogroms against Jews in the mid 1930s, groups like ONR-Falanga and The Camp of Great Poland. There was the massacre of Jews in the city of Kielce in 1946, the result of people panicking over conspiracy theories when Jews returned home after being liberated from the camps. This Holocaust Law is nothing but a gag order and is historical revisionism at its worst.
And so the nations of the world are disgusted with Canada. Shameful Canada. But hypocrisy runs deep and undetected. What Canada did unwittingly last week many nations and institutions have already done discreetly, clandestinely and on purpose time and time again. Perhaps before lashing out they should think about the famous Jew of antiquity who said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
