Canada Nazi monument prompts discord after parliament hailed SS office
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On Friday, the Canadian parliament unintentionally celebrated a 98-year-old Nazi veteran.
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Monument to UPA veterans at St. Volodymyr Cemetery, Oakville, Ontario (Wikipedia Commons)
After the Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to a former Nazi veteran, calls have been made to remove a monument in a Canadian cemetery that honors his unit.
During a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a 98-year-old former Nazi Ukrainian soldier, Yaroslav Hunka, who had served in a Waffen-SS division during WWII, received a standing ovation from the Canadian Parliament.
Canada's Speaker of the House of Commons for the lower chamber Anthony Rota, announced on Tuesday his resignation, just a few days after he faced criticism for publicly praising the former Nazi, something Russia called outrageous.
Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau also apologized, calling the blunder "deeply embarrassing."
The event has reignited calls to remove a memorial honoring Hunka's battalion in Oakville's St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery.
Dan Panneton, director of allyship and community engagement from the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, told Global News, that the monument's dedication to a unit affiliated with 14th SS was simply "unacceptable," due to their complicity in the Holocaust. The battalion is also known as the Galacia Division.
According to The Ottawa Citizen, it was defaced with graffiti in 2020, when someone spray-painted the words "Nazi war monument." It was also mentioned by the Russian Embassy in Ottawa in 2017 on Twitter.
There are monumets to Nazi collaborators in Canada and nobody is doing anything about it. #NeverForget #Holocaust #WorldWar2 pic.twitter.com/ANQ0FBk9k9
— Russia in Canada (@RussianEmbassyC) October 14, 2017
According to David Marples, professor of Eastern European history at the University of Alberta, several Ukrainians who migrated to Canada think individuals who joined the Galicia Division believed they were fighting to liberate their homeland from the Soviets, something Jewish groups completely disagree with.
Hunka's unit, the Galicia Division, has been accused of war crimes, including the massacre of hundreds of Polish civilians. Its members have not been prosecuted in court, despite the fact that documents of the killing continue to emerge.
It was a volunteer unit founded by Nazi Germany in 1943, primarily of individuals of Ukrainian or Slovak ethnicity.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a Polish minister stated that he had "taken steps" to extradite Hunka from Canada and prosecute him in Poland.
