Front Burner - How did a Nazi fighter end up in Parliament?

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Canada’s Parliament gave two standing ovations to a Ukrainian man who fought for a Nazi division. What is this division, why are its fighters in Canada, and why is it receiving modern day memorials? Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese explains.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. So by now, you've most likely heard this clip of House of Commons Speaker Anthony Roda from late last week. But I feel like it's worth hearing one more time. We have here in the chamber today Ukrainian Canadians, Ukrainian Canadian world veteran from the Second World War who fought the Ukrainian independence against the Russians

and continues to support the troops today, even at his age of 98. That's Rhoda honoring Yaroslav Hanka in the House when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was there on Friday. Hanka got two standing ovations from Parliament. He's a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service. Thank you. But as we later learned, Punka fought the Russians because he fought with the Nazis in a division called the SS 14th Waffen, a revelation that's caused outrage and embarrassment, prompting Roda to apologize and take responsibility. Yesterday, he gave in to calls to resign as Speaker. It's with a heavy heart that I rise to inform members

of my resignation as Speaker of the House of Commons. But what is this SS division? Why are there still two monuments to it in Canada? And how did a man who fought for a division commanded by the Nazis end up living here? David Pugliese with The Ottawa Citizen is back with answers. He's been covering military issues for four decades. Hi, David. Thanks so much for doing this.

Oh, great to be here. Hello. So let's start with what happened on Friday with Ukraine's president in attendance. Canada Speaker of the House of Commons proudly recognized Yaroslav Hanka saying that he fought against the Russians in the Second World War. And I know this is fairly basic history, but why should fought against the Russians have at least raised eyebrows here? So it is basic history, but a lot of Canadians don't know their basic history. If he fought against the Russians during the Second World War, that means he was fighting on the side of the Nazis. The Russians were allied with the US, Canada, Britain,

and the various allied powers to defeat Nazi Germany. And so what did you think when you first heard what Rhoda said? When I saw it, I thought, oh, God, what is he doing? Because I knew immediately. Right. So Friday night, you know, I listened to that. And then soon enough, emails started coming in from various Jewish organizations. They realized what was going on immediately. They were shocked.

Then a University of Ottawa professor did some more digging, found a website honoring 14th SS Galicia. That's the Waffen SS organization of the Third Reich. They were made up of Ukrainians. And there was Mr. Hunke on that site. He volunteered for the Waffen-SS. And there were photos of him in his Nazi uniform and at the front fighting with Nazi Germany. What do we know at this point about how Hunke ended up at Zelensky's address in the House of Commons? How did he get invited? Well, there's a couple of stories. I mean, Rhoda has the House Speaker has taken responsibility for inviting him.

I recognize an individual in the gallery. I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so, he says in a statement. I just want to make it clear that it was my decision and my decision alone. And I apologize profusely. I cannot, I cannot tell you how regretful it is. And it may not be good enough. There's been suggestions now that Mr. Hunka's son asked that he be invited and put in the gallery. And, you know, when the House Speaker introduced him, he received a standing ovations, two standing ovations from all MPs.

And among those guests that he received a standing ovation from was Chief of Defense Staff General Wayne Ayer, who was seated nearby. So there's been quite a bit of reaction since then. As you said, Speaker Rhoda said this was entirely his decision. He apologized and resigned, although he didn't actually specifically mention Hunka in his apology. The prime minister called this deeply embarrassing to the Parliament of Canada and by extension to all Canadians. I think his office said that this was all Rhoda's doing. But what else have Jewish groups and other countries been calling for? Well, just to put this a little bit in context, this is the first time that a member of the Waffen SS has has been honored in Canada's parliament.

So, full stop on that and let that sink in. So, what's happening now? You know, the Jewish groups, three Jewish groups banded together and they've put out news releases condemning this, linking, you know, the Waffen-SS and 14th SS Galicia to war crimes. Poland has asked for an official apology from Canada. It hasn't received it because the 14th Waffen-SS has been implicated in the murders of Polish civilians during the Second World War. And this morning, the Polish education minister announced that he is starting extradition proceedings for Mr. Hanka. Wow. Quite a turn of events for Mr. Hanka. Let's just talk about Russia's reaction for a second.

So one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's justifications for his invasion of Ukraine is that they're trying to denazify the country. That's what he's been saying from the beginning. So how has Russia responded to our parliament applauding Hanka? Well, Russia is using this as part of its propaganda campaign against Ukraine. Russia is seizing on this controversy in Canada's parliament, saying it's outrageous a Ukrainian veteran who fought for a Nazi unit was presented as a hero in the House of Commons. Here's a Kremlin spokesperson speaking earlier. Such a sloppy attitude towards memory and memory must be preserved in relation to the Nazis no matter how old they are. There's no statute of limitations for these crimes. Such sloppiness in this memory is of of course, outrageous.

You know, it's interesting that Prime Minister Trudeau said, oh, we have to be careful about Russian disinformation. But it was the Canadian government, the House of Commons, that has presented Russia with this propaganda coup. So, you know, I think MPs and the House of Commons should look towards themselves for their role in this. bit more about this unit that Hunka served in. This is the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which is often called the First Galician. How was it formed and what was the role that it was supposed to play in the war? So in 1943, the Germans were realizing that they were starting to lose the war. The Russians were pushing into German occupied territory. Landings, Canadians and Brits were landing in places like Italy. So the noose was tightening. They needed more manpower.

So in their occupied areas, particularly in Eastern Europe, they had already used some of the local population to murder the Jewish population. They put out recruiting for these new SS units. So in 1943, the Waffen SS, 14th Galician, was formed. And so they were put to the front, you know, to fight the Russians. They were used later on to crush uprisings in occupied Nazi territories. They've been allegedly involved in the massacre of civilians in a number of Polish villages. Near the end of the war, when, you know, it was obvious that Germany was defeated, the 14th Waffen SS renamed itself in the final days of the war as the 1st Ukrainian Army. And so that's why sometimes more of a, you know, they knew that the war was finished and the allies weren't looking kindly on SS units. And why might some Ukrainians have wanted to join this division? So there's obviously a hatred of Russia in some parts of Ukraine.

The Russians, Stalin had been involved in the starvation of Ukrainians. There's war crimes on the Russian side. And so the Nazis used that hatred and they put out the call for volunteers. The recruiting poster, for instance, had an octopus type creature with a hook nose and a Jewish symbol on it. And you had this SS man with a sword ready to cut its head off. So, you know, the Nazis were saying, well, the Jews are behind communism, behind Bolsheviks. And so join us to fight them. Right. So you had 80,000 Ukrainians volunteer for the division, around 10,000 were selected. However, it's interesting to note that you also had 4.6 million Ukrainians fight for the Red Army,

the Soviet Army. So that just shows you kind of the split in Ukrainian society at the time. Right, of course. So we haven't heard from Hanka himself, and we don't know if he had personal involvement in some of these atrocities that you mentioned, but he was in this division. And what else do we know about the time that he served based on this website that you mentioned, where we learned that he was part of this unit? Well, he said he enjoyed himself immensely. It was one of the high points of his life. I mean, the photos he's published

or that were published of him show basic training, also shows him behind an anti-aircraft gun or with a group of his fellow SS soldiers. So he doesn't go into a lot of detail about that. And I would add that, you know, it's going to be very hard for Poland to extradite him unless they have actual evidence placing him at the scene of some of these alleged war crimes. And the Poles haven't produced anything like that at this point. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So I think this story took a lot of people by surprise, not just because he was recognized in Parliament, but also because here you have someone who fought under Nazi command living freely in Canada. And if you don't know the history, you might think surviving Nazis would have been imprisoned after the war. So how did members of the 14th Division end up coming here after the war? So after the war, the International Military Tribunal labeled the Waffen-SS and the SS as a criminal organization. But what happened was there is

some push among the Ukrainian community in Canada to welcome these veterans. At the time, though, there were other Ukrainians who said, no, we don't want these individuals. They were allowed to come to this country, 2,000 of them. And over the years, this situation has been percolating. In the 1980s, Jewish groups raised concerns about war crimes. You had the Deshane Commission, which looked into the matter, at least partially, but it concluded that despite what the International Military Tribunal said, involvement with S. Escalicia was not in itself a crime. And so what's been happening as Holocaust survivors die off,

as our own Canadian war veterans die off, you see a revisionism that's happening, where in some of these Eastern European nations like Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine, these individuals who fought for the Nazis against the Russians are now being seen as heroes in some people's eyes. The report from this commission in the 1980s, am I right that hundreds of pages of that report are still classified? Yeah, part of the report is out there in the public domain. There was another secondary report that had more details about the potential war crimes that the government had found out about. So that was released in 2022 through the Access to Information Act. It was 1,237 pages. Only 600 pages were released. So there's another, you know,

the rest of it is still classified. So I was kind of surprised to learn that there are actually still two monuments to this SS division in Canada, one in Oakville and one in Edmonton. There's also been marches quite recently that honor this division in Ukraine. So help me understand that. Why would someone want to commemorate this group? Again, it's because this has been portrayed as this unit fought against the Russians. And so in some eyes of some Ukrainian nationalists, they're seen as heroes. Except, you know, in Poland, they're not seen as heroes, they're seen as war criminals. In Slovakia, there's been allegations of war crimes as well. So it comes down to viewpoints of the war. Polish and Jewish groups have been trying to get these monuments taken down.

You know, it's interesting to note 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians fought for our side during the Second World War, and there isn't a monument for them. So today, we've talked about this on the show before, there are fighters in Ukraine with neo-Nazi links or who wear symbols the Nazis made infamous? I'm thinking of the Azov Brigade, for example. Why are these Nazi symbols still held up by small groups in Ukraine? I mean, it's hard to explain. Well, it's hard to understand, I guess. So Azov started off as a far-right organization, So it's not unusual that they would embrace Nazi symbols. Now, with the Russian, the terrible Russian invasion of Ukraine, people are saying, well, Azov has changed its tune. It's now just a regular unit.

They've, you know, they've gotten rid of all this Nazi symbolism and far right symbolism. But what you're still seeing on social media, lots of swastikas, lots of Nazi salutes, the Black Sun, for instance, which is a symbol that Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, used. NATO was embarrassed last year when it published photos online, social media, to highlight Ukrainian women fighting. They had the Black Sun, Naziia, on their uniform. So NATO had to quickly remove that. So you're seeing that all the time. You just go on social media, and it's providing the Russians with a propaganda gift. And so just picking up on what Putin has been arguing here, we've just gone through a bunch of Second World War history that highlights how some Ukrainians fought with the Nazis. But what should we make of that in today's context, where Putin is saying he wants to denazify Ukraine? How should people weigh those two things? Well, I think there's separate issues. You know, what Putin is saying is obviously wrong. The invasion is wrong. But you don't go, OK, well, Ukrainian Nazis are okay, because now Ukraine is fighting the Russians. You could say, for instance, Osama bin Laden fought the Russians in Afghanistan in the early days, and we're not erecting a statue towards him or a monument towards him. So I think

totally two separate issues. And these Jewish groups and the Poles, they have valid concerns here. To put it bluntly, Canada fought against the Third Reich, fought against the Nazis. So it is mind-boggling that SS soldier was honored by our MPs, by our parliament. Yeah. And I wonder what you make of the fact that it was news to some Canadians that there were former Nazi fighters living here, or that there was even a Ukrainian division commanded by the Nazis. Is there a lesson that we can take from that or this whole disaster about how we remember our history? I mean, these are basic historical facts. This isn't hidden history. And this has been debated repeatedly. I mean, we've, you know, the monuments, for instance,

that was in the news several years ago. And then there's the big controversy about it. So it just continues on. It's there. I think public officials have to recognize this type of dynamic. What I find interesting is, as I've mentioned, there's 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians who fought with our military against the Nazis. So if you're going to honor a Ukrainian veteran, why not bring one of those gentlemen into our House of Commons and give him two standing ovations or give her two standing ovations? I think that would say a lot about our government. Okay, David, thank you so much.

Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, that's all for today. I'm Tamara Kandaker. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.