Poland may seek extradition of Ukrainian Nazi WW2 veteran Hunka from Canada
notesfrompoland.com
notesfrompoland.com
Wow, this is basically a storyline from The Thick of It or similar.
(I have the vague memory of more or less exactly this playing out in some sitcom, possibly The Thick of It or Yes Minister.)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-india-atwal-controv...
>Although the Waffen-SS as a whole was declared to be a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trials, the Galician Division has not specifically been found guilty of any war crimes by any war tribunal or commission. However, numerous accusations of impropriety have been leveled at the division
There are questions that have never been answered properly. From what I understand OUN/UPA,Galician Division did not have the machinery in place to kill 100k + Poles. Their tactics and their primary purpose was to protect and defend Ukrainian lives from Russian communists. Further more most of Western Ukrainians are a mix of Polish/Ukrainian peoples.
We need to be mindful that there is much Russian propaganda concerning many of these kinds of events as it was advantageous for the the Communists to try and seed lies into the historical record.
-50% Polish....
I guess Nazis are fine, and not problematic, as long as they don't have literal war crime charges against them. I'm sure that will own the Russians lol.
Here is an interesting caption from a magazine.
The German war on the civilian population in Ukraine was ruthless. The entire world heard about the total destruction of the Czech village of Lidice and the killing of all the men in its population of 400 on June 10, 1942. The French village of Oradour-sur-Glane razed on June 10, 1944 is also well known.
But the world never heard about the Ukrainian village of Kortelisy which the Germans burned to the ground on September 23, 1942 and killed all its 2,892 population of men, women and children. There were about 459 villages in Ukraine completely destroyed with all or part of their population by the German Army with 97 in Volhynia Province, 32 in Zhitomir province, 21 in Chernihiv province, 17 in Kiev province and elsewhere. There were at least 27 Ukrainian villages in which every man, woman and child was killed and the village completely destroyed by the Germans. (Ukrainska RSR u Velykyi Vitchyznianiy Viyni, vol.3, p. 150).
At least 160 Nazi concentration camps, some holding tens of thousands of prisoners, were established in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians were also sent to Auschwitz and other death camps in Poland. The janowska (Yanivska) Camp in Lviv was especially notorious because the Commandant, SS officer Gustav Wilhaus, used to sit on his balcony and with his automatic rifle use the inmates in the yard as target practice, even shooting children. The camp also had an orchestra and played a tune titled "The Tango of Death" specially composed for it. The orchestra was executed when the Germans closed the camp during their retreat. (Wytwycky, p. 59)
According to the official records of Germany there were 4,192,000 German war dead. If Germany itself, according to World Book Encyclopedia, lost only 2,196,000 military dead and 1,858,000 missing or a total of 4,054,000 why were Ukraine's losses so huge? There are several possible explanations. It is known that the Germans intentionally starved Ukrainian cities; that Ukrainian prisoners of war in concentration camps were starved to death; that disease was rampant and was not top be treated on Hitler's orders; and that because about 2,000,000 houses and apartments were burned at least 10,000,000 Ukrainians were left homeless in the war exposing them to freezing in the winter.
Wilhelm Keitel gave an order to the German Army in the East: "for the killing of a single German soldier we should retaliate by the execution of 50-100 persons" (Kamenetsky, Secret Nazi Plans, p. 166). The death penalty was applied to Ukrainian hostages: up to 200 innocent Ukrainians were executed for one German attacked by guerillas. In spite of this a total of 460,000 German soldiers and officers were killed by partisans in Ukraine during the War.
Major-General Eberhardt, the German Commandant of Kiev, on November 2, 1941 announced that: "Cases of arson and sabotage are becoming more frequent in Kiev and oblige me to take firm action. For this reason 300 Kiev citizens have been shot today." This seemed to do no good because Eberhardt on November 29, 1941 again announced: "400 men have been executed in the city [of Kiev]. This should serve as a warning to the population."
The death penalty was applied by the Germans to any Ukrainian who gave aid or merely information or directions to the UPA or Ukrainian guerillas. If you owned a pigeon the penalty was death. The penalty was death for anyone who did not report or aided a Jew to escape, and many Ukrainians were executed for helping Jews. Death was the penalty for listening to a Soviet radio program or reading anti-German leaflets. For example, on March 28, 1943 three women in Kherson, Maria and Vera Alexandrovska and Klavdia Tselhelnyk were executed because they had "read an anti-German leaflet, said they agreed with its contents and passed it on." (History Teaches a Lesson). It is obvious that early in the war Germany had a policy of annihilation of Ukrainians because it planned to establish a German colonial population in the Lebensraum of Ukraine.
The USSR also sacrificed countless Ukrainian lives in its "cannon fodder" military procedures. Soldiers were marched across minefields by foot to clear them by their deaths. When the USSR retreated in June 1941 it executed over 19,000 political prisoners in Lviv and other west Ukrainian cities. Stalin was not interested in preserving Ukrainian lives. But does all this account for Ukraine's population loss of 7.5 to 11 million? Unfortunately the Government of Ukraine since independence in 1991 has not released any official figures for Ukraine's population loss in World War II.
One astounding theory is that Stalin used the war as a pretext to destroy Ukrainians and other Soviet citizens. This theory was proposed by an Englishman of Russian origin, Nikolai Tolstoy, in his book Stalin's Secret War. Nikita Khrushchev in his secret speech to the 20th Congress said Stalin wanted to exile all the Ukrainians to Siberia so this theory is not completely far-fetched. In June 1944 a Soviet decree, signed by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Lavrenti Beria, recommended that all Ukrainians be resettled in Siberia. One expert on Soviet history suggested that Stalin destroyed up to one million people of the USSR every year during the war so the statistic of 20 million total lost probably includes Stalin's victims.
> “Such crimes constitute grounds for applying to Canada for his extradition,” added Czarnek in the letter.
Actual Nazis getting standing ovations! Unbelievable. Drag him home and try him.
Indeed; but in their defence, members of parliament did not know, at the time, that this guy was a Nazi.
It's really comforting that Members of Parliament are that intellectually bankrupt.
The fault here lies in the pathetic vetting done by the MP that invited him (the Speaker no less). And he'll likely resign or be fired shortly.
It's a shame westerners love to paint everything with a broad brush and don't look into details during WW2 in territories between Nazis and Soviets.
Why did Trudeau call it Russian propaganda when confronted about it, even if we assume that he magically didn't know anything about the guest?
Do people think public officials are all-knowing and incapable of making mistakes?
The only upside here is all the parties in parliament applauded the guy, so there's limited possibility for it becoming a "F*ck Trudeau" crowd issue. Their own tribe were right there, applauding the same guy.
Why should the Speaker of the House be held to a lower standard of diligence, especially when their actions have international geopolitical consequences?
They have cell phones, don't they? Maybe do a quick search before you give a standing ovation to a Nazi war criminal, _especially_ if you hear "fought against the Russians in WWII". If that doesn't set off more red flags than Red Square during an October Revolution Parade then maybe the MP is just too stupid to be in Parliament.
It's unclear to me in general why she hasn't been more prominent on this file in general (Ukrainian-Canadian relations during the war). Except that there have been controversies about some of her family's Ukrainian nationalist past, and maybe they're keeping her out of the limelight on this for that reason.
Or Trudeau sees her as a threat, and is doing to her what Chretien did to Paul Martin (keep them close but under wraps), I dunno.
In any case, she should have been involved, and would have known better. You hope.
There was a time a couple years ago when she was the clear "natural" successor to Trudeau. Since then her star seems to have faded, and he doesn't seem to know when to get off the stage, either.
The deputy prime minister should be involved in vetting other people's guests to the House of Commons? Personally? You don't think she has more important things to do? Vetting of guests should be done, and should be done much better than it was, but it's a job for (competent) staffers, not cabinet personally.
She's also currently the Minister of Finance. I think her skills are focused on other things besides guest lists.
or
"Mr Speaker, I hear you're putting together a set of speakers for Mr Zelensky's visit, it would be great if you would share that set with me, as I have a special focus on this area"
I'm sorry, I don't see the confusion here. Unless you think that would be partisan interference with parliamentary procedure?
Putting it another way, if she was my MP I'd be pissed. Because she's not "just" the deputy PM & finance minister, she's an MP in the Canadian parliament in the governing party, and this has been one of her lifelong areas of study, and I would expect her to be applying her expertise on the public's behalf, because that's how she got voted in.
> He identified Hunka as a "war hero" who fought for the First Ukrainian Division
The speaker evidently did not think to so much as Google "First Ukrainian Division" (which would have made the nature of the situation clear) so it's... optimistic to assume that he'd think to check with an expert.
> "Mr Speaker, I hear you're putting together a set of speakers for Mr Zelensky's visit, it would be great if you would share that set with me, as I have a special focus on this area"
This probably wasn't even realistically on her radar; she's the _Minister for Finance_, which is, like, an actual job which requires a lot of work. Organising events like this is for backbenchers, and, apparently, speakers. Like, if she'd been chatting to the speaker at the coffee machine and he'd mentioned who he was inviting, I assume she'd have gone "wait, you're inviting a member of _what_?!", but it's not clear how you expect her to even have known about it otherwise.
It's the man himself. That's what really matters. Too many of these monsters got away in the ratlines and recruitment programs after the war. He should be drug and tried like the rest who were responsible for the atrocities of the time.
But he fought against the Russians. His past is here irrelevant.
North American democracies have never had issues with Nazis, as long as they can help them beat the Russia. They even got the highest possible positions, like for example, the chief of NASA that landed on the moon before the Soviets.
And then there's another can of worms of how Poland acted to it's neighbours in 1920.
There was a very easy way to help Nazis beat Russia in WWII, and uh, we did the opposite thing.
You mean like being neutral and refusing to open a second front for years, while Russians were fighting against Nazis.
> and uh, we did the opposite thing.
What, landed in Normandy in 1944 when the war was already decided because you were afraid of Soviets reaching Paris before you?
If you're going to be one of those tiresome "Russia would have won WWII alone!" nationalists then this conversation isn't worth having, but I'm happy to show evidence you're wrong, if you aren't.
Despite the way popular history paints these things, the game that folks in the allied command played was not some grandiose good vs evil fight with two clear sides. It was complicated and dirty and awful things were done by everyone including the Americans.
And those "huge" quantities were just a small drop in the sea of the total effort. Their significance was more for propaganda purposes than actual military impact.
> And invaded Italy and North Africa years before, if you had any knowledge of history.
If you had any knowledge of history, you may be aware of the fact that the total German Afrika Korps consisted of merely 35,500 soldiers [1], while there were millions fighting on the Eastern Front. And you managed to drag those Africa operations for years.
And Italy was selected as a target for the invasion exactly because it was strategically relevant. It was again defended by a minor German force for more than a year. It wasn't even a distraction for the Nazis.
But I understand the USA didn't want to actually engage fighting Germany and end the war. It was in their interest to let them slaughter each other, regardless how many civilians get killed.
> If you're going to be one of those tiresome "Russia would have won WWII alone!" nationalists then this conversation isn't worth having, but I'm happy to show evidence you're wrong, if you aren't.
I never claimed Russia would have won WW2 alone. What I said is that the Soviets (not only Russia) did win against the Germany alone. The influence of other "allies" war minor.
The USA had its role fighting against the Japan, but that was a completely separate fight. And even there, the Soviets helped the USA, by binding significant Japanese forces on their borders, that would otherwise be used against the USA, and maybe change the flow of war. They even did a similar move like the USA in Normandy, by defeating the Japanese expeditionary army in China. The only difference, they left China afterward, while the USA army stayed in Europe as an occupying force, and is there up until now.
for example:
> Lend-Lease trucks were particularly important to the Red Army, which was notoriously deficient in such equipment. By the end of the war, two out of every three Red Army trucks were foreign-built, including 409,000 cargo trucks and 47,000 Willys Jeeps. [Note, Glantz's 2/3 stat is a higher ratio than Ellis indicates, but Ellis still points to 2:1 import/production, and regardless there may be other caveats in play]
The shipment of finished trucks, planes and tanks was very important in the early years of the war, and forced a stalemate in early battles (we both know, that Moscow was about a hair from being captured). Yes, the material aid became relatively less significant as Soviet production ramped up, but that wouldn't have happened if the USSR had collapsed in 1942 or 1943.
Oh lol I almost missed this gem.
> The only difference, they left China afterward, while the USA army stayed in Europe as an occupying force
Absolutely incredible to describe the US forces in Europe as "occupying" and not mention what the Soviets did.
Yeah I think we're done here.
How do you call a foreign force in a foreign country that came with the force, and refuses to leave, although there is no reason to stay there? If you think they are "partners" to Europeans, ask yourself why are there no "partner" European forces on the US soil.
> Yeah I think we're done here.
Great. Then tell your army to pack their stuff and GTFO from Europe. We don't need you here.
(hint: you can't)
> ask yourself why are there no "partner" European forces on the US soil
In case you are arguing in good faith... Canada isn't going to invade.
Opinions differ:
> "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
> Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.
> "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."
[…]
> Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper.
[…]
> The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks.
* https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balanc...
During the Battle of Moscow, apparently British tanks may have made 40% of the armour:
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1351804060069781...
Furthermore you are absolutely correct that Soviet rule was not something you'd wish for.
Waffen SS was however a truly heinous organisation. If you consider it common to join the SS I would state that it also paints a rather extreme picture of those persons.
I think it is very dangerous to apologise for SS "just because they killed Soviets".
You're thinking about SS units formed in Nazi Gerrmany-proper. Ethnic units, while technically a part of Waffen SS, were quite a different story. At least up here in between Nazis and Soviuets. Recruitment was mostly about defending from Soviets. In most cases leaders were well-known figures from interwar era. And usually those leaders did a lot to make sure their units ain't used for stuff you typically think of when you hear „Waffen SS“. At the end of the war, those units were the starting point for post-WW2 anti-soviet resistance. Both people and guns/ammo.
Buddy, think about what you are writing. You don't need to defend these people. What they did, what they were a part of, is in fact bad and they should feel bad.
He naturally hated the NAZIs and the German nation of the time, but he maintained a lifelong deeper distrust and probably-bigoted hatred for Poles (and Slavs from that part of the world in general) because it was Polish neighbours who put him in there, and he saw plenty of enthusiastic Polish accomplices.
Germans back in Germany or on the western front could often claim plausible ignorance of what the NAZIs were up to with the concentration camps. Volunteering in an SS militia in the lands where the bulk of the extermination of Jews was happening is another form of evil entirely.
The holocaust is the most horrible crime of the 20th century, probably of all of human history. Being an accomplice to it, even just in thoughts and ideology, is repugnant with no excuse.
There's a point in Meip's (person who hid Anne Frank and her family) memoir where she relates a story of Otto Frank discussing a staff member who joined the Nazi party. (Remember, the Franks hid in the building where Otto Frank ran a business.) Otto pointed out that this man probably joined for the social connections, and called the man a "good man." He (Otto Frank) was well aware that people had to adapt to the "new normal" of Nazi rule, and that often meant joining and cooperating with them.
Later in Meip's memoir, she implies that the business where the Franks were hiding were selling foodstuffs to the Nazi army. Everyone had to do what they could to survive Nazi occupation.
Don't forget that Otto Frank ultimately is one of the reasons why we know so much about the Holocaust. He spent a good deal of his post-WWII life raising awareness of it.
https://www.amazon.com/Anne-Frank-Remembered-Helped-Family-e...
The report also found that Canada was home to several thousand ex-Nazis who couldn’t be directly implicated in war crimes given the available evidence.
This was the inquiry’s verdict on the Galicia Division, the Ukrainian Waffen-SS unit in which Yaroslav Hunka – the man applauded Friday in the House of Commons – was a veteran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division...
> the Galician Division has not specifically been found guilty of any war crimes by any war tribunal or commission
And it does a disservice to the Ukrainian people. Because it emphasizes the ugly side of Ukrainian nationalism instead of the legitimate side of their cause, and gives Putin and Lavrov an ideological weapon at home and abroad in BRICs countries, etc.
The line from the west should be clear: we will help defend you. Your cause is just. But the far right imagery has to end, they need to put their foot down about it. Was looking at photos of the liberation of (what's left of) Andriivka the other day and right there in a western news media article was an unfurled flag of a far right militia with a quasi-Nazi insignia. That's f'd up.
From my understanding of friends who grew up in the Canadian Ukrainian community, there have always been two sides to it, with "progressive" or "left" branches and nationalist and right-wing branches. I remember a friend telling me his parents sent him to a Ukrainian summer camps where they practiced shooting rifles to "fight against Russians" and stuff. In Canada. It's a messed up history.
Here you didn't need to be a nazi to end up with nazis setting up soviet resistance. There was no third option.
"These conclusions were based partly on the assumption that the Division underwent a thorough screening by the UK authorities while in SEP/POW camps in Europe, although that screening, as will be discussed in Chapter 3, was far from thorough. This, however, did not discourage the Deschênes Commission from relying on it, as is evident from the conclusions which cite the screening report of 1947"
"The confidence of the Deschênes Commission in the British screening report’s conclusions seems to imply that the Commission was either ill-informed as to the meticulousness of the screening of the ‘Galicia’ performed by the UK authorities in the aftermath of the Second World War, or that it chose not to subject the report to close scrutiny. According to Rodal, a key explanation for the Deschênes Commission’s collective exoneration of the Division is what she refers to as the ‘ethnic factor’,28 and ‘persistent lobbying efforts and backing from a demographically significant Ukrainian ethnic constituency.’29"
"While lacking conclusive documentary evidence, the assumption that those Ukrainians who joined the ‘Galicia’ Division in its post-Brody recruitment phase might have participated in war crimes in the earlier years of the war is highly credible."
i think this could be really entertaining in the future
It all just seems ridiculous to me. I think about my wife's maternal grandmother (actually both sides of her family really) whose family was from that area (Galicia) and emigrated dirt poor to Canada pre-WWI. She was able to flip between speaking something-like-Polish and something-like-Ukrainian on a whim without even seeing it as two different languages, really.
Like most of Europe (my own father was born in Alsace during the war, also an ethnic border zone), the lines on the map and the official ethno-nationalisms hide a much more complicated diversity, and I always mistrust the people who have made their political careers out of boosting some tribalism vs another marketing a simplistic vision of language-ethnicity-nation.
>Parliamentary elections will be held in Poland on 15 October 2023 to elect members of the Sejm and Senate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Polish_parliamentary_elec...