LETTER: The Hunka incident: Now do the right thing

To the editor:

At the invitation of Anthony Rota, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Yaroslav Hunka went to Ottawa on 22 September 2023 to witness the visit of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

When The Jewish Daily Forward subsequently reported that Hunka had served in the 14 Waffen- Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) – more commonly referred to as the Galicia Division – a controversy erupted. It continues to suppurate. And even as Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine and Ukrainians escalated, so too did criminal vandalism directed against cemetery monuments to veterans of this unit.

That is not a coincidence.

Lamentably, some Canadians bought into Soviet-era propaganda about the Galicia Division, now being regurgitated by operatives of the Russian Federation and their fellow travellers in the West. That has furthered the goals of a long-standing KGB campaign, known as Operation Payback, orchestrated to provoke tensions between the Jewish, Baltic, and Ukrainian diasporas over what happened in eastern Europe during the Second World War.

I do not know Mr Hunka. However, I was around as the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, headed by Mr Justice Jules Deschênes, investigated the alleged presence of “thousands” of “Nazi war criminals” in Canada. I was in the “lockdown” when the Minister of Justice, Raymon Hnatyshyn, revealed the Commission’s findings to the Baltic, Jewish, and Ukrainian Canadian communities. Along with Irwin Cotler, then representing the Canadian Jewish Congress, I welcomed those results on CBC TV’s The Journal, hosted by Barbara Frum (12 March 1987). So I find his community’s current forgetfulness about the Commission’s conclusions rather puzzling. And how could Mr Cotler, himself a former Minister of Justice, brand Mr Hunka  “a notorious Nazi war criminal?" A person is innocent until proven guilty. When, where, and by whom was Mr Hunka ever found to be a “Nazi war criminal”?

The principled position taken by the Ukrainian Canadian community has always been that if credible evidence of wrongdoing by any person is presented then the alleged war criminal, regardless of his/her nationality, “race” or ideology, should be brought to justice in a Canadian criminal court of law. To this, I might add that my teenage mother, Maria, was kidnapped and transported to the Third Reich as a forced labourer, one of the millions of Ukrainians so enslaved. I have no interest in defending Nazi Germany or any Nazi who may still be alive.

Now the truth is that no Ukrainian could ever be a “Nazi” because the real Nazis, so-called “Aryans,” denigrated all Ukrainians and other Slavs as subhumans (Untermenschen). And while Mr Hunka swore an oath to Hitler, so did everyone who served in the Third Reich’s armed forces. Taking that pledge did not transform millions of Germans into Nazis, including about one-quarter of a million Germans who emigrated to Canada in the years following the war’s end.

Indisputably, Hunka served in the Galicia Division. Why? 

In a letter dated 22 September 2015 (years before he became the subject of public controversy), he recalled how family members were deported to Siberia during the first Soviet occupation of western Ukraine, adding: “In my childhood and later [I] saw terrible atrocities committed on my people by ALL occupants, especially Soviets! Especially when in ‘41 they ran from [the] Germans. In [a] local prison they left hundreds+ dead. They were not just killed – they were savagely mutilated! Inhumanly! Most of them had some parts of the body cut off – like women’s breasts were missing. All that horror was put out for all to see, and I was 16 years old...I hated everything Russian – and I still do! So I volunteered to [the] Division! I was called up in September ‘43...for training in anti-aircraft artillery, where I served to the end of the war.”

After considering this unit’s wartime record, the Deschênes Commission concluded:

“ (1) the Galicia Division should not be indicted as a group;

(2) members of the Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada;

(3) charges of war crimes against members of the Division had never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before the Commission, and that

(4) in the absence of participation in, or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division was insufficient to justify prosecution.”

The Commission also confirmed that:

“(5) no case could be made against members of the Division for revocation of citizenship or deportation since the Canadian authorities were fully aware of the relevant facts in 1950 and admission to Canada was not granted because of any false representation, or fraud, or concealment of material circumstances.”

So when Mr Hunka arrived in Canada in 1954 he did so legally. His war record was known in Ottawa. Like many other Division soldiers, he was screened by British, Canadian, American and Soviet interrogators while held as a POW in Italy from 1945 to 1947. No evidence of wrongdoing on his part has ever been produced.

Quite understandably, given the horrors of the Second World War, the Canadian Jewish Congress protested against any immigration of Galicia Division veterans.

Investigating, the High Commissioner for Canada in the United Kingdom, L Dana Wilgress, dismissed allegations about the Galicia Division as “Communist propaganda.” In his September 1950 report to Cabinet he observed: “It is interesting to note that no specific charges of war crimes have been made by the Soviet or any other Government against any member of this group.”

That astute assessment seems to have been forgotten.