The last few days have been quite a roller coaster for Yaroslav Hunka, an elderly Ukrainian-Canadian. First he was honored with standing ovations from President Zelensky and the Canadian parliament during glowing praise for his service in WW2:
Yaroslav Hunka stood and appeared to salute from the public gallery when he was recognized by House Speaker Anthony Rota, who introduced Hunka as a Canadian-Ukrainian war hero from his political district.
“We have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today, even at his age of 98,” Rota said Friday, followed by a lengthy round of applause and a wave by Zelenskyy. “He’s a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service. Thank you.” Nazi-linked veteran received ovation during Zelenskyy’s Canada visit - POLITICO
Now there are proposals to extradite Hunka to Poland for war crimes. The military service that was so praiseworthy in Canada was reportedly with the infamous Waffen SS.
Prime Minister Trudeau is scrambling. He says the solution to the controversy is pushing against “Russian disinformation” and sending more dollars to Ukraine.
Remember when “standing with people who wave swastikas” was a smear not official policy?
Neither imho he is 98 years old time to move on, that doesn’t mean he should be celebrated either. I can’t remember everything I was doing 20 years ago much less this guy which would have been close to 80 years ago when he served.
I get back in the day when they went after the high profile people, the ones left are all low ranking people months or a year from death. All the high level people where either caught, killed, or dead after they fled. This guy was a low ranking soldier. Again he should have been vetted better and not given a standing ovation but to ship him back is silly, he was a foot soldier not the architect of the holocaust.
The red army was killing and raping their way to Berlin none of those people went on trial just because they where the winners didn’t make them the good guys.
A prosecution at this point makes no sense given Hunka’s advanced age and position as a low-ranking soldier. At the same time, service in an SS unit is not something that should be celebrated either, but current politics leave no middle ground.
The area of western Ukraine that Hunka came from was part of Poland when he was born. In 1939 the region was annexed into the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and the Soviets declared the inhabitants to be Soviet citizens.
At the end of the WW2, Ukrainians who fought in SS units generally surrendered to British and American forces. Many were conscripts. Most were not returned to the Soviet Union, where they could have been executed for treason. Instead they were treated as Polish citizens, and many ended up emigrating to Canada and the US.
The choice between Hitler and Stalin was at best a choice of the lesser of two evils.
Of course, based on the precedent of the Canadian trucker protests, the entire parliament along with their donors should see their banking accounts frozen.
The parliament gave an SS soldier who fought in support of the Third Reich a standing ovation for his service. The truckers were merely in the general vicinity of someone with a swastika.
After ignoring the story, CNN is now in full damage-control mode–no mention of the SS in the headlines, just a “troubling error”.
The story claims that Zelensky and the other people in the room had no idea that Hunka was in the SS, but it deleted the clear reference to fighting Russians during WW2. The only Ukrainians fighting Russians in WW2 were fighting with Germany and its allies. That should have been obvious to Zelensky and anyone else familiar with the history of Ukraine.
Former British intel official and diplomat, Alistair Crooke explains that it was no accident that the veteran of the SS was honored in parliament. Instead it is consistent with Canada’s history of welcoming former SS soldiers after WW2 and with current efforts to rewrite history to justify a NATO war with Russia.
Curiously I have seen no explicit denunciation of the Waffen SS and their racist allies from Zelensky or Trudeau, nor have I seen any demands from the media or the ADL for that. Here is an example of what to do:
From a legal standpoint it’s immaterial. He was a member of the SS. Both the SS and its frontline combat counterpart, the Waffen-SS, were both declared criminal organizations after WWII. Technically being a member of either group, barring proof of forced impressment (which did happen, especially with the Waffen-SS after 1942) made one a war criminal.
With that said, the Western Allies didn’t really go out of their way to find individual members of the SS/Waffen-SS after the war unless they were over the rank of Colonel. Millions of Waffen-SS veterans weren’t hassled after the war and allowed to live in relative peace in West Germany. A good portion of them actually ended up serving in the Bundeswehr after 1955. And they fought for years to have their service recognized by the West German government so that they could receive pensions. Which became a bit of a political quagmire for West Germany.
Wehrmacht veterans were entitled to pensions and medical care due to their service for Germany. The Wehrmacht was never declared a criminal organization. Not for a lack of trying by the Soviets and the French; they were outmaneuvered by the US and the British on that debate. So West Germany technically owed them pensions and medical care because the Wehrmacht was the German Military of WWII. No different than any other German military organization of previous wars.
That wasn’t the case for the SS or the Waffen SS. Being declared criminal organizations they were considered a formal part of the Nazi Pargy. So they were denied pensions and medical care since they weren’t classified as military veterans.
I agree with this. He was low ranking. He probably did some awful stuff as a member of the SS but ultimately it’s been 70 years. The guy should be allowed to live out the rest of his life in relative peace.
I never got the point of hunting down old low ranking guys 70 years after the fact.
But why? The dude was the equivalent rank of sergeant. He wasn’t defining policy. And it’s been over 70 years.
Hate to say this, but why waste the time? The guy knew what he did (assuming he personally committed war crimes) and he’s had to live with that knowledge since 1945.
IMO, that’s punishment enough. He’s not long for this world too much longer anyway.
If we decided to go out of our way to punish every single person who committed war crimes in WWII it would be a system on the scale never seen before in human history. And we would be arresting some our own American and Canadian veterans. And a metric ■■■■ ton of Russian veterans.
The Germans weren’t the only ones who were committing war crimes in Europe in WWII. They were just the worst of all of us and they had the unfortunate (for them) reality of losing the war. Which made initial punishing of the ones who decided policy very easy for us.
That’s a good point: the Waffen SS was a military organization. Totenkopfverbände was the branch that ran the camps. He was a soldier; is there any evidence of this guy committing war crimes as a soldier?
We would need to look up exactly what Waffen-SS division he served in and see what they were credibly accused of. Chances are he probably did participate in some of the most common Waffen-SS war crimes though.
They didn’t take prisoners almost as a rule on the eastern front (intentionally killing surrendering uniformed personnel is a war crime) so there’s a strong chance he participated in some of that since that’s the front he would have fought in.
But then again that happened A LOT in WWII on almost every front. Trying to round up every group of soldiers who killed surrendering personnel intentionally would have been impossible. It was near a rule on some fronts. Especially the Eastern Front. Soviet Guards divisions tended not to take Waffen-SS prisoners either. They barely took Heer personnel as prisoners.
Any prosecution would have to rely on testimony of witnesses, but the vast majority are dead. Those who are still alive would be required to recall events from 80 years ago.
Hunka’s extreme age means that he is likely to die before a trial would be completed. Any verdict or punishment is not in human hands.
The allies (and the judicial systems of the victim countries) mostly went after higher ranking individuals. It was much easier and the numbers of perpetrators much smaller.
All it took to convict a commander at the time was did he A. Issue an illegal order or B. Did not try to stop his men from committing war crimes.
Back in 1997, a Jewish investigator from the US was able track down large numbers of Nazi collaborators from Ukraine and the Baltic states who were living in Canada. Many were in the phone book under the original names they had in eastern Europe. Canadian authorities had made no attempt to find the people.
“One of the ways to get into Canada was to show your SS tattoo” at 5:15.
This Politico article from 2022 may explain why there was so little effort to go after war criminals: The US considered them to be a valuable asset in the Cold War. That included support for Operation Red Sox, which air dropped to Ukrainian emigres into western Ukraine to link up with Ukrainian insurgent groups starting in the late 1940s:
. . . there was the reality of who these Ukrainian emigres were actually linking up with. The main body of Ukrainian insurgents, and in particular the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, had already been linked directly to Nazi atrocities in the region. “They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.” The Covert Operation to Back Ukrainian Independence that Haunts the CIA - POLITICO
The Soviets were able to track down the CIA operatives with great success. Most were captured and executed within hours.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is still active in Ukraine; its allies run Azov other paramilitary groups that dominate the government with the support of western intelligence agencies.
He would be long dead before the courts got around to do anything. Watch the case of John Demjanjuk where Israel thought he was Ivan the Terrible back in the 80’s a notorious guard at Treblinka the dude was tried in a show trial receiving the death penalty costing the state millions only to have the case tossed out after the Soviet Union released information that he wasn’t the John Demjanjuk they where looking for he sat on death row for five years.
Fast forward he comes back to the U.S. then Germany had him extradited to Germany because they said he was a guard at Sobibor which he probably was, he died before the case could be heard. All the big war criminals of WW2 are long dead, hell there is only a few people alive from WW2. They need to move on this guy isn’t worth the trouble. A lot of these people from Ukraine fought for Germany thinking they would have a better or life or not get killed by the Germans. They were constantly persecuted by both Germany and the Soviet Union.
