Speaker's honouring of former Nazi soldier reveals a complicated past, say historians

Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Anthony Rota's failure to vet a Ukrainian Second World War veteran who fought for Nazi Germany points to a lack of education in the West on 20th-century history in Eastern Europe, say historians.

Rota stepped down this week as House of Commons Speaker after inviting Yaroslav Hunka, a former Nazi soldier and one of his constituents from North Bay, Ont., to sit in the parliamentary gallery during the Ukrainian president's address in Ottawa. Hunka received a standing ovation for his service during the war, but media reports later revealed he fought for Nazi Germany.

"For many in the West ... the understanding of the Second World War is in very black and white terms of, 'We won, they lost,'" Pawel Markiewicz, executive director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs office in Washington, D.C., told CBC News.

"Once you get into several layers deeper and start to look at these issues that went on in Central and Eastern Europe, the minutiae of it gets very delicate and you have to tread softly on these issues."

Rota later said the "public recognition" he gave to a former Nazi soldier "caused pain to individuals and communities," including Jewish and Polish people, and "other survivors of Nazi atrocities."

Alliance with the Nazis to fight the Soviets

In 2021, Markiewicz published the book Unlikely Allies: Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II, which details the complicated history of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany.

Markiewicz said some Ukrainian nationalists aligned themselves with the Nazis in hopes of eventually separating from the Soviet Union and creating an independent Ukrainian state.

"Some Ukrainian nationalist groups saw co-operation with Nazi Germany as being something that they could parlay, so to speak, into their own interests," he said.

David Marples, a professor of Russian and Eastern European history at the University of Alberta, said purges and a famine in 1933, at the hands of the Soviets, killed four million Ukrainians.

For many in what is now Western Ukraine, it was better to align with the Nazis than the Soviets.

"If they got an opportunity to form a national army, many of them were prepared to overlook the fact that they had to wear uniforms and swear allegiance to Hitler and have the name SS," Marples said.

"So that was really the choice they made."

Markiewicz noted many Ukrainians, though, also opposed the Nazis.

"There were many Ukrainians that suffered just as much as Poles suffered under the Nazi occupation," he said.

"There were Ukrainian Jews that lived in Ukraine that were also exterminated."

The 1st Galician Division

In 1943, Nazi Germany formed the 1st Galician Division, also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the elite guard of the Nazi regime. It was a volunteer division made up of Ukrainian nationalists. Hunka, the 98-year-old veteran recognized in the House of Commons, was a member.

Markiewicz said young men would have joined the division for a number of reasons.

"Some of them followed the examples of their friends or forefathers who also fought in post-World War I formations considered to be Ukrainian."

Others joined for ideological reasons, in opposition to the Soviet Union, in hopes of creating an independent Ukrainian state.

For others still, said Markiewicz, volunteering was an alternative to working in forced labour.

By the time the unit formed in 1943, Germany had forced around three million Ukrainians into forced labour, said Marples.

"The division was formed in 1943, and by that time people should have got a pretty good idea of what the Germans were all about," Marples said.

Ukrainian nationalist leaders with the division hoped it could build the groundwork for a standing Ukrainian army after the war, Markiewicz said.

Members of the division were responsible for the Pidkamin massacre on March 12, 1944, in which an estimated 850 Polish villagers were rounded up and killed.

Markiewicz said it's not possible to say if Hunka was there without a closer look at historical records.

International fallout

Markiewicz said the controversy surrounding Rota is unfortunate because it has drawn attention away from the war effort in Ukraine.

The war began Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country. During Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Canada's Parliament earlier this month, he called on Ukraine's western allies to stick by his country.

Markiewicz said inviting a Nazi veteran to Parliament gave Putin  "propaganda wins."

In the lead-up to the Russian invasion, Putin made the unfounded claim the goal was to "de-nazify" the country.

"It looks really perfect from Russia's point of view," said Marples.

"This is exactly the sort of propaganda they were looking for and it was handed on a plate by the Liberal government."

After news of Hunka's past emerged, Poland's education minister said he had "taken steps" to have him extradited to Poland.

No matter how you try to explain the complexity of history, the symbolism is awful, it's shocking.- Dominique Arel, historian, University of Ottawa

Steven Rambam, an American private investigator who works to expose Nazi war criminals, said it's unlikely that would happen considering Hunka is 98 years old.

"The vast majority of war criminals have died comfortably in their beds and there's a limited number to pursue," Rambam said.

"Governments have proven that they're not going to prosecute these people, and frankly, at this point in time, the age of the war criminals makes it extraordinarily unlikely that any will be successfully prosecuted or put in jail."

In 1985, the Deschenes Commission was struck by Brian Mulroney, the prime minister at the time, to investigate claims Canada had become a haven for Nazi war criminals.

It investigated the 1st Galician Division that Hunka served with, as well as individual soldiers, and found no evidence of war crimes.

Dominique Arel, chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa, said he was surprised at the international fallout around Hunka's past and the standing ovation he got in Parliament, because there is evidence to suggest the 1st Galician Division's impact late in the war was minimal.

But Arel said the symbolism tied to the SS is powerful, and Hunka's recognition in Canada came at an unfortunate time as the Russia-Ukraine war continues.

"No matter how you try to explain the complexity of history, the symbolism is awful, it's shocking," Arel said.