Parliament Canada gives former SS man standing ovation twice

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Yaroslav Hunka



Yaroslav Hunka (Ukrainian: Ярослав Гунька; born c. 1925) is a Ukrainian World War II veteran of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a Nazi Germany military formation. Hunka was born in Urman, then part of Poland, and volunteered for SS Galizien in 1943. He emigrated to Canada after the conclusion of World War II. In 2023, Hunka made international headlines after he received a standing ovation from the House of Commons of Canada, and was recognized by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Later, it was revealed Hunka was affiliated with the Nazis, and Canadian government officials apologized to the worldwide Jewish community. Hunka is retired and lives in North Bay, Ontario.

Biography

Yaroslav Hunka was born in Urman, Second Polish Republic (now Ukraine) c. 1925. In 1943, Hunka volunteered to join the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1)). During his time in SS Galizien, he was photographed training in Munich and Neuhammer (present day Świętoszów). In 1944, Hunka was deployed into combat against Red Army forces on the Eastern Front of World War II. Following the conclusion of World War II in Europe, Hunka immigrated to Canada and joined the Ukrainian-Canadian community. He remained active in Waffen SS veterans circles there and maintained a blog on the Internet where, in the early 2010s, he compared veterans of SS Galizien to Jews, arguing that both groups were spread in worldwide diasporas from their homeland and could only return after several years of exile. As of 2022, Hunka lived in North Bay, Ontario, and travelled to Greater Sudbury to protest against that year's Russian invasion of Ukraine. Describing the situation in Ukraine, Hunka told CTV News that the "Destruction is just unbelievable but it will take years and years to rebuild it, ... But Ukrainians will win and God Bless Ukraine and I pray for it."



House of Commons of Canada visit

In September 2023, Anthony Rota, the current Speaker of the House of Commons, invited Hunka to visit the House of Commons of Canada and accompany President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On September 22, 2023, Zelenskyy and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau recognized Hunka in a ceremony in the House of Commons. Rota characterized Hunka as "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 praised Hunka, asserting that "He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service." After Rota's praise, the House of Commons gave a standing ovation to Hunka, which Zelenskyy and his wife joined.

Reactions to the celebration of Hunka were mostly negative and generated international headlines. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies condemned SS Galizien as "responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable," referencing events such as the 1944 Huta Pieniacka massacre of Polish civilians. In a statement released on September 24, Rota accepted responsibility for inviting Hunka to the ceremony, and stated that "I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world. I accept full responsibility for my action." Ann-Clara Vaillancourt, a spokeswoman for Trudeau, called Rota's apology "the right thing to do" and emphasized Rota's responsibility for inviting Hunka to the ceremony.

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A situation that was a mistake but once known, to resolve the issue was to turn course to ask resignation by the parliament as a agreeable resolution.

The person of issue being, Yaroslov Hunka was as indicated, found out of his actual past whilst a member of The SS Galizien and found out of the crimes his unit had committed in year 1944.

It should be noted that all former SS military people should not be tossed into the same bucket, but should be held in individual brackets of their war time personal records of action.

It should be of noten that Mr. Hunka although brought into the war time service as a foreign member in the manner of the then shortage of manpower due to combat losses of German personal, it become normal of those times to accept foreigners into their ranks. Ordinally, SS Military personal were held to a higher degree of training and expectations in combat, and were usually within the confines of combat, did not give ground to allied combat unites but in that stead, fought to the bitter end, thusly were not a very welcomed situation to allied combat troops.

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Atrocities of the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1)

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, and at particular members of the division, from a variety of sources. It is difficult to determine the extent of war criminality among members of the division. If prior service in Nazi police units is a measure of criminality, only a small number were recruited from established police detachments. Among those who had transferred from police detachments, some had been members of a coastal defence unit that had been stationed in France, while others came from two police battalions that had been formed in the spring of 1943, too late to have participated in the murder of Ukraine's Jews. According to Howard Margolian, there is no evidence that these units participated in anti-partisan operations or reprisals prior to their inclusion into the division. However, before their service within the police battalions, a number of recruits are alleged to have been in Ukrainian irregular formations that are alleged to have committed atrocities against Jews and Communists. Nevertheless, in their investigations of the division, both the Canadian government and the Canadian Jewish Congress failed to find hard evidence to support the notion that it was rife with criminal elements.


The 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS "Galizien" is sworn in. In the foreground, soldiers taking the oath and giving the Nazi salute.

The division did destroy several Polish communities in western Ukraine during the winter and spring of 1944. Specifically, the 4th and 5th SS Police Regiments have been accused of murdering Polish civilians in the course of anti-guerilla activity. At the time of their actions, those units were not yet under Divisional command, but were under German police command. Yale historian Timothy Snyder noted that the division's role in the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia was limited, because the murders were primarily carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.


14th SS Division soldiers with a 5 cm Pak 38 anti-tank gun on the Eastern Front, March 1944.

In a speech to the soldiers of the 1st Galician division, Heinrich Himmler stated:

Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – those residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia's good name, namely the Jews ... I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles ... I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.


Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler visits the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS "Galizien". In the foreground a soldier with binoculars in a trench, next to Heinrich Himmler.

In June 2013, Associated Press published an article stating that an American, Michael Karkoc, who was alleged to be a former "deputy company commander" in the division, was implicated in war crimes committed before he joined the division in 1945. According to Associated Press, before joining the Division Karkoc had served as a "lieutenant" of the 2nd Company of the German SS Police-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion (USDL; in German; Schutzmannschaft Bataillon der Sicherheitspolizei 31; Ukrainian: Український легіон самооборони, Ukrains’kyi Legion Samooborony). The USDL was a paramilitary police organization in the Schutzmannschaft. Karkoc was found living in Lauderdale, Minnesota. He had arrived in the United States in 1949 and became a naturalized citizen in 1959.

Huta Pieniacka

In the winter and spring of 1944, the SS-Galizien participated in the destruction of several Polish villages, including the village of Huta Pieniacka. About five hundred civilians were murdered. The Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka has stated that the Germans formed several SS police regiments (numbered from 4 to 8) which included "Galizien" in their name. Those police regiments joined the division in Spring 1944. On 23 February 1944, before being incorporated into the division, the 4th and 5th police regiments had participated in anti-guerrilla action at Huta Pieniacka, against Soviet and Polish Armia Krajowa partisans in the village of Huta Pieniacka, which had also served as a shelter for Jews and as a fortified centre for Polish and Soviet guerrillas.


One of the stone tablets of the monument which lists the names of Poles killed at Huta Pieniacka.

Huta Pieniacka was a Polish self-defence outpost, organized by inhabitants of the village and sheltering civilian refugees from Volhynia.

The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia (Polish: rzeź wołyńska, lit. 'Volhynian slaughter'; Ukrainian: Волинська трагедія, romanized: Volynska trahediia, lit. 'Volyn tragedy') were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. The massacres were exceptionally brutal and affected primarily women and children. The UPA's actions resulted in up to 100,000 deaths. Other victims of the massacres included several hundred Jews, Russians, Czechs, Georgians, and Ukrainians who were part of Polish families or opposed the UPA and sabotaged the massacres by hiding Polish escapees.

On 23 February 1944, two members of a detachment of the division were shot by the self-defense forces. Five days later, a mixed force of Ukrainian police and German soldiers shelled the village before entering it and ordering all the civilians to gather together. In the ensuing massacre, the village of Huta Pienacka was destroyed, and between 500 and 1,000 of the inhabitants were killed. According to Polish accounts, civilians were locked in barns that were set on fire, while those attempting to flee were killed.

Polish witness accounts state that the soldiers were accompanied by Ukrainian nationalists (paramilitary unit under Włodzimierz Czerniawski's command), which included members of the UPA, as well as inhabitants of nearby villages who took property from households.

The NASU Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine concluded that the 4th and 5th SS Galizien Police regiments did kill the civilians within the village, but added that the grisly reports by eyewitnesses in the Polish accounts were "hard to come up with" and that the likelihood was "difficult to believe". The institute also noted that, at the time of the massacre, the police regiments were not under 14th division command, but rather under German police command (specifically, under German SD and SS command of the General Government). The Polish Institute of National Remembrance stated: "According to the witness' testimonies, and in the light of the collected documentation, there is no doubt that the 4th battalion 'Galizien' of the 14th division of SS committed the crime".

Pidkamin and Palikrowy

The village of Pidkamin was the site of a monastery where Poles sought shelter from the encroaching front. On 11 March 1944, around 2,000 people, the majority of whom were women and children, were seeking refuge there when the monastery was attacked by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (unit under Maksym Skorupsky command), allegedly cooperating with an SS-Galizien unit. The next day, 12 March, the monastery was captured and civilians were murdered (part of the population managed to escape at night). From 12 to 16 March, other civilians were also killed in the town of Pidkamin.


Polish graveyard in Podkamien

Estimates of victims range from 150, by Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka, to 250, according to the researchers of the Institute of History of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.


Polish graveyard of 4th police SS regiment and UPA victims in Palikrowy

Members of another SS-Galizien sub-unit also participated in the execution of Polish civilians in Palykorovy, located in the Lwów area (Lviv oblast today) near Pidkamin (former Tarnopol Voivodeship). It is estimated that 365 ethnic Poles were murdered, including women and children.


Meadow near village, where 365 Poles were murdered by 4th police SS regiment and UPA


Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)#1st_Ukrainian_Division_UNA