The annual salmon run on the Humber River has been going on for a week now. Throngs of the curious line the banks daily, watching the resolute efforts of mature Chinook, striving against the current. Elder Advice has often thought the fascination springs from the comparison between something contrarian and uncompromising and the onlookers’ own bland and conforming lives. And he has wondered whether there is a place anywhere that spawns leaders of similar character. Those who know instinctively what must be done. Who swim upstream and battle the current for the benefit of the rest of us.
There is certainly no evidence of it these past weeks.
Elder Advice was barely able to sit up and take a little nourishment following Doug’s apology over the Greenbelt scandal1 when Justin unexpectedly apologized for something other than acts of long dead Canadians without Liberal connections. While Doug’s apology might be better described as an expression of deep regret at being found out, Justin’s apology in the Hunka affair was really more of a non est mea culpa - the usual response of his government to allegations of incompetence. Step 1: Deny all knowledge of the issue. Step 2: Discredit those who raised it. Step 3: Refuse blame and throw expendables (in this case, Speaker of the House Anthony Rota) under the bus.
The now international embarrassment of the Hunka affair is a grim reminder that, when it comes to history, even recent history, Canadians who should know better display an appalling ignorance. The failure of federal government vetting authorities and every single member of the House who stood and applauded Hunka, a 98-year old veteran of the 14th Waffen-SS “Galician” Division, to know that honouring him was, at the least, ill-advised and guaranteed to distract the public from the critical and time-sensitive message delivered to Parliament by President Zelensky in person, is inexcusable. So too is the assortment of statements and headlines which followed, describing Hunka and all other members of the Galician Division as “Nazis”, accusing them all (expressly or impliedly) of committing war crimes, and handing Putin an invaluable propaganda tool.
Elder Advice yearns for a new mask mandate. At least it will muffle the voices of stupid people.
Life for millions during the Second World War was as complex as it was precarious. That many Ukrainian men - destitute, grim witnesses to the deaths of their families and friends at the hands of Russia in the 1930s genocide known as “the Holdomor” - chose to fight the devil they knew by accepting food, clothing and arms offered by the devil they didn’t, should be both understandable and forgivable. Assuming forgiveness is needed from those who have never faced their dilemmas and who enjoy unfettered freedom to criticize their actions. Between 1931 and 1934 at least 3.9 million Ukrainians died as a result of Stalin’s deliberate policy of starvation. In the brutal winter of 1932–33 in particular, organized gangs of Russian-backed police and communist apparatchiks ransacked the homes of Ukrainians and stole everything edible - crops, personal food supplies, even pets. Stalin himself went so far as to repress the results of a later Soviet census - arresting and murdering the census administrators - because the figures revealed the deliberate slaughter of Ukraine’s population. And the man-made famine provided cover for a relentless Russian campaign of persecution of Ukrainian political and religious leaders and repression of its national culture. All too aware in 1943-45 of the future that awaited Ukraine if the Russians controlled their country again, thousands of Ukrainian volunteers answered the call to fight for a "unified Ukraine”, which necessarily meant aligning themselves with Nazi Germany.
The Galician Division was not part of the Allgemeine SS, the military formation involved in the Holocaust and other horrific operations in German-occupied territories. Neither was the 29th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as “the Legione SS Italiana”, a formation composed entirely of Italian volunteers. Or the French Légion des Volontaires (LVF) who fought as part of the German Army on the Russian front and whose surviving members ended up in the Waffen SS “Charlemagne” Grenadier Brigade. Or the 22,000 strong Dutch Volunteer Legion which was also part of the Waffen-SS. Or the 18th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division "Horst Wessel", a unit of largely Hungarian volunteers formed in 1944. Elder Advice could go on. And on.
Neither has Elder Advice seen or heard anything which even suggests, must less proves, that Mr. Hunka himself was active in, or even present during, any of the crimes against Polish civilians or others which have been attributed by some to members of the Galician Division. What we do know for certain is that Mr. Hunka fought and killed Russians.
Anyway, we have gone down this road before. The 1986 Federal Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, launched following Canadian media reports of Nazis hiding in Canada, while rightly concluding that legislation should allow for the prosecution in Canadian courts for war crimes committed on foreign soil and deportation for those convicted, also found no credible evidence that any of the Ukrainian veterans of the Galician Division participated in war crimes.
If we now want to vilify everyone who aligned themselves with Germany during the Second World War and ignore the fact that our own alliance with Russia - itself an ally of Nazi Germany until 1941 - was simply an unhappy marriage of convenience, we will also need to reserve some time for the Finns. Because Finland which, like Ukraine, has a depressingly long border with Russia, also allied itself with Nazi Germany to help in the struggle to oust Russia from Finnish territory it invaded and occupied in the Winter War of 1939-40.
This issue has especial significance for Elder Advice. One of my first clients was a Ukrainian who had been a police officer under Nazi authority and who the Federal Republic of Germany sought to extradite for alleged crimes based on evidence supplied by the Russians. I confess to all manner of conflicting concerns at the time. That every person is entitled to a defense. That I would have to look my Royal Air Force veteran and journalist father in the eye while telling him I was representing an accused war criminal, before he saw it reported in the newspaper for which he worked. That my client was, at once, a thoroughly likeable and utterly terrified elderly man, who denied the allegations against him and explained consistently and convincingly that, given what the Russians had done to his people, to help in the struggle against them he would have made a pact with the Devil himself. And then ruefully acknowledged that he had. During that case, before the client died of a stress-induced heart attack, Elder Advice learned a great deal about the daily Sophie’s choices faced in those years, by the people of Central and Eastern Europe in particular. And of the critical importance of waiting for probative evidence, viewed in the cold light of another day, before passing judgement on their actions or inaction. And where there is no such evidence, not passing judgement at all.
Elder Advice? Frankly, I do not know why I expected more from Canada’s Parliament than Justin’s after-the-fact, feeble: “All of us who were in the House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context.” To be knowledgeable of the context, one would have had to remain awake in high school history class or have paid some attention to the thousands of tragic stories told by those who lived in through the Second World War. Instead, Canada is burdened by a political caste increasingly clueless of geopolitical reality - of how nasty, dangerous and complex the world is today, much less in the last century - and so fixated on microaggressions that they would not know what to do if the real thing showed up.
If anyone in authority had the most basic knowledge of recent history, the whole sorry mess of the Hunka affair would have been easily avoided. And Justin would not have one more reason to be red-faced.
Although, in his case, that would be a refreshing change of colour.
Elder Advice 125
Not in its defence, but I first read the facts both you and Tim outline so clearly here from a Ukrainian gentleman on X. The researcher/reporter? who belatedly brought Hunka’s background to light, should have dug deeper.
Tim,
Thank you for weighing in on this.
I was pretty appalled by last week's fiasco re this topic in the HoC and the Liberal handling. I've also been appalled at the superficial and ignorant discourse about the historical context in Eastern Europe at the time and opinions resulting soonafter.
You mentioned, those in authority should have known about the background of Hunka and why giving him a 'standing O' was probably not advisable given the complexities of eastern Europe at that time and Canada's positioning opposite to Nazi Germany. Freeland, who actually has sufficient personal and professional background and grasp on the subject, should have provided that context directly to Canadians, along with her correct admissions of the mistake that had occured. The Liberal party should have taken responsibility, being the party in charge, but instead deflected to the speaker. The expedient path..
Thank you for going in depth on the nuances that the people living in the borderland republics at the time endured. My grandparents also lived through this reality in Ukraine and were persecuted by the Russians and were forced to flee to avoid harm / deportation.
We have a fundamental problem in this country with how social media and twitter dictates policy, discourse, and the forming of opinions, and the limiting of discussions grounded in facts and reasoning. Twitter likes and knee jerk reactions to "micro aggressions" as you put it, are washing out all nuance.
This piece is the most thorough, and thought through I've read on this topic so far. Unfortunately, the political damage has been done and the Kremlin has been handed a big fat propaganda meatball, but Canadians can still be informed.