Celebration Turned to Tragedy

"One door was blocked, so we opened it by force [in an outsider rescue attempt]. Massive flames came out of the hall. It was like Hell's doors opened."

"The temperature was unbearable. I cannot describe the extreme heat."

"I could not do anything but run away from the fire."

"After the firefighters arrived, I rushed inside to look for my friends. I saw 26 dead bodies in the bathroom. A 12-year-old girl was completely burnt and left in a corner."

"I cannot describe what I feel. I know families that lost almost everyone. At least three families have lost every single member in the fire."

"The whole community is sad, not only in Nineveh province, but all over Iraq. The whole country is sad." 

Nineteen-year-old Ghaly Nassim    

 

"What I saw was very difficult."   

"I have seen people with more than 90% of their bodies completely burnt [at least 50 children were pronounced dead as soon as they arrived at the hospital]."

Chief Nurse Israa Mohammed, Mosul's specialized medical centre for burns 

 

"We miraculously left the place. The groom and the bride were among the people who survived the accident. I was just with them, and their psychological condition was very difficult."

"I took some wounded to the hospital. What I saw in the hospital is difficult to describe. Many of the victims were burned and dead."

Wedding family member 

Chandelier catches alight in fire that killed more than 100 people at wedding in Iraq – still from video

What could represent a more festive social occasion than a wedding? At this one, in the mostly Christian-occupied Hamdaniya area of Nineveh province, in Iraq, not far from Mosul the entertainment aftermath was a critical disaster. There were 250 guests. All invited to celebrate a wedding, the start of a new life together for a couple looking into the future. All too soon, as the celebratory dancing was initiated by the new bride and groom the 250 attendees panicked; guests in the Haitham Royal Wedding Hall stampeded toward the exits as flaming decorations and pieces of ceiling rained down on them.

Some cultures have strange and dangerous ideas about how they express jubilation, the joy of an event. As for example, shooting firearms into the air as an expression of excited happiness and power. What goes up will come down, and bullets can be lethal in their original forceful trajectory as well as their re-entry from a targetless shooting. And then there is the addiction to brilliant lights and explosive sounds inherent in fireworks displays, capturing attention, enrapturing the eyes, exciting the pulse.

 

Kurdish television news channel Rudaw showed footage of the event, of pyrotechnics blasting flames from the event's floor, hitting a chandelier and setting it afire. Authorities blamed flammable building materials that contributed to the blaze. An eruption of hellfire that killed 100 people and injured 150 more, accounting in total for the number of invited guests. 

 

Witnesses explained what they recall of the shocking events. Faten Youssef described the bride and groom initiating a ritualistic slow dance, when the fire began and raced through the plastic decorations that festooned the hall. And soon the ceiling began collapsing, the 50-year-old woman said. "Flames started falling on us. things were falling down and blocked the way to the exit".

 

Her family found a way through a kitchen exit, struggling through smoke and flames. A bystander shot video that showed a desperate attempt by people outside the hall to aid the escape of those trapped within. One man attempted to knock down a wall with an excavator. Soon, local hospitals were receiving victims conveyed by screeching fleets of ambulances. 

 

Bandaged survivors received oxygen. Workers at the hospital organized more oxygen cylinders, but then it was realized there was a shortage of oxygen; too many calls too suddenly exhausted hospital supplies, including burn bandages. Children were among those being treated for severe burns. Paramedics worked for hours after the fire was extinguished bringing out the injured.

It is customary in many countries in the Middle East for extravagant wedding ceremonies and entertainment planned for the hundreds of relatives and community members representing the wedding parties' close acquaintances and family members. Spectacularly elaborate decorations in the halls, with music and entertainers, and quite often pyrotechnics for the amusement and entertainment of all concerned.

 

Highly flammable material is thought to have fuelled the blaze

Canada, a Harbour For Nazi War Criminals

"Canada has a really dark history with Nazis in Canada."

"There was a point in our history where it was easier to get in [immigrate to Canada] as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person."

"I think that's a history we have to reconcile."

Immigration Minister Marc Miller 

"What little we know of their [SS members] war record is bad."

"We're still hoping to get rid of the less desirable Ukrainian PoWs either to Germany or to Canada."

British Home Office official Beryl Hughes, 1948

Ukrainians dressed in SS Galicia Division uniforms march past graves during a re-burial ceremony at the SS Galicia Division cemetery near the village of Chervone, Ukraine, in 2013. Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP/File

Documents compiled by a commission set up in the 1980s to scrutinize Canada's record in permitting members of the Nazi SS into Canada through government-sanctioned visas, including members of the Ukrainian collaborationist special ethnic SS-linked divisions meant to work with German SS units in

rounding up Jews in massive pogroms of shooting deaths -- part of the Holocaust's 'Final Solution', a priority with Nazi Germany while it was prosecuting World War I --, have never been made available for public scrutiny.

 

In the wake of a public scandal where a North Bay Ukrainian military veteran was invited to parliament to meet with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who was to address the House of Commons, where the entire House inclusive of parliamentarians and diplomatic guests rose on the introduction of the 98-year-old, a former volunteer serving with a Ukrainian SS division, Jewish groups in Canada are now demanding the release of the documents, unredacted.

 

The 40-year-old report along with allied documents that contain details relating to Nazi war criminals residing in Canada remains in a 'secret' category. It represents a second portion of a 1986 government-commissioned report on Nazis who were permitted to enter and settle in Canada. Another 1986 report was heavily censored, one that examined how it was that Nazis were enabled to enter Canada to begin with, post World War Two. That commission was struck in the wake of years of Jewish groups urging the government to investigate and extradite Nazi war criminals known to be living in Canada.

Over 600 pages of the document finally obtained through the country's Access to Information law, was censored. B'nai Brith is now demanding the release of RCMP and Department of Justice files on Nazi war criminals in Canada. "We've run up against a brick wall", commented David Matas, counsel for the Jewish advocacy organization ... in view of the government's ongoing decision to withhold such records from public view. A ray of hope shimmered briefly when Canada's Immigration Minister Marc Miller allowed that the government might reconsider whether the records could be released.

Canada's track record, he commented pointedly, with Nazi criminals was notoriously poor. B'nai Brith pointed out in a submission to the House of Commons committee on Access to Information in February that the government's approach to Nazi war criminals reflected its "intentional harbouring of known Nazi war criminals" along with "deliberate inaction".

And that historical puzzle has now been resurrected since MPs in the House of Commons a week ago honoured a Canadian-Ukrainian who had served in a Nazi SS division. Two standing ovations from those present were awarded Yaroslav Hunka, sparking outrage on social media, prompting the resignation of the House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota on whose invitation to the man living in North Bay, arrived at the House of Commons, with no one apparently aware, despite that House security and Canadian intelligence services were to have scrutinized the man's background prior to his entrance.

 

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa last Friday. Photo by Patrick Doyle /The Canadian Press

 

The now-98-year-old had volunteered to fight with the 14th Waffen-SS Division Galicia, a Nazi military unit recruiting Ukrainians to fight alongside German SS groups, and more to the point, help in the extermination of Europe's Jews. Poland, along with Jewish groups denounced the infamous division, citing its role in killing civilians in grouped massacres during the war. Poland, in fact has petitioned Canada for the man's extradition as a war criminal.

Large numbers of SS soldiers and other Nazi collaborators from eastern Europe settled after the war in Canada. Jewish refugee-survivors who had also come to Canada, spoke in shocked whispers to one another when they recognized on the streets of Toronto, German SS members they had last seen in the ghettos and death camps. Many of the records sought have links to the 1986 war crimes commission that was led by Justice Jules Deschenes.

The International Military Tribunal had declared the SS a criminal organization, including units of the Waffen SS, like the Galicia division that Yaroslav Hunka had fought with. There are nationalist Ukrainian-Canadians today, who view the 14th Waffen Division as heroic for battling Soviet forces who at that time were allies with the US, Canada and Britain after Russia was invaded by Germany despite Russia having begun the war as part of the Axis group.

The release in Britain in 2005 of documents from British archives outlined concerns relating to the members of SS Galicia along with intentions to ship them to Canada. "The Division was an SS division and technically all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals", noted one report for the British government. In another report dated 1948 there were discussions on sending SS members to Canada. And they did.

Yet Another of Justin Trudeau's Unfortunate Lapses in Judgement

"[House Speaker Anthony Rota made an] unforgivable error [and] a sacred trust has been broken [in recognizing 98-year-old Yarsolav Hunka as] a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero [moments before Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was set to make his address to Parliament on Friday, prompting Members of Parliament and dignitaries present for the occasion in the House to offer him a standing ovation]."

"This is not something that should be any sort of political game."

"We, as parliamentarians, did something that was profoundly offensive, insulting to people around the world. That denied the ... reality of the Holocaust as a genocide." 

NDP House Leader Peter Julian

The Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota delivers a speech following an address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.   Sean Kilpatrick/AP

Speaker of the House Rota's error in judgement brought down calls from all political parties in the Canadian Parliament, including his own, to step down from his position. His resignation required for having invited a man from his constituency -- to a ceremonial welcome in the Canadian Parliament for the president of Ukraine preparatory to hearing him address Parliament -- who had fought for the Nazi SS. Several days later, on Wednesday, he did just that, reluctantly, and claiming himself and he only to have been responsible for the hugely unsettling incident.

"It's for that reason, for the good of the institution of the House of Commons, that I say, sadly, I don't believe you can continue in this role."

"Regrettably, I must respectfully ask that you step aside."

Two days after House Speaker Rota had referred to his invited guest Yaroslav Hunka, sitting in the parliamentary gallery, as a "hero" who had fought for Ukrainian independence against the Soviets during the Second World War, when all those present in Parliament erupted into an ovation of recognition, it was reported that Yaroslav Hunka in actual fact had fought for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. This was a Nazi-controlled unit comprised of volunteer Ukrainian collaborators.

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Ontario on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.    Patrick Doyle/AP

The Waffen Grenadiers was recognized post-war as a criminal organization operating in concert with Nazi Germany, willing recruits to mass murder, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles. Jewish groups demanded an immediate apology from the government of Canada. Poland's ambassador to Canada did the same. And Canadian parliamentarians were disgusted at having been invited unwittingly to applaud the exploits of a Nazi collaborator.

House Speaker Anthony Rota has apologized after arranging for a Ukrainian constituent to be honoured by MPs during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit. Yaroslav Hunka fought for a Nazi unit during the Second World War.

 

The Nazis established many collaborationist armies in the territories they occupied in Europe during the Second World War. There were collaborators from France, Italy and the Netherlands drawn by Nazi ideologies. And thousands of Ukrainians fought for Germany, believing fervently in German propaganda convincing them that Jews were at the helm of the Soviet government in Moscow and to kill Jews en masse would solve an oncoming event of Soviet occupation of Ukraine.

For its part, post-war, Canada chose to overlook and went so far as to provide official cover for emigrants from Ukraine that were Nazi collaborators portraying themselves as Ukrainian freedom fighters, though they fought with a unit founded by Nazis, served under Nazi command, and exclusively fought to serve the Nazi aim of annihilating Europe's Jews. Monuments to the unit were erected at Ukrainian cemeteries in Edmonton, Alberta and Oakville, Ontario.

When this situation was highlighted by the Russian Foreign Ministry in 2018, Canada's foreign affairs department rushed to deny it, calling it "Russian misinformation". Prime Minister Trudeau, in the wake of this latest dreadful affair, cites Russian "misinformation" as being responsible for Canada's own lapse of vigilance in bringing an old Nazi collaborator to Parliament for recognition as a 'war hero'. Speaking dismissively of Russian "disinformation" is Canada's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland.

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Speaker Anthony Rota 'acknowledged his mistake' in inviting a Ukrainian who served in a Nazi unit to the House of Commons. Trudeau says he wants parliamentarians to refocus on standing against Russian propaganda and disinformation

 

Russian 'propaganda' was cited when Russian investigators pointed out that her family during World War II was also embroiled in collaboration with the Nazis; her grandfather as editor of a Ukrainian, Nazi-affiliated newspaper, published in occupied Poland where antisemitic propaganda found a good home. These unfortunate details have also been investigated and recorded by Ukrainian academics in Canadian universities.

Nazi commanders had called for volunteers to sign up for the Schutzstaffel (SS) a corp of elite military members loyal to the Nazi Party, as a distinct unit not part of the German army. A French SS unit was in existence, as well as a Norwegian SS unit, a Dutch SS unit, and SS units formed unbelievably from British and American prisoners of war. The Ukrainian recruits were accepted and indoctrinated into a unit of Ukrainians, created in 1943.

The initial "ground zero" for the Holocaust took place in Ukraine, where German and collaborationist death squads murdered over a million Ukrainian Jews. Galicia Division recruits were likely intrigued by the thought of seeking a sovereign Ukraine eventually, gaining momentum in joining the SS, swearing a personal oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, their actions directed by Nazi German commanders.

Following war's end, a large number of Galicia Division veterans emigrated to Canada. At that time immigration policy was ordered in rejection of any veterans of the German Wehrmacht or the SS, yet through a 1985 federal public enquiry into war criminals being sheltered in Canada, Galicia Division members were granted cabinet-level exemption in 1950. At the time, the Canadian Jewish Congress fiercely opposed that decision, but was ignored. 

The reason given was that the division's volunteer Ukrainians had become a willing part of the Nazi SS "not because of a love of the Germans but because of their hatred for the Russians and the Communist tyranny". A hatred that extended lethally toward Europe's Jews, enabling the Division members with a clear conscience to murder Europe's Jews in defence of their Ukrainian homeland's future as a sovereign nation. 

Canadian justice, empathy and humanity.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre blamed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally for the fact that Hunka was invited. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Canada's Faulty WWII Memory

"The Canadian government should directly condemn SS Galicia, not honour it. It is  unbelievable this happened in the first place."

"Members of this division were involved in mass murder of Jews, Poles and Ukrainians during [the Second World War], and many of them did this before they joined this division."

"They're considered to be Nazi collaborators, and they are not regarded even as heroes in Ukraine by the Ukrainian government."

"They massacred entire villages of Polish residents in this region… including women and children because they were accused of being associated with Soviet partisans. This was just mass murder without any real justification."

"In addition to this, the SS Galicia Division was involved in other cases of violence. They took part in the suppression of the anti-Nazi uprising in Slovakia, and they also took part in the brutal and violent suppression of the anti-Nazi partisan movement in Yugoslavia."

Ivan Katchanovski, Ukrainian Canadian professor, University of Ottawa 

 

"Those units were involved in real acts of atrocities against Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime."

"The Nazi units, like the one he was involved with, did not give the victims of the Holocaust, the millions of them, Jews and others, an opportunity to live their lives, have children and grandchildren and live to be 98 years old."

"[It's] absolutely critical that we reflect back on Canada's absolutely awful, awful record of holding Nazis accountable for their crimes."

"We have failed at that -- we were a safe haven for so many that came in."

Wiesenthal Center president, CEO Michael Levitt 

"[The military division contributed to the deaths of six million Poles during the war, half of whom were Jewish." 

"This is a person who participated in an organization that was targeting Poles, was committing mass murders of Poles, not only the military personnel but also civilians." 

"For me, such people should not be present in public life and probably should be prosecuted."

Witold Dzielski, Poland's ambassador to Canada

The obtusely stunning performance -- during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Canada, preparing to address Parliament -- to reveal the invited presence of a Ukrainian WWII 'hero',

98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka by Parliamentary Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota as a surprise went sideways fairly quickly. "He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service" said Speaker Rota in introducing the nonagenarian invitee. The entire chamber burst out in an ovation of appreciation.

Only to soon enough discover him to be a Ukrainian who had voluntarily, during World War II, joined a Nazi SS division, fighting with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division known as well as the SS 14th Waffen Division, referred to as well as the First Ukrainian Division under the command of Nazi SS officers. Friday was the day that Yaroslav Hunka was feted by Parliament, and on Sunday, Speaker Rota apologized for the man's presence in Parliament, before a Jewish Ukrainian president no less, whose family had perished in the Holocaust.

Jewish groups in Canada and the world over were shocked, dismayed and angered, demanding at the very least an apology from the Canadian government, the rousing standing ovation honouring a Ukrainian Nazi, beyond belief. Poland too has demanded an apology. And has gone even further issuing a formal request for the man's extradition to Poland to stand trial for war crimes as a former officer of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division.

 

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo by Patrick Doyle /The Canadian Press

Calls for the resignation of House of commons Speaker Anthony Rota were swift in coming. And finally, on Tuesday, he did resign, under pressure from even several members of his own governing party. What stretches credulity is that everyone invited to appear in person at a parliamentary session is given a background security check, and in this instance it would have been no different. It was well known in North Bay and among Ukrainians that the man was a Nazi collaborator. That he was a resident of the Speaker's riding, fails to excuse Mr. Rota of ignorance of his past.

A website honouring the division that includes photographs of the man in his Nazi uniform offers ample details. The photographs that the professor posted on social media were viewed over three million times. The shameful episode on Parliament Hill has been reported in American, British, Polish and Australian legacy media. The Waffen-SS Galicia Division is well noted for its role in murdering civilians and its involvement during the war in bloody massacres.

At that point of the war after Hitler's Germany had invaded Russia, despite its pact with Germany as part of the Axis group, Soviet Russia allied itself with Canada, the United States, Britain and other Allied nations against Nazi Germany. The Ukrainian SS division dates from 1943 when Germany looked for allies to support its forces at a time when the Allies began gaining traction in the war and Germany became concerned the war was its to lose.

Recruitment of Ukraines to the SS made use of propaganda, one particularly appealing poster featuring an SS soldier in conflict with a caricature with the Star of David emblazoned on its arm. In the end, 80,000 Ukrainians volunteered for the SS Division with 12,000 making the final selection. Many more Ukrainians fought against the Nazis, with the Soviet military. Following war's end, the International Military Tribunal included the units of the Waffen SS like the Galicia division in its identifying them as criminal organizations. 

In Canada, there remain some nationalist Ukrainian-Canadians that view the 14th Waffen Division as heroes for fighting Soviet forces. Oakville, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta have sites where monuments honouring the Ukrainian SS troops were erected to express that pride. And while the monuments fail to state the Divisions as part of the Nazi SS, this is what they clearly are.  B'nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Polish Congress jointly called for their removal.

Finally, not a word from Chrystia Freeland, finance minister, and deputy prime minister of Canada. Whose own Ukrainian-Canadian background surely entitles her to make some pithy comments. Then again, perhaps not, given that her grandfather was in essence, little different from a Ukrainian member of a Waffen SS. He was stationed in German-occupied Poland, editor of a newspaper that parroted Nazi propaganda de-humanizing Jews, a collaborator himself.

Beijing's Fear of "Splittism"

"The Chinese police's stability maintenance methods directed toward me were becoming more and more cruel and crazy." 

"They detained me at will without following legal procedures, taking my cellphone and even giving me a psychiatric evaluation."

"I can no longer continue to accept the ravaging of my personal dignity, the trampling of my honour and the threat to my body."

"I am willing to wait for months, because I feel safe in Taiwan. I want to go to the United States. I think Taiwan is very safe and there are no security problems. Taiwan has democracy and liberty as its shelter, so Taiwan is safe for me personally. But security is not my first option in where I settle, I have a lot of work to do in the US."

Chen Siming, Chinese dissident, Taipei, Taiwan

Chinese dissident Cheng Siming is holed up in the transit lounge at Taiwan’s Taoyuan international airport. Photograph: AP

 

Chinese dissident, Chen Siming who habitually made it a practise to commemorate the1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 in Beijing has fled China, arriving in Taiwan, searching for aid to enable him to seek asylum in the United States or Canada. He posted a video on Twitter, stating that he had arrived to the transit area at Taoyuan International Airport, in a bid to escape political persecution in China.

How he was able to make the trip, travelling to Taiwan remains unclear, but he explained he had left China on July 22. Self-governing Taiwan has its own concerns over persecution by Beijing which considers the island to be part of greater China and has plans to military invade at some point, to claim the sundered territory as its own which has been independent, calling itself the Republic of China since 1949.

Public memorials honouring the protesters who were killed in the 1989 crackdown -- launched by the Chinese Communist Party against Chinese citizens, mostly university students who advocated for democracy -- are forbidden by Beijing. Anyone who persists in recognizing the event attracts the attention of police, risking detention and/or arrest for their troubles.

According to Mr. Chen, in 2017, police took him into detention custody and that has been repeated every year since then in reaction to his annual commemoration of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown and the death of thousands of protesters. The shortest length of time he was detained in prison was for week's punishing stay, as opposed to longer stretches of time that tended to 15 days at a time.

 

Chen Siming sits beside a notice that reads ‘Commemorate June 4 on 2021 June 4’ in central China’s Hunan province on that day. Photograph: AP

 

Authorities in Hunan province detained Chen in May, following a posting he made on social media to commemorate the crackdown. State security police harassment over the years during "sensitive periods" around the anniversary date have been relentless. Human Rights Defenders, a Chinese rights group, believes Mr. Chen was held in a detention centre in Zhuzhou, Hunan province.

"If Chen Siming is returned to China he faces an almost certain risk of detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and an unfair trial", stated William Nee, research and advocacy coordinator for the rights group, urging Taiwan to assist Chen in his search for asylum abroad. 

Rahile Dawut   Dui Hua Foundation/Lisa Ross

Rahile Dawut, a Uyghur academic who disappeared six years ago during Beijing's crackdown in Xinjiang, hasn't been merely harassed, her life made miserable. She was given a life sentence in prison, according to Dui Hua, a California-based human rights group that advocates for political prisoners in China.  The 57-year-old professor, a leading scholar on Uyghur folklore, was convicted in 2018 on charges of endangering state security through her promotion of "splittism".

China is devoted to the principle of 'harmony', that all its 1.3 billion residents representing a large population of varied ethnic, social and religious groups from Tibetan Buddhists to Chinese Christians, to Muslim Turkmen and Uyghurs, integrate into Han Chinese society. "Splittism", the movement of Tibetans to have their autonomy restored, or Muslims their homelands carved out of the forced union with China, is viewed as subversive.

Ms. Dawut lost an appeal of her sentence in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region High People's Court. She ranks among over 300 intellectuals, artists and writers detained in Xinjiang, a reflection of a government campaign whose aim is to assimilate China's Muslim minority -- to promote ethnic harmony. In other words, erase any vestiges of an alter-culture, -religion, or -society.

Righteous Among The Nations

 

"They brought their factories of death to the Polish lands."

"In Poland, even if you gave a glass of water or a slice of bread [to a Jew during the Nazi occupation] that was considered help and was punishable by death."

"The Polish state has a special obligation, a special duty to make sure that remembering the Holocaust is preserved. We need to make sure that this remembrance is passed on to the future generations."

Wojciech Kolarski, Polish culture minister

"The government tries to impose a certain narrative showing Poland as the most pure nation of the world. Many governments do this; it is not a very original idea."

"There's no doubt whatever that the Ulma family were heroes and what they did was absolutely heroic. We should remember them."

"The problem is that using the righteous people for an electoral campaign is very low."

Piotr Wrobel, history professor, University of Toronto, Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish Studies

"Jews were generally accepted in Poland when they weren't necessarily accepted in other places in Europe."

"Most of the Holocaust survivors are people who survived in hiding, either because they went east [fleeing to Russia], or because they were given out by their family members to non-Jewish families [to hide and give Polish names and backgrounds to]."

"What we try to do is we try to expose people to the idea that war is complicated and it brings out the best and the worst in people."

"Did Poland perpetrate the Holocaust? No. Were there Poles who contributed to the suffering of the Jews? Yes."

Sebastian Rudel, deputy director, Jewish Community Centre, Krakow, Poland

People stand at the Ulma grave during the beatification of the family in Markowa on September 10, 2023. Photo by BARTOSZ SIEDLIK/AFP via Getty Images

The Catholic Church in Poland earlier this month beatified Wiktoria and Jozef Ulma, along with their children and their unborn child, in what is potentially the first step on the path to sainthood in the Church for the family. It will represent the first time in Catholic history that an entire family will have been so honoured. Poland holds this family in the highest regard, memorialized in postage stamps and coins. A museum is even dedicated to the family and to hundreds of other Polish families who stepped into the lethal danger zone of aiding Jews during the Holocaust.

 Ulma Family, circa 1943

In the case of the Ulmas, an indigent rural family with a stern moral outlook on life that committed them unequivocally to face danger in exchange for self-respect and empathy for the plight of their neighbours, they undertook to shelter two Jewish families, eight people in total in their modest home close to the village of Markowa in the war years. Jozef was 44, his wife Wiktoria 31, their daughters Stanislawa, 7, Barbara,6, Maria, 18 months, and sons Wladyslaw, 5, Franciszek, 3, and Antoni, 2.

The Jews they sheltered and who were summarily slaughtered by the Nazis in the crowded little farmhouse were 70-year-old Saul Goldman, his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Mojzesz, along with Golda Grunfeld and her sister Lea Didner with her young daughter Reszla, according to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance which documented the Ulmas’ story. The family was previously memorialized as 'righteous among the nations' by Yad Vashem in Israel in 1995.

On March 24, 1944 when German police --  responding to an informer who became aware of the family's involvement in sheltering Jews and then reported them to authorities -- raided the home. Not only were the eight Jews being sheltered by the Ulma family murdered, but the murder spree included Jozef and Wiktoria, pregnant at the time, and their six children. During the violence, Wiktoria went into sudden labour and the Ulma family's youngest was briefly introduced to the world. None survived.

 

 

A nun views a display about the Ulma family outside the presidential palace in Warsaw.  Photo by Ryan Tumilty

 

The family has been recognized as an important symbol of national honour for Poles, fitting right in with the national narrative that Jews and Catholics lived a peaceful co-existence before the German occupation shattered the status quo and produced the Holocaust, drawing Poland into Germany's state-sponsored genocide through its orchestrated mass extermination of Europe's Jews.

Before the advent of the Second World War, an estimated 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, 90 percent of Polish Jews were murdered, along with hundreds of thousands of Poles whom the Nazis also considered to be a sub-human species. It was not only Polish Jews that were annihilated in the many death camps established in Poland by Nazi Germany; Poland became a gathering-point for Jews transported from other parts of Europe.

The six most-infamous extermination camps were established in Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, and Treblinka. Although Jews felt more accepted in Poland than in many other countries in Europe, particularly in the east, there was ample persecution and antisemitism along with deadly pogroms carried out against Jews in the country. Violence by Poles, stoutly religious Catholics where the church itself acted in promoting antisemitism, was not uncommon before the war.

There were many Jew-hating Poles who took their hate out in persecution and violence against Polish Jews. The Ulma family was an exception, among even the thousands of Poles who sacrificed their security in favour of trying to help neighbours frantic to escape mass death. Postwar, when Communists ruled Poland, they encouraged the Jews that remained to leave the country, continuing the old tradition of antisemitism. In fact, Jews who survived the Holocaust, returning to their towns and villages were met with threats from former neighbours now living in their homes.

Relations between Jews and the Polish Law and Justice party government in 2018 became strained when the country's Holocaust denial law made it illegal to publicly claim Poland or the Polish nation to have been involved in Nazi atrocities. The changes were withdrawn under outraged protests, including from the government of Israel. What remains is the potential of civil penalties for anyone implying Poles had any element of an active role during the Holocaust. Which, in certain documented instances they did have.

 

Jan Gross, Polish American history professor, has received opprobrium and has been investigated for libel, criticized by the current Polish government in relation to his work identifying a number of pogroms carried out in Poland against Jews by Poles themselves in the early period of the war. As Piotr Wrobel, University of Toronto history professor points out, Poland's view of history and Jews is accurate enough, albeit politicized by the government Law and Justice party.

The estimated 16,000 people comprising the Jewish community in today's Poland is small in a country of close to 38 million, yet the many synagogues that serviced Poland's large pre-war Jewish population have been protected and preserved. Sebastian Rudol, deputy director of Krakow's Jewish  Community Centre, states that the contemporary community views the debate surrounding responsibility as more nuanced in view of various aspects of the past in Polish-Jewish relations.

His centre caters to their small Jewish community. And it has  reached out to respond to the war in neighbouring Ukraine to help the conflict's refugees. Its agenda is also to help people whom ancestry searches identify their families' hidden backgrounds as Jews. When their forbears sought to protect themselves from antipathy to and persecution of Jews, by hiding their Jewish identity and assuming a Christian background in its stead.

Clergy attend the beatification ceremony of the Ulma family, who were murdered by German Nazis for sheltering Jews in Markowa, Poland September 10, 2023. Patryk Ogorzalek/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS

Poland's Military Dilemma

"Of course, we would like to spend it on hospitals, education, on the development of our social support."

"The reality is different. We are forced to spend this four percent of GDP on defence because we are facing the biggest threat in Europe since the Second World War."

"Do we really believe that, in a confrontation with the West, Poland is the only target of operations lke this [Moscow's crosshairs]."

Jacek Siewiera, head, Polish national security bureau

 

"Russia's concern is the unity of NATO and that is going to be the first objective, to dissolve the unity."

"And as soon as they calculate that the attack on one member of the alliance will lead them there [to disunity], they will definitely do that [attack Poland]."

"I believe that one day the public will realize how important and crucial it was that the NATO alliance reacted in unity, and very fast for the attacks on Ukraine."

"I can assure  you that the people who are dealing with national security and defence in Russia, they are aware what this sign actually meant."

General Wieslaw Kukula, commander, Polish armed forces

Belarusian mechanical brigade units during their training with Wagner instructors in a recent military TV broadcast. Oleg Nekalo / VoenTV

 

While Ukraine is coping with responding militarily, going from defense to offense, against a widespread, destructive Russian invasion which aims to capture as much of Ukraine as it can manage for inclusion in Russian geographic territory for an even greater Greater Russia, Poland nervously watches its own borders. Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles hae  found their way to Polish soil. The United States has moved 10,000 American troops to Poland.

 

The ammunition, tanks and support that sympathetic Western nations through NATO, and Poland's near neighbours have provided it in its response to the Russian invasion move toward U kraine through Polish airports and across Polish roads and railways. A Russian spy ring earlier this year was uncovered operating within Poland, by its intelligence services resulting in two Russians being arrested for posting leaflets inviting people to join the Wagner Group Russia's private military.

 

Belarus, in support of Russia, has flown migrants from the Middle East, directing them to cross into Poland an an effort to destabilize the country. The head of Poland's national security bureau clarifies that Russia is targeting Poland, but won't stop at Poland. Jacek Siewiera believes that every NATO country is being considered by Moscow as a potential victim. A former military doctor, Siewiera stated tht Poland cannot afford not to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

As a result, the country has increased military spending dramatically, with plans to continue with more troops and greater military capabilities with an aim to bring its army to 300000 soldiers in ten years' time, from the current total of 179,000. Artillery systems, tanks and fighter jets have been brought in with plans to continue adding to its armed forces. While NATO's official target of two percent of GDP be spent by member countries on defence, Poland currently spends four percent, while aiming for five.

NATO's charter is explicit,that an attack on one of its member-nations represents an attack on all NATO  countries, long considered an effective deterrent against Russian aggression against members of the alliance. General Wieslaw Kukula, however, commander of the country's armed forces believes that NATO's shield is no longer assurance that his cou ntry will be safe from aggression by Moscow.It is his belief that Russia awaits an opening, and that would be a sign that NATO's resolve is weakening.

The Polish military, General Kukula stated, is conducting a careful study of the war in Ukraine, for the purpose of determining what weaknesses exist among Russian forces. It has been noticed how effeciveUkraine's drone attacks have been; instnces where millions of dollars in Russian military equipment were destroyed by drone attacks, costing Ukraine a few thoousand dollars, in comparison. While Poland has not yet become a direct target, Arkadiusz Pulawski points out thathis country has become a major target of pro-Russian propaganda.

The obvious design of the propaganda has been to sow division and fear through messages that Poland is itself planning to exploit the war so it can take possession of parts of Ukraine. As well, that Ukrainian refugees seeking refuge from the war in Poland, are the cause of crime and disorder. Polish intelliogence agencies believe that china has been giving assisance in spreading Russian propaganda online, part of a larger purpose of undermining the United States.

Poland has been obliquely put on notice that it will pay dearly for its assistance to Ukraine. An apparent spy ring that was monitoring military facilities and helping to spread Russian disinformation saw Poland arrest 15 people earlier in the year. None of the information was seen to seriously undermine Poland's resolve recognizing the height of the stakes involved, and its vital role within the new reality that has struck Europe.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, third from right, meets with military officials in Moscow beneath a large map depicting NATO and Russian allied territories this month.AFP - Getty Images

"Our main hostile actors are Russian and Belarus and we treat those two hostile regimes and their propaganda as one conglomerate and they work hand in hand."

"We have narratives that rely on intimidation -- that by helping Ukraine, Poland runs the risk of retaliation by Russia, and sometimes that it may be tactical nuclear strike."

"We are now a key country for NATO's credibility in the region and the strength of the alliance's eastern flank."

Arkadiusz Pulawski, senior Polish government intelligence official

Canada, Once Again on the World Stage

"Amid the ongoing diplomatic tensions between India and Canada over the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, sources have revealed that the Khalistani leader was found to be at flight risk in the United States and was on USA’s no-fly list in 2019."

"Meanwhile, in contradiction to Trudeau’s recent support to the Khalistani activist, it has been learned that Nijjar was also included in Canada's no-fly list in 2017–18."

YouTube

 

"Murdered Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a designated terrorist in India, was allegedly involved in crime since the 1980s and had connections with local goons from a young age, a detailed dossier prepared by Indian authorities, and accessed by NDTV, revealed. It further says Nijjar, who fled to Canada on a forged passport in 1996 and maintained a low profile as a truck driver there, travelled to Pakistan for arms and explosives training. He also allegedly ordered several killings and attacks in Punjab while taking refuge on Canadian soil."

"Later, he allegedly came in touch with Pakistan based KTF Chief, Jagtar Singh Tara. He also visited Pakistan in the garb of a Baisakhi jatha member in April 2012 and underwent an arms and explosive training there for a fortnight, the dossier said."

NDTV legacy news outlet

 

"In light of the current environment where tensions have heightened, we are taking action to ensure the safety of our diplomats."

"As a result, and out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to temporarily adjust staff presence in India."

Jean-Pierre Godbout, spokesperson, Global Affairs Canada

 

"There is no question that India is a country of growing importance. And a country that we need to continue to work with."

"We're not looking to provoke or cause problems. But we are unequivocal around the importance of the rule of law and unequivocal about the importance of protecting Canadians and standing up for our values."

"We call upon the government of India to work with us to take seriously these allegations and to allow justice to follow its course."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

"[It appears Canada's allegations] are primarily politically driven."

"No specific information has been shared by Canada on this case. We are willing to look at any specific information; we have conveyed this to the Canadians."

Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ahead of the G20 Leaders' Summit in New Delhi on Sept. 9  Evan Vucci—POOL/AFP/Getty Images

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's accusation on Monday that the Indian government had a role in orchestrating an assassination of a Canadian Sikh embroiled in Khalistani agitation against India did not go down well in India. As a prime minister with a personal background in administrative malfeasance, lapse of ethical conduct, theatrical and embarrassing behaviour on the world stage, while at home pushing a woke agenda on mostly unwilling Canadians whom he refers to as 'racist' and 'homophobic' for their protests, and having alienated one end of the country from the other by his environmental politics, it is hard for many to take his accusations seriously.

 

In June of this year a Surrey, B.C. resident with citizenship in Canada, Hardeep Singh Nijjar -- described variously as a "Sikh community leader" and a "peaceful advocate for Sikh independence" as president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey -- was gunned down in the parking lot of the gurdwara by two masked thugs who fled the scene and whose identities remain unknown. In India, on the other hand, the man had a notorious reputation as a terrorist: a "terrorist fugitive from India who emigrated to Canada".

 

On his disastrously embarrassing 2018 trip to India, Justin Trudeau had been handed a list of "Khalistani operatives in Canada" by Amarinder Singh, at the time chief minister of Punjab province. Nijjar's name was on that list. Canada has a reputation of harbouring Sikh separatists. Khalistanis, as they are called, are known to be extremists and have been involved in violent incidents in the past, not the least of which was their bombing of Air India Flight 182, which killed 329 people -- most of whom were Canadian-Indian Hindus -- in mid-flight over Ireland in 1985.

 

A banner with the image of Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar is seen at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, British Columbia (REUTERS)

Little wonder that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is convinced that Canada has done nothing to prevent the threat of violence against its diplomats assigned to Canada on the evidence, blatant and ignored. There are more incidents of agitation for a Punjab Khalistani homeland out of Canadian Sikh separatists than there is among Punjab majority-Sikh residents where it is now considered a non-issue. The provocations and threats emanate from among Canadian Sikh separatists who stage loud protests in Vancouver and Toronto with placards openly threatening Indian diplomats.

One parade float in Brampton Ontario glorified the 1984 assassination of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi by her trusted Sikh bodyguards. And then there was the issue of an unofficial Khalistani secessionist referendum held in the Toronto area a year ago, a referendum that Hardeep Singh Nijjar was deeply involved with. Billboards in Surrey in the aftermath of Nijjar's killing were emblazoned with "assassination wanted", listing names and photographs of Indian diplomats. 

Little wonder the government of India is convinced that Canada is wholly indifferent to the safety and security of its large expatriate Indian community, both Hindu and Sikh, living in Canada, almost two million in combined numbers, much less the large number of Indian students who come to Canada for their post-secondary education in a fellow democracy.

Supporters of the Khalistan movement, a push for an independent Sikh homeland in northern India, protest outside the Consulate General of India in Vancouver on Sept. 8. (Ben Nelms/CBC)