"Let’s be clear about the eight men for whom the University of Alberta maintains named endowments. They fought for the Waffen-SS, an armed wing of the Nazi Party which was declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials because of its role in war crimes. Their division was implicated in brutal wartime massacres of civilians, including one atrocity in which Polish women and children were locked inside buildings and burned alive."

"It should publish a complete list of all endowments honouring a Waffen-SS member, together with a timeline for resolving them. It should pursue renaming, seek legal variations where necessary, and return to court if required. The university must make clear that those who fought in service of the Nazis have no place of honour at a Canadian university."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, Bernie Farber, Edmonton Journal 

Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler inspects volunteers of the Ukrainian Waffen SS division during the Second World War. Library and Archives Canada is now reviewing whether to release the names of alleged Nazi war criminals who fled to Canada after the war. (File photo)

 

 The Waffen SS Galicia comprised of Ukrainian volunteers and overseen by Nazi SS groups were implicated in WWII war crimes; Jewish groups as well as the Polish government denounced the Ukrainian volunteer group for its part in murdering civilians, as well as for massacres it was involved with. The Nazis made use of the division in Slovakia to crush a national uprising; another condemnation for war crimes committed by the group. 

 

In the wake of receiving a legal permission to proceed with dissolving a research trust in the name of Ukrainian SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka who received accolades in Parliament during a visit to Canada by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023 when a standing ovation honoured the misconception that he was a war hero by Western standards by fighting against the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, at a time when Russia was viewed as an ally alongside the U.K., U.S. and Canada, the University of Alberta announced it would go no further in expunging Ukraine-centred research funding.

 

Yaroslav Hunka (giving a thumbs up) during applause in the Canadian Parliament, September 22, 2023. Photo: YouTube/CBC News: The National

 

The university planned to retain eight other endowments involved with Waffen-SS soldiers, claiming it would be too costly in time and legal fees to seek court approval for termination of the endowments. Researchers with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. a Toronto-based Holocaust research organization, totaled a list of 12 endowments at the University of Alberta with a value to the university of $2.2 million in funding, linked to Nazi-allied individuals during WWII in Ukraine. 

 

"This is dirty money and it's unconscionable they are continuing with this. It's beyond despicable", 84-year-old Andy Reti, a child survivor of the Holocaust stated in condemnation of the university's position. An alternative, he felt reasonable was that the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the university should donate the endowment funding of he Waffen-SS to the Salvation Army so that something positive could result from the untenably tainted funds. 

 

Senior director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Jaime Kierzner-Roberts, stated that her group had called on a number of occasions for the university to divest all of the Nazi-linked endowments, including one named for Peter Savaryn, another SS-Waffen member, who had in time become chancellor of the university. In 2023, however, the office of the Governor General expressed its deep regret for having awarded the Order of Canada to Savaryn in 1987. In the event, at revelations of his wartime activities and connections, in consequence of which the Order was revoked. 

 

In its remediation defence, the University of Alberta revealed its intention to spend $100,000 to "deepen scholarship and education about the Galicia Division and other complex and difficult aspects of 20th-century history". None of which can expunge the reality that the university had accepted funds from the estate of Volodymyr Kubijovyc, a Nazi collaborator who had helped create the Waffen-SS Galicia, and was as well an advocate for ethnic cleansing to create an independent Ukraine without the presence of Jews or Poles.

 

Parade of recruits of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division in Lviv. In the foreground is the head of the Military Administration, Col. Bisanz. July 18, 1943. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

Members of the Waffen SS Galicia are regarded as heroes -- who had fought against Soviet forces -- among nationalist Ukrainian Canadians. In summer day camps for Ukrainian children in Canada, this kind of folkhero history is taught to the campers, where they can also view commemorative statuary celebrating Waffen-SS WWII members for their courageous heroism in confronting and killing Red Army servicemen. Criticism of these heroes, they aver, represents Russian misinformation.

 

Critics of the volunteer SS battalion point out that in volunteering themselves to fight with the Nazis, Ukrainians were essentially freeing  up German soldiers to enable them to be redirected to fighting against the British, Canadian,and American soldiers, at that time advancing toward Berlin. Following the end of the war, the International Military Tribunal declared the SS a criminal organization, with the inclusion of Waffen-SS units. 

 

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

  

Nazi Collaborators, Eastern Europe

"This is like a nightmare."
"This is all happening once again in the lifetime of survivors."
"It has to be tearing their hearts out."
Bernie Farber, former chief executive officer, Canadian Jewish Congress

"[Such events as Ukraine's honouring of Nazi collaborators are] internal issues of Ukrainian politics."
"[Israel's decision to condemn such parades is] counterproductive."
Gennady Nadolenko, head, Ukraine diplomatic mission, Israel

"We must challenge all those who distort the historical record on governments, military units or organizations that fought with, supported or sympathized with the Nazis during World War II."
"This includes government leaders who acquiesce in, or fail to condemn, a process of Nazi glorification that amounts to Holocaust distortion."
"Those who glorify the record of such organizations or units cannot dismiss criticism as 'fake news'."
Michael Mostyn, CEO, B'nai Brith Canada

Veterans of the Latvian Legion, a force that was commanded by the German Nazi Waffen SS during WWII, and their sympathizers carry flowers as they walk to the Monument of Freedom in Riga, Latvia on March 16, 2016 to commemorate a key 1944 battle in their ultimately failed attempt to stem a Soviet advance. Jewish groups, Moscow and some in Latvia's ethnic-Russian community see the parade as glorifying Nazism because the Legion, founded in 1943, was commanded by Germany's Waffen SS, the armed wing of the Nazi party's Schutzstaffel SS (Protective Squadron). / AFP / afp / Ilmars ZnotinsILMARS ZNOTINS / AFP/Getty Images

For Jews around the world the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Red Army's liberation of Poland's Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where Nazi Germany engineered the death of almost a million Jews, along with Roma, Soviet POWs, Polish political dissenters, gays, the very thought that Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Poles would in the 21st Century, celebrate their national heroes who were Nazi collaborators is unthinkable.

Yet the reality is that throughout Eastern Europe countries are celebrating their nationals who collaborated with the Third Reich and took active participation in the rounding up and murder of Jews. Torchlight parades were held in a number of cities in Ukraine early this month in honour of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist Ukrainian and Nazi collaborator involved in the killing of thousands of Jews and Poles. Despite which, Ukraine sponsors such events celebrating Nazi collaborators with links to the Holocaust.

A school was named in Lithuania for Jonas Noreika whose own family agrees was involved in the killing of Jews. A Ukrainian diplomat talked about punishing "k----", while posing for photographs with a cake baked in the shape of Hitler's memoir Mein Kampf, and blaming Jews for the Second World War. Once a minor kerfuffle passed, when he was condemned by Jewish groups, he was reinstated to his diplomatic position.

For the approximately 200 Canadian military trainers currently deployed to Ukraine, it is likely that on the first of January they would have witnessed a torch lit procession. Throughout Kiev and numerous other towns in Western Ukraine, thousands of civilians took to the streets – not to usher in the New Year – but to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of a man named Stepan Bandera.  Scott Taylor, Canadian Military Magazine

Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine have all held parades in honour of those who fought in Nazi SS units. The Latvian SS units who fought for the Nazis in the Second World War were praised by Latvian Defence Minister Artis Pabrike in December, who spoke of them as "the pride of the Latvian people and of the state". One of the unit's officers, Viktors Arajs, participated in the murder of 26,000 Jews with his unit. At a dinner party in Riga he entertained guests with his method of killing Jewish babies.

Throwing the babies into the air, then shooting them would avoid any ricochets that might occur if the babies were shot while lying on the ground. Eastern European nations such as Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania are involved in rebuiilding their national identities, "rediscovering" individuals from the 1940s to elevate them to the status of national heroes, according to Holocaust researcher, Professor Per Anders Rudling.

Latvian Herbert Cukurs was a key member in the Arajs Kommando, known as the "Butcher of Riga". In 2014, the Israeli government raised concerns relating to a musical performed in Latvia celebrating his life, that of a Nazi war criminal whom Holocaust survivors linked to the murder of Jews. Over 50 members of the U.S. Congress in 2018 condemned Ukraine's efforts to glorify leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, along with the 14th SS Galizien Division, comprised of Ukrainian volunteers.

"It's particularly troubling that much of the Nazi glorification in Ukraine is government-supported", the letter stated. Poland passed legislation to make it illegal to accuse Poles of any complicity in the Holocaust when the simple reality is that fascist Germany felt confident in placing a number of forced labour and death camps in Poland, knowing there would be no popular outcry from a country where antisemitism was well entrenched.

In Western Ukraine, thousands of civilians took to the streets to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera

Lithuania's pro-Nazi government had been involved in the rounding up and murder of Jews, according to well-researched conclusions, yet a new law is under consideration in Lithuania to declare that neither Lithuania nor its leaders had ever participated in the Holocaust. Ukrainians, for their part, push back against Israel's condemnation, insisting that Stepan Bandera had never supported Nazi Germany, just as the Latvian government claims the Latvian SS units hadn't fought in support of Hitler, but to fight the Soviets.

News articles and research relating to Nazi collaborators have been dismissed by officials in Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Lithuania, claiming them to be the product of Russian disinformation campaigns meant to cast their countries in a bad light. Canadian officials failed to join Jewish groups condemning Latvian Defence Minister's Pabriks praise of the Latvian SS and two months later, he met with Canadian Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan, while next month he returns to Ottawa for a defence conference.

Chrystia Freeland, formerly Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and in this new Liberal government named as deputy Prime Minister, is of Ukrainian background. She has been banned from entry to Russia. Her grandfather was a Ukrainian patriot who collaborated with Nazi Germany, publishing a newspaper in Nazi-occupied Poland, supportive of the Third Reich and rife with antisemitic tropes. The Ukrainian-Canadian community has always denied that members of the 14th SS Galizien were Nazi collaborators, many of whose members immigrated to Canada.

After Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, their initial collaboration with the Nazis and participation in the slaughter of Ukrainian Jews prevented Bandera and Shukevych from being considered national role models. However, much to the consternation of the Jews, and the Poles – whom Bandera’s OUN also massacred in the thousands – over the past three decades history in Ukraine has been revised.

At the time of the Maidan uprising in 2014, the spirit of Bandera was revived by the right wing, ultra-nationalists, and, just five years later, his past crimes have been whitewashed to the point where his date of birth is a national holiday.  Scott Taylor, Global-Politics,EU

Poland Should Study Remorse and Humility

"During World War II, due to the demoralizing circumstances and German actions, it is true that vile-acting individuals could be found among Poles and Jews alike."
"Yet, we should remember that the objective of the Germans was also to 'eradicate the Polish nation' and 'completely destroy Poland'."
"In his numerous publications and public statements, he [Grabowski] falsifies the history of Poland, proclaiming the thesis that Poles are complicit in the extermination of Jews."
"The attempts to ascribe part of the responsibility for the crimes of the World War II and the Holocaust to the Poles are evidently actions damaging Poland and are based on Jan Grabowski’s unconfirmed estimated figures."
Polish League Against Defamation statement

Jews are loaded onto trucks in the Lodz Ghetto, to be sent to an extermination camp in 1942.

"What is important, from my point of view, is that the militant nationalists who nowadays hold sway in Poland be warned that they will be held to account, that they are wrong if they think that their outrageous statements and slanders will go unnoticed."
"The more I studied these issues, I saw a level of complicity of parts of Polish society in the destruction of Polish Jews."
"From among the approximately 250,000 Polish Jews who had escaped liquidations of the ghettos and who had fled, about 40,000 survived. We have thus more than 200,000 Jews who fled the liquidations and who did not survive until liberation. My findings show that in the overwhelming majority of cases, their Polish co-citizens were – directly through murder, or indirectly by denunciation – at the root of their deaths."
"Whether they lived or died depended to a large extent on the attitude of the Poles. [While some Poles did save Jews], Polish society demonstrated various behaviours, some of which were horrifying."
Jan Grabowski, Holocaust researcher, professor, University of Ottawa

Jews are liquidated from the Krakow Ghetto in 1943.

 

"[The Polish League Against Defamation] has attempted to silence Prof. Grabowski by criticizing both his academic credibility and his personal integrity. Most recently, the league circulated a letter to universities in Europe and North America – including the University of Ottawa – that questions Prof. Grabowski’s widely acclaimed scholarship and accuses him of defaming the Polish nation."
"The HRREC affirms our confidence in the highly respected scholarship of Prof. Grabowski and we underline his academic freedom to pursue and publish his research without fear of attacks on his person or reputation."
"The HRREC strongly denounces the attacks on Prof. Grabowski as well as any endeavour to interfere with independent research."
Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC), University of Ottawa

After the Second World War, Jewish refugees who settled in Canada among the already long-settled Jewish immigrants from Europe, became aware that it was entirely conceivable that they might come across a former guard from any of the extermination or forced-labour camps operating in Eastern Europe walking the streets of Canadian cities. East Europeans, post-war, made application to leave their countries of origin and settle in Canada. They took steps to conceal their past during the war and succeeded in their applications for settlement in Canada.

Among them a good number of Ukrainian and Polish nationals who had collaborated with the Nazis taking up prison work with relish, work that made them complicit in the deaths of millions of Europe's Jews. When the Canadian Jewish Congress applied to the various governments of Canada over the years to establish a commission that would root out former war criminals living in Canada who took part in Nazi Germany's genocide against the Jewish population of Europe, nationalist Canadian-Ukrainian did everything they could to circumvent any such actions, denying that Ukrainians had ever been part of Germany's extermination plans.

 

Germany, by contrast, has a dreadful legacy to live down, responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people -- among them six million Jews in a diabolical plan to exterminate European Jews -- through its plan for world domination, bringing the world to a second global conflict in the first half of the 20th Century. Had Nazi Germany with its Axis partners succeeded, there is little doubt that the Nazi killing machine would have continued to dedicate itself to a Jew-free world. Post-war Germany in its defeat had little option but to face its dreadful legacy. Successive German governments have acknowledged the horror of the nation's responsibility.

For the past few years Poland has been strenuously applying itself to teaching the world that it is morally incorrect to refer to 'Polish' concentration camps, though so many were located in Poland. The Nazis knew that in establishing death camps in Ukraine and Poland they could anticipate local complicity. Even in occupied France French police and authorities were swift to make common cause with the Nazis, helping to round up Jews to be dispatched to concentration camps from which they would never return. Poland prefers the descriptive of 'Nazi' concentration camps, never 'Polish' concentration camps. Clearly, Poland struggles with itself, unwilling to remorsefully indulge in introspection.

Dr. Grabowski, a highly internationally respected Holocaust researcher, has been the victim of a campaign of defamation by the Polish League Against Defamation, allied with the conservative ruling party of Poland which claims that his research uses wholly fictional accounts in a deliberate effort to slander Poland. History speaks for itself. There is more than ample documentation, from meticulously-maintained German archives, much less personal testimony of Holocaust survivors to attest to Polish complicity in Nazi atrocities. Ukraine's defence is Poland's as well. Most Eastern European countries lent themselves under Nazi occupation, to the hunt for Jews.

Poland's Law and Justice party attempted to make it a criminal offence to label the concentration camps in that country where millions were exterminated 'Polish' installations. International indignation convinced it to back down. Professor Grabowski wrote an historical accounting of Poland's complicity during the Holocaust years titled Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, to document the involvement of Poles finding and killing Jews who managed to escape from ghettoes attempting to survive by installing themselves surreptitiously among non-Jews.

With its publication, heated debate ensued even as the book was recognized in 2014 for an award by the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research. That award was not the only recognition given Dr. Grabowski for his research and writing; he received numerous death threats. A German newspaper review of the book recognized its quality of revelations and that favourable review saw a response from a far-right Polish website which chose to publish an article alongside a photograph of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister.

"Sieg Heil, Herr Grabowski, Three times Sieg Heil" ran the headline of the article. Leading to a successful libel suit. Now, with this latest besmirching of the professor's scholarship and literary and moral  integrity, the Polish organization is being sued for libel by him, in recognition of its public campaign accusing him of slandering Poland by writing of Polish violence against Jews. Should justice prevail, he will win this lawsuit as well.

Poland does itself no favours by their disingenuous efforts to exonerate their wartime record. Far better to be resigned to the reality of history, to express regret and shame and the intention to cultivate a more humane and responsible admission of wrongs done and deplored. What has passed is past; what is required is to ensure that there can be no repeats of the past. This offensive defensiveness does the country no credit whatever, other than bringing more shame upon it for denying its part in the horrors of genocide.

An inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sits above the main gate at the Auscwitz-Birkenau concentration camp museum in Auscwitz-Birkenau, Poland, February 28, 2018.   Bloomberg