Saluting a Nazi

At a high-profile event for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sept. 22, Canadian lawmakers gave 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a Canadian immigrant who ostensibly fought for the First Ukrainian Division against the Russians in World War II, a standing ovation for his service in the cause of freedom. Speaker of the House Anthony Rota introduced Hunka as a “war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians.”

It soon became known that Hunka served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Ukrainian unit formed by the Nazi regime in 1943. This division is notorious for its mass murders of Jews and Poles on the Eastern Front during the war. Journalist Lori Spencer has unearthed a video in which Hunka speaks of yearning for the arrival of the “mystical German knights” during Operation Barbarossa. “We greeted the German army with joy,” Hunka confides.

Rota dutifully fell on his sword, confessing that he took responsibility for the travesty and that members of Parliament and the Ukraine delegation were not aware of his plan to recognize Hunka, who is from Rota’s electoral district. Rota’s admission was obviously met with both relief and righteous indignation since both parliament and leadership were thus absolved of complicity in the debacle. After all, how could they have known that an obscure Canadian immigrant was in effect a war criminal?

“Never in my life would I have imagined that the speaker of the House would have asked us to stand and applaud someone who fought with the Nazis,” House government leader Karina Gould said. “This is very emotional for me. My family are Jewish holocaust survivors. I would have never in a million of [sic] years stood and applauded someone who aided the Nazis.”

Trudeau’s apology — “All of us who were in this House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped even though we did so unaware of the context” — was par for the Liberal course. But the expressions of affront and umbrage, the protestations of innocence, and the apologies, all miss several key points.

First, despite speaker Rota’s disclaimer, it is likely that Trudeau himself had met with Hunka or at least had him officially vetted before he was presented to parliament, which makes perfect sense since all such events and invitations must be approved by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). You don’t bring guests into the inner precincts of the chamber, especially when honoring a foreign dignitary, without the prime minister’s knowledge and consent. Trudeau’s apology rings utterly insincere.

Second, the incident not only embarrassed and compromised Trudeau and Rota, but all 338 Members of Parliament who, after all, offered Hunka two heartfelt standing ovations. The entire House has been tarnished, and every single member who rose and clapped is guilty, if not of compliance, at any rate of the most impregnable ignorance and an absolute dearth of common sense.

Consider: did they not realize that Russia in the Second World War was an ally, responsible at the cost of enormous casualties for driving the Germans back from the gates of Stalingrad to the center of Berlin, marking a turning point in the European theater of war? Did it not dawn on the benighted minds of our representatives that fighting the Russians at that historical juncture would have been the act of an enemy combatant? Hunka’s video makes this painfully obvious.

But anyone with the slightest shred of historical knowledge would not have needed the video or the revelation to understand that the West was then at war with Germany, not with the Soviet Union. That is the deeper shame for which the prime minister, the Speaker of the House, and indeed all 338 members have to answer. They are historically illiterate.

Aside from the Hunka farce, they do not seem aware of the extent to which Nazi collaborators were welcomed into the country after the conflict ended and certainly are not advocating for the declassification of the Deschenes Report which contains the relevant information. They seem oblivious to the fact that the relationship between the Biden regime and Ukraine is rife with corruption, as evidenced by the Burisma scandal.

They refuse to acknowledge that Russia’s belief that NATO’s encroachment on Ukraine’s borders represents a threat to Russian security is a valid political perception. Nor do they realize that Zelenskyy became Ukrainian president after the Obama-inspired Euromaidan coup. The applause accorded the Ukrainian president cloaked in drab camouflage green, who copped a $650 million handout from Trudeau, is a fitting companion to the acclaim heaped on Hunka.

Surely, our political nomenklatura is too obtuse, uneducated, and unobservant to presume to lead an advanced G-20 nation. Some are liars from the egg. Some are sanctimonious prigs in love with their own inflated identities. Some are invertebrate virtue signalers. Most are merely very ordinary people incapable of escaping the trap of presentism — Russia, Russia, Russia — and clearly unused to the habit of thinking or noticing what is immediately plain to see. Zelenskyy is a confidence man. Hunka was engaged in fighting our military allies. Such is the mindset of our parliamentary notables and ministers. These are our lawgivers and decision-makers. God help us all.