Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Honourable members of Parliament, on behalf of the Canadian Polish Congress, thank you for this opportunity to address the serious matter of the former member of the SS Galicia unit who was invited to be honoured in the House of Commons last year.
Canada’s Polish community, much like Canada’s Jewish community, watched in horror as members of Parliament, inadvertently prompted by the then-Speaker of the House, rose in the chamber to applaud Yaroslav Hunka as a “Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero” who fought against the Russians. That wording immediately caught our attention, as it quickly became evident who Mr. Hunka had fought for: namely, the SS Galicia unit. This moment was a shock for Polish Canadians, who were baffled at how such an event could have come to pass in our House of Commons.
To properly address that question, it is important to set out the relevant historical context. First, the Waffen SS was not a conventional German Wehrmachtmilitary unit. Rather, it was quite literally the combat wing of the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel organization, which was created to implement its aims. Its members were required to swear personal fealty to Adolf Hitler. The SS Galicia, also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, 1st Galician, was created by Nazi Germany as a part of a broader strategy to recruit and mobilize non-German ethnic groups in occupied territories to fight alongside the German armed forces.
The SS Galicia was composed mainly of Ukrainian volunteers from the Galicia region, then part of Nazi German-occupied Poland. These volunteers were motivated by various factors, including opposition to Soviet rule, nationalist sentiments and promises of autonomy. Nazi Germany exploited these sentiments to bolster its military forces and further its goals of expansion and domination in eastern Europe.
Mr. Yaroslav Hunka was a member of the SS Galicia, and proudly so. In his own words, published in a readily accessible online blog from 2011 in the The Combatant News, Mr. Hunka recalled, “The Polish army and the civilian population are fleeing along the road in the direction of Berezhany in a continuous stream, and German planes are catching up with them from time to time. Every day we impatiently looked in the direction of the Pomoryans [the Germans] with the hope that those mystical German knights who give 'bullets' to the hated cowards will appear."
Another quote reads, "At the call of the OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists], many joined the ranks of the UPA [Ukrainian Patriotic Army]. Others, at the call of the Ukrainian Central Committee, went as volunteers to the 'Galichyna' division. In two weeks, eighty thousand volunteers volunteered to join the division, including many students of the Berezhan Gymnasium.
Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance documents SS Galicia’s role in the Huta Pieniacka massacre, which occurred on February 28, 1944, in Nazi German-occupied Poland. This massacre involved the murder of approximately 500 Polish civilians, including women, children and the elderly, by a joint force of soldiers from the SS Galicia and other units under German command.
Further, in a speech to the soldiers of the 1st Galician Division, Heinrich Himmler, the infamous head of the SS, is quoted as saying:
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.
Given historically documented examples like this, it is unfortunate that some have attempted to minimize the criminal nature of the Waffen SS by selectively using Canada’s Deschênes commission report as a sort of fig leaf. What is not often mentioned is that the Deschênes commission was limited by the scope of its investigation, which focused on identifying individuals suspected of involvement in war crimes who had emigrated to Canada after World War II. Moreover, its ability to access evidence, especially from witnesses, foreign governments and agencies was limited, given that the region was still behind the Iron Curtain at that time.
The question of whether or not Mr. Hunka himself was involved in perpetrating war crimes is not central to the debate. What we know is there is no ambiguity about the criminal nature of the SS, of which he was a voluntary member, and this historical fact cannot be dismissed as Russian disinformation.
The brutal attacks carried out by the Waffen SS units, including the Galician Division and others, such as the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, are forever part of the tragic legacy of the Second World War in what Yale historian Timothy Snyder appropriately termed the “Bloodlands.”
From the perspective of Canada’s Polish community, there is no question that a former member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) should never have been recognized in the House nor, as we later learned, been invited to a reception hosted by the Prime Minister of Canada for visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This regrettable incident, which this committee has been investigating, embarrassed President Zelenskyy during his visit, damaged Canada's reputation and played right into Vladimir Putin's false narrative about modern Ukraine at a critical time in its heroic fight for survival against Russian aggression. Worst of all, it was easily avoidable. Mr. Hunka’s words, which I quoted earlier, and his association with SS Galician were readily accessible via a cursory online search.
The Canadian Polish Congress sincerely hopes that the House of Commons and the Government of Canada will reflect on this situation and leverage the significant resources at their disposal to ensure that guests it wishes to single out for recognition are properly vetted and meet our standards of human rights and dignity.
Thank you. I look forward to any questions you may have.
