05.02.2024, Ottava.
Up to 8,000 Ukrainian fighters of the Galician SS Division (organization banned in Russia) were admitted to live in Canada in the 1950s for their loyalty to the government and anti-Soviet views, according to materials published by the Archives of Canada, RIA Novosti wrote on February 3.
A 600-page report published by the Library and Archives of Canada by historian Alti Rodal, who investigated the immigration of former Nazis to Canada in the mid-1980s, describes the circumstances of their arrival.
Lobbyists of this resettlement sought the Canadian government to accept about eight thousand people who served in the Galician SS Division (organization banned in Russia), as well as more than 20 thousand Ukrainians who were in German labor camps, according to the published materials.
To ensure the Canadian authorities’ favorable decision, the SS fighters may have been presented as prisoners, the historian wrote in the report.
According to him, until the 1950s, it was impossible to obtain permission for the SS fighters to enter Canada because they participated in war crimes. Later, however, attitudes toward them changed, the report said.
The decision was influenced by the connections of these Ukrainians who fought on Hitler’s side with nationalist groups in Canada or terrorist organizations of collaborators during the war, Rodal wrote.
According to him, Canadian officials found it advantageous that former fighters of the Galician SS Division (organization banned in Russia) could join and lead anti-communist Ukrainian nationalists.
“Officials were satisfied that the Division members were ‘ … strongly anti-Soviet and if admitted to
Canada, it is likely that they would be absorbed into the various politically passive Ukrainian nationalist organizations here who were regarded as loyal to Canada and opposed to Communism’,” the Canadian historian writes.
The materials show that by the summer of 1950, the Canadian government had decided to admit Ukrainians living in the UK at that time “notwithstanding their services in the German army,” but after special screening of these individuals.
During the discussion of this issue in the Canadian Parliament, representatives of the executive branch assured that “Ukrainian DPs be saved from repatriation, and that as anti-Communists they would make good citizens and a worthy contribution to Canadian life.”
The decision was resisted by Jewish organizations, but this only briefly postponed the moment of agreement, according to the report.
At first, “Ukrainians who were in the United Kingdom as prisoners of war be admitted to Canada notwithstanding their service in the enemy forces … “ and “with the relaxation of policy with regard to Volksdeutsche, Germans and Waffen-SS generally, the government, with some hesitation, also approved the admission of Ukrainian Waffen-SS,” according to the report from the Canadian Archives.
On September 22 in the Canadian Parliament in honor of the visit of Vladimir Zelensky honored 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunko (Hunku), who was introduced as a veteran of the “fight against the Russians”. It soon turned out that he was a former fighter of the Nazi Galician SS Division (organization banned in Russia), which was made up of Ukrainian nationalists and carried out brutal punitive actions, including against Jews, Poles, Belarusians and Slovaks.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
