LEFT: Canada is home to two monuments honoring the 14th Waffen SS “Galicia” Division whose members are shown here meeting SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Some members of the division have been accused of war crimes,
By David Pugliese
As the public prepares for yet another Remembrance Day efforts are under way to push for the removal of three monuments in Canada glorifying Nazi collaborators and instead replace them with statues to honour Canadians who fought against the Third Reich.
As the public prepares for yet another Remembrance Day efforts are under way to push for the removal of three monuments in Canada glorifying Nazi collaborators and instead replace them with statues to honour Canadians who fought against the Third Reich.
The offending monuments include a cenotaph at Oakville’s St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery honouring Ukrainian volunteers of the 14th Waffen SS “Galicia” Division and another similar cenotaph honouring the same Nazi division in Edmonton. In addition there is a bust of Roman Shukhevych, a Nazi collaborator in Ukraine who oversaw the murder of Jews, ethnic Poles, Belarussians and others. The organization he was involved with is linked to the killings of more than 100,000 people. That bust was erected at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton in the 1970s.
As author Lev Golinkin points out, the monuments were originally built by the Nazi collaborators themselves who Canada took in with open arms after the war.
B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Polish Congress have jointly called for the removal of the three monuments.
Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, an official with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, has also echoed that call. “It is beyond shameful to have (these) monuments here in Canada,” noted Kirzner-Roberts. “These monuments are nothing less than a glorification and celebration of those who actively participated in Holocaust crimes as well as the mass murder of Polish civilians.”
Others are calling for the monuments to be torn down and replaced with memorials honouring the 40,000 Canadian- Ukrainians who joined the Canadian military and actually fought against the Nazis.
The monuments have long been controversial. Canadian Jewish groups have tried for years to have the Shukhevych bust removed. Last year B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Polish Congress raised questions why such monuments even exist in Canada, labelling them as an affront to veterans. “Such monuments dishonour the memory of the victims and those who fought against Nazi Germany in World War II,” they added in their statement.
The Ukrainian nationalists who are behind the monuments have refused to take them down. Since the commemorative structures are on private property there seems to be little that can be done.
Ukraine’s 14th SS Division was formed in 1943 when Nazi Germany needed to shore up its forces as allied troops, including those from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Soviet Union, started to gain the upper hand and turn the tide of the war. In May 1944, SS leader Heinrich Himmler addressed the division with a speech that was greeted by cheers and clearly reflected the views of those who served in the unit and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler. “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews,” Himmler said. “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.”
There are allegations members of the 14th SS Division took part in killing hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944 in the village of Huta Pieniacka. The division was also used by the Nazis to crush a national uprising in Slovakia, again prompting allegations of war crimes.
Ukrainian nationalists in Canada defend the monuments, claiming falsely, that the SS unit was used to only fight for Ukraine independence and that Shukhevych was never involved in the killing of Jews and Poles. They say those who object to the monuments are anti-Ukrainian or supporting a Russian disinformation campaign.
But those who want the monuments torn down point out their efforts aren’t about being against Ukrainians but instead they are speaking out against those Ukrainians who supported the Nazis and took part in the Holocaust.
Questions have also been raised why the Ukrainian nationalists in Canada are so reluctant to honour Ukrainian-Canadians who actually fought against the Nazis. While there are two monu- ments in Canada for the Ukrainian SS division, there is no similar monument to the 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians who served in our country’s navy, air force and army during the Second World War.
The Shukhevych bust and the two SS cenotaphs have also been the target of vandalism, with slogans being scrawled on the monuments pointing out the Nazi connection. In the summer the cenotaph in Edmonton was defaced with “Nazi Monument” and “14th Waffen SS” in red paint, noted the Progress Report, an online publication.
That prompted some Ukrainians to complain that the SS division was being “defamed.” Someone also painted “Actual Nazi” on the Shukhevych bust.
But critics have proposed a simple solution to stop such vandalism. “If they want people to stop spray-painting ‘Nazi’ on their statue then they should take down the Nazi statue,” Evan Balgord of Anti-Hate Canada told the Progress Report.
Canadian Ukrainian nationalists aren’t the only ones supporting public monuments to Nazi collaborators and members of the Third Reich.
In 2020 individuals and various groups such as B’nai Brith Canada rallied to successfully rename a street in Ajax, Ontario that was dedicated to Hans Langsdorff, who commanded the Graf Spee. Langsdorff hailed Hitler as “a prophet, not a politician.” The naval officer committed suicide after scuttling his warship. His suicide note pointed out that “I shall face my fate with firm faith in the cause and the future of the nation and of my Führer.”
In 2017 various groups rallied to force organizers of an aviation conference in Lachute, Quebec not to celebrate Nazi pilot Hanna Reitsch.
Reitsch was a darling of Nazi propaganda, a test pilot for the Stuka dive bomber among other planes and the first female helicopter pilot. She also presented Hitler with Operation Suicide, a plan to use pilots as human glide bombers to attack Canadian and other allied forces. Reitsch went to her grave in 1979 as a true believer of the Nazi cause, boasting that she still wore the Iron Cross with diamonds that Hitler gave her. Reitsch said she and all Germans did have guilt from the era of the Third Reich but that guilt was because they had lost the war.
Organizers with Women of Aviation Worldwide, the group co-ordinating the conference, saw nothing wrong with honoring the Nazi pilot, claiming she could be a role model for females around the world. “Are we going to do something and change the world and make it a better world, or are we going to keep on talking about the past?” organizer Marguerite Varin told the CBC.
But disgusted by the decision of the conference organizers to celebrate the Nazi, politicians in Lachute acted. Lachute Mayor Carl Péloquin said when the town found out about the event they contacted the organizers, threatening to prevent the event from taking place at the municipal airport. “We told them that we wouldn’t be accepting or tolerating any kind of events in relation with Nazism or any other kind of extremist movement,” Péloquin said to journalists.
As a result, the plan to honor Reitsch was dropped from the program.
Controversy is now starting to grow over another monument now being built in Ottawa.
The $7.5 million Memorial to the Victims of Communism is being financed mainly with Canadian tax dollars. The structure has support from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Alberta premier Jason Kenny, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler, former Green party leader Elizabeth May, and former NDP leader Tom Mulcair.
But in July 2021, the CBC reported that the monument received donations in honour of known fascists and Nazi collaborators. The structure is being partly financed by a campaign which sells “virtual bricks” which are supposed to be dedicated to victims of communism and include biographical notes about the individuals being commemorated.
But some of those bricks have been purchased to commemor- ate Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators such as Ante Pavelić, the CBC reported. Pavelić was the leader of the notorious Ustaša who ran Croatia during the Second World War on behalf of the Nazis. The Ustaša murdered more than 300,000 Serbs and 55,000 Jews and Roma. Ustaša methods of killing were so brutal that even some SS officers complained.
Other bricks have been purchased for additional Ustasa officials as well as Hungarian fascists who helped the Nazis. The League of Ukrainian Canadians’ Edmonton Branch, purchased five virtual bricks in honour Shukhevych, the CBC reported. “If Canada commemorates Ante Pavelić or Roman Shukhevych, it can throw its human rights record right in the trash,” Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, told the national broadcaster.
So why are Nazi collaborators finding honours in Canada, a country that did so much to help destroy the Third Reich? With Canadian Second World War veterans dying off and the horrors of the Holocaust a distant memory, an opening has emerged for those who want to rewrite the history of Adolf Hitler’s regime and those who served it.
A movement is afoot to claim that the Nazi collaborators and the SS units made up of Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians and other eastern Europeans, were actually nationalistic heroes and in no way associated with the Nazis. These days there are parades in Latvia and Ukraine to honour these SS units who fought under the Swastika. These parades and memorials have attracted the support of Neo-Nazis and other fascist groups.
