A Holocaust education centre has labelled Waffen SS soldier Peter Savaryn as a Nazi (U of A photo)
By Tim Ryan
The battle over an Edmonton roadway named after a Waffen SS soldier continues.
Peter Savaryn was honoured by the city with a drive named after him.
Savaryn was a Waffen SS soldier who fought for the Third Reich and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler. He was a member of the 14th Waffen SS Galician division. That division, like all units of the Waffen SS was deemed to be criminal. Division members have been accused of murdering woman and children in an attack on a village in Poland. They burned them alive in a barn. 14th Waffen SS Galician has also been accused of other atrocities during the war.
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center has called on the City of Edmonton to rename Savaryn Drive, CTV reported recently.
In his memoirs, Savaryn, who came to Alberta when the Nazis were defeated, expressed great pride in his Waffen SS service.
Critics say an article in the Edmonton Journal recently whitewashed Savaryn’s Nazi past.
More attention was put on Savaryn after the international embarrassment caused in 2023 when Canada’s Parliament gave one of Savaryn’s fellow soldiers, Yaroslav Hunka, a standing ovation. It was the first time that a western country so honoured a member of the Waffen SS. After it became known that Hunka was a member of the Waffen SS, the Canadian government apologized.
Another apology followed. As CTV News reported, in 2023, following the Hunka controversy, the Governor General’s office apologized for awarding the Order of Canada to Savaryn in 1987.
SS leader Heinrich Himmler reviews Waffen SS troops of 14th SS Galicia (German Government Archives photo)
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center is trying to get the name of Savaryn Drive renamed. “The continued existence of these street names causes pain to Holocaust survivors, the Jewish community and all Canadians who cherish human rights and historical truth,” said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts with the FSWC. “Such a disgrace also dishonours the 45,000 Canadian soldiers who gave their lives fighting Nazism.”
After his SS unit’s surrender, Savaryn came to Canada. Among his accomplishments was to help establish the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. The institute has over the years faced criticism for its less than critical views on Ukrainians who served the Nazis. And it has been criticized for accepting donations from large numbers of Waffen SS members. At least one university faculty member has questioned whether some of the donations were funded by money stolen from Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.
Journalist Hunter Pauli, who has written for the Guardian and Rolling Stone, made an interesting observation about the ongoing debate: “Wiesenthal and Savaryn were from the same hometown, same school even,” he wrote. “Wiesenthal barely survived the local pogroms by Ukrainian nationalists when the Nazis invaded, while Savaryn joined them.”
But Ukrainian nationalists in Canada see the Waffen SS members as true heroes. Some are involved in a petition to keep Savaryn Drive in place.
Over the years, there have been a lot of false claims about the Waffen SS Galicia.
For starters, the claim that members of the division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada is a total fabrication.
Kirzner-Roberts also laid out in an article in the Edmonton Journal the true details about Savaryn:
https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-no-shades-of-grey-about-peter-savaryns-past
She noted that it was troubling to see the Journal publish a piece riddled with distortions and omissions that obscured the truth about Savaryn’s wartime past and the unit he voluntarily joined. “Savaryn was a Nazi, plain and simple,” she wrote. “He voluntarily enlisted in the SS — the organization tasked by Hitler to implement the Holocaust — and served in a unit that committed crimes against humanity targeting Jews, Poles, and others. These are unassailable historical facts. If a man who volunteered for Hitler’s SS is not a Nazi, who is?”
It doesn’t get more clearer than that.
Kirzner-Roberts correctly pointed out that the Edmonton Journal article falsely claimed that Savaryn “condemned” Hitler, and that his decision to enlist in the SS was “not out of hatred for Jews or allegiance to Hitler.”
There is no such evidence whatsoever that Savaryn condemned Hitler.
“What the article does not mention is that when Savaryn joined the SS Galicia, he swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler, served under German officers, and fought where the Third Reich ordered — all while the SS was murdering Jews by the millions,” Kirzner-Roberts pointed out. “The SS Galicia engaged directly in atrocities, including massacres of civilians, such as locking women and children in barns and burning them alive. Are we to believe such actions should be excused?”
Also misleading were the claims that the Deschênes Commission did not find any Nazi war criminals living in Canada. Kirzner-Roberts correctly noted that the Commission identified a number of residents who were implicated in crimes against humanity while serving the Nazi military apparatus. In fact, the Canadian government is still withholding the names of those alleged killers.
Then there are the claims that the Russians are behind the criticism of Savaryn.
Such claims harken back to the anti-Semitic trope which falsely linked Bolsheviks with the Jews, thus setting the stage for the Holocaust.
“Most disturbingly, perhaps, the article suggests that Jewish organizations raising objections to Nazi glorification in Canada are parroting Russian disinformation,” Kirzner-Roberts wrote. “This claim is as absurd as it is offensive. It portrays Jewish voices as foreign agents rather than principled advocates for truth and justice. For the record, Jewish organizations have stood firmly with Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. To smear them as Russian propagandists is a gross insult.”
There are calls for a more thorough examination of alleged Nazi collaborators and fascists who fled to Canada after Hitler was defeated. Recently researchers compiled a list of such individuals – Savaryn’s name was on that. Others included Dmytro Kupiak, Sylenko Porfirii, Danylo Luciuk and dozens more.
It would seem that the best course of action would be to release the war criminals list being withheld by the Canadian government.
And the easiest way to settle the controversy over Savaryn Drive?
Rename the roadway after one of the brave Ukrainian-Canadians who fought for Canada during the Second World War. There are some 40,000 such individuals.
There is absolutely no need to name a roadway in Canada or anywhere else after a soldier who willingly fought for the Waffen SS.
