Nazi party member Max Brose and his fellow Nazis (Photo imagery courtesy of Lev Golinkin/The Forward)
By Tim Ryan
Another day in Canada brings yet another discovery of more streets that honour Nazis or Nazi collaborators.
Canada is gaining quite the reputation of being a country which has more than its share of memorials to those who fought for the Third Reich and supported the Holocaust.
There are the monuments to the Ukrainian Waffen SS soldiers, Estonian SS troops and of course Canadian politicians gave a standing ovation in Parliament to Waffen SS soldier Yaroslav Hunka.
Now Lev Golinkin, who writes for the U.S. Jewish publication, The Forward, and who was the first to report the Hunka story, has found a couple of streets named for Hitler’s supporters.
In London, Ontario we have a street named for Max Brose, a Nazi party member and industrialist who used slave labour at his factories that churned out weapons for the Third Reich.
And in Edmonton, Golinkin discovered a street honouring Waffen SS soldier, and Hunka comrade, Peter Savaryn. As CTV News reported, in 2023, following the Yaroslav Hunka controversy, the Governor General’s office apologized for awarding the Order of Canada to Savaryn in 1987.
Savaryn, the SS man, was also at one time the Chancellor of the University of Alberta.
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center has called on the City of Edmonton to rename Savaryn Drive, CTV reported. The Holocaust education group has also called on the City of London to rename the drive named after Brose.
“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.”
Kirzner-Roberts pointed out that Brose “was happy to have Jewish and other slaves working in his plant to produce armaments for a genocidal war effort.”
Brose joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and was given the title Wehrwirtschaftsführer or industry leader. He also benefited from the theft of Jewish property by the Nazis, purchasing the villa seized from a Jewish resident of Coburg who was later murdered.
For his part, 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 Waffen SS members.
Golinkin, a regular contributor to the Forward is a major force behind the publication’s Nazi Collaborators Monuments Project. That is an investigation chronicling monuments and honors to Nazis and their collaborators all over the globe, the publication has noted.
It will be interesting to see if there is any pushback to this latest expose from the usual gang - Marcus Kolga, Justin Ling and Terry Glavin. They all have complained in the past that this type of media coverage only helps the Russians.
Maybe this trio should just acknowledge that most Canadians are pretty disgusted with all of the monuments and streets named for these Nazis and the collaborators whose support made the Holocaust possible.
And let’s not forget Lubomyr Luciuk..
It could be just a coincidence, but Luciuk – a retired Royal Military College professor -has seemed at times extremely focused on Golinkin. Check out some of the YouTube videos.
Luciuk has referred to Golinkin as a “Soviet Jew” which is somewhat ironic since Golinkin- unlike Luciuk – was actually born in Ukraine.
And then there is Luciuk’s claim that Golinkin is a “fiction writer.” In fact, Golinkin writes non-fiction and is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, which chronicles his immigration from Ukraine.
What should be interesting is the next entries in the Forward’s Nazi Collaborators Monuments Project. Unfortunately, the entries never seem to end, which in itself is a dreadful commentary on the world today.
