Trudeau’s apology: is all fair in love (for Nazi collaborators) and war?
Was the Canadian House of Commons gamed by a covert inter-generational positive emotional attachment to the Nazis as “liberators?"
“He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.” (Speaker of the House Anthony Rota about Yaroslav Hunka in the Canadian House of Commons, September 22, 2023)
The rapturous applause in the Canadian parliament for Yaroslav Hunka—a 98-year-old Canadian man originally from the Ukraine who was presented as a hero fighting the Russians but who was soon after exposed as an ex-SS soldier—might appear to be primarily a display of ignorance and confusion about WW2 history—viewed through the distancing and blurring fog of time. (It was also perhaps a reminder that following social cues—in this case clapping—does not always lead one down the path of truth and virtue.)
I do not blame the participants in the standing ovation. Who among us has never clapped without fully understanding what they were applauding? Usually, the emperor is naked. In this case, he happened to be wearing an SS uniform.
Given widespread ignorance about the networks of Nazi collaboration during World War II and about the rhetorical masks typically worn by Nazi sympathizers, Trudeau’s claim, “all of us who were in the House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context” has a ring of truth and honesty to it. However, when it comes to at least one clapper—Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland—“unaware of the context” is most likely not accurate. How credible it is that Freeland, who in the past had to engage with claims that her Ukrainian grandfather was a Nazi collaborator, was “unaware of the context” of Ukraine in World War II?
If Trudeau was sincere about apologizing to those who suffer inter-generational trauma as a result of the Nazi genocide, he could have more accurately said that “most of us” rather than “all of us” were not aware of the context.
Instead, Trudeau provided further proof of his high level of comfort with the gaming of history when he did not stop at apologizing (which is a good idea if you are actually apologizing) but felt the need to add, “Friday's joint session was about what Canada stands for, about our steadfast support of Ukraine’s fight against Putin's brutality, lies and violence. It was a moment to celebrate and acknowledge the sacrifices of Ukrainians as they fight for their democracy, their freedom, their language and culture, and for peace. This is the side Canada was on in WWII, and this is the side we are on today.”
The last sentence stands out like a sore thumb. “This” is a conveniently generic word. Trudeau awkwardly manipulates this bland word to tie the allied fight against the Nazis to what he articulates as being Canada’s mission today. Having apologized five seconds before, Trudeau efficiently moves on to deflecting attention away from the manipulation of the Canadian House of Commons, suggesting that it was the result of one man’s error despite collective noble intentions—the same intentions that animated the allies’ fight against the Nazis in World War II.
There is no real history in Trudeau’s invocation of Canada’s role in World War II. In World War II, Hunka was among the Ukrainians who were Nazi collaborators (not all were), and Canada was an ally of Britain, the United States and Russia. This means that some Ukrainians (including the man invited to Parliament) regarded the Nazis as their liberators from Soviet oppression (indeed, the communists committed terrible atrocities in the Ukraine) and viewed the allies as their enemies. In the perception of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, it was the Nazis—not the Canadians—who would bring them freedom and peace. Some Ukrainians also actively participated in the execution of the Holocaust—their roles ranging from enthusiastic spectators to concentration-camp guards and several other functions. If my vague memory of some accounts I heard serves me right, the sadism of some of the Ukrainian guards toward their Jewish victims during the Holocaust was sometimes “explained” in relation to the guards’ own experiences of starvation and hardship under the communists in the 1930’s—the oppressed becoming a demonic oppressor. I seem to recall a reference to a Ukrainian who later turned Nazi guard having had to eat his cat due to starvation under communism.
Canada fought in World War II along the allies because Britain declared war against Germany, and Canada was obligated to join. There is evidence that the allies were not sufficiently motivated to help the victims of Nazi atrocities and missed many opportunities to do so, even as they ultimately liberated those among them who survived—for which we are eternally grateful (as a reminder that helping Jews was not the focus of the allies, see Trudeau’s apology regarding the ship of Jewish refugees that Canada denied entry to in 1939). The focus of the allies was beating Germany. Saving the Jews and other victims of the Nazis was an outcome, not the primary motivating factor of going to war.
For people who grew up with the inter-generational trauma of the Holocaust—or who grew up in the typical cultural milieus of the Western formerly allied nations—the emotional attachment to Nazism is typically negative—sometimes very profoundly, nightmarishly negative. However, it should be remembered that during its short and vicious tenure, the Nazi regime was fiercely admired and loved by many people in Germany, and to some extent among some members of the population in collaborating nations. These people believed that they were entering a thousand-year reign of glory and viewed the Nazis as cultivated, superior liberators and redeemers.
It would be naïve to believe that the positive emotional attachment to Nazism in the hearts of those who viewed the Nazis as liberators from communism or from other real or feared horrors simply fizzled out with the defeat of Nazi Germany—and that this positive emotional attachment has no inter-generational echo. It would be equally naïve to believe that the tireless efforts of Holocaust educators were highly effective when Grandma and Grandpa privately told you things that “complicated” the “Jewish” “self-centered” and “exaggerated” narrative. In other words, it would be naïve to believe that Canada does not have some people who have a covert inter-generational positive emotional attachment to Nazism and that this phenomenon would not express itself in the public sphere—for example through the distortion and watering down of Holocaust memory. In some ways, the fiasco in Parliament was almost bound to happen in a culture that has been increasingly emphasizing subjectivity over shared moral values.
Typically, people who have a covert inter-generational positive emotional attachment to Nazism (or who for some other reason developed a positive emotional attachment to Nazism) understand that they cannot openly praise the Nazis. In some cases, they may also be genuinely struggling with the positive emotional attachment to Nazism that they have inherited or developed. They tend to express their “different” view of Nazism indirectly through arguments that stress fairness and justice to all human beings and the importance of seeing reality from different points of view. In their rhetoric, the Holocaust is acknowledged, but every war crime seems to be implicitly equivalent to the Holocaust—and perpetrators quickly turn to victims when they lose. Crimes against the Jews are always committed by someone else, not by Grandma and Grandpa. They exploit the well-meaning natures of their listeners to create a moral vacuum into which they weave narratives that sound reasonable, measured, ethically moving and worthy of support on the surface but that, upon examination, reveal themselves to be self serving and riddled with holes. They bait you into arguments in which they seem to be superiorly humane and fair minded while you seem petty and self-centered in your “bickering” about the exceptionalism of the Holocaust. You are falsely made to appear as if you do not care about any other human suffering except for the “idealized” Holocaust. In fact, it is them who mythologize the Holocaust, imagining is as far away and abstract in relation to where Grandma and Grandpa were positioned. They will tell you that Grandma and Grandpa had no idea about the Holocaust but just wanted freedom from their own horrific oppressors—no less horrific than the Nazis (never mind that some people in Nazi-collaborating nations were enthusiastic about getting rid of the Jews, and most seemed at the very least indifferent to the fate of their Jewish neighbors). They will drop references to “enlightened” Jewish friends and colleagues who agree with them as proof of their own virtue (indeed, some Jewish people collaborate with the distortion of the Holocaust, perhaps to feel morally superior to more “self-centered” Jews or for some other reason of self-interest—see the clapping the Jewish Zelensky as a case in point. Why did Trudeau feel the need to apologize to a Ukrainian Jew who should presumably be familiar with “the context?” Should Zelensky himself not apologize for clapping?). But the one type of question that they will likely not ask, in private and with genuine empathy for the Jews, is, “Grandpa, Grandma, what happened to your Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens while you were being ‘liberated’ by the Nazis? What did the Jews ever done do to you that you were so happy about or indifferent to their fate? And did you by any chance help the Nazis take care of the ‘Jewish problem?’ And what would have happened if the Nazis won the war?” Or perhaps they DO ask, with suppressed glee, “what did the Jews do?” and are quite happy to believe false antisemitic tales about Jewish dominance and greed. Antisemitism is not acknowledged for what it is: a projection of the evil within humanity upon the Jews. For who wanted to dominate the world during World War II? And who collected from the Jews any gold tooth or other item that they could get their hands on?
In a documentary I once watched (cannot remember the exact reference), a concentration-camp survivor comes back to his modest home after being liberated. He sees the simple table and chair on which he used to sit as a child and do homework. He also notices that, strangely, the wall boards are missing. The new owner of the expropriated home welcomed the returning survivor by grabbing him by the collar of the shirt and demanding “where is it?” He was referring to the (non-existent) treasure that he was convinced was hiding (according to antisemitic doctrine) in every Jewish home.
The following quote from a Toronto Star article provides a glimpse into the world of positive emotional attachment to the Nazis:
“Much of what is known of Hunka’s wartime record was provided by him directly, in a series of blog posts written in Ukrainian for a publication called Vesti Kombatanta, roughly translated as Combatant’s News. The publication, which dates back to 1961 and is based in the United States, is dedicated to the ‘Brotherhood of the Soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army.’
‘In July 1941, the German army occupied Berezhany,’ wrote Hunka. ‘We greeted the German soldiers with joy.’
‘I just turned 16, and the next two years were the happiest years of my life,’ continued Hunka. He later indicated that he along with many others in his high school joined the Galicia Division in 1943. Photos of Hunka show him in Munich in December 1943, undergoing military training, as well as in Neuhammer, a German village near the current Polish border, where he can be seen posing with soldiers and an anti-aircraft gun. The caption reads ‘training ground, two weeks before leaving for the front, sharp shooting.’”
Hunka remembers 41-43 , when the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities were raging, as the happiest years of his life. His nostalgia for the past is not for lack of apparently having achieved prosperity in Canada. For example, Hunka had an endowment of $30,000 at the University of Alberta named after him and his wife:
Given the scandal that developed, the University of Alberta had no choice but to return the $30,000 to the Hunka family. Their statement declared that they have made the decision to return the money “after careful consideration of the complexities, experiences, and circumstances of those impacted by the situation.” The returning of the money is not interesting, given that our public sphere still has some concern for Holocaust memory. What is interesting is that they took the money in the first place. Do you believe that the experts at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies were not aware of the context of positive emotional attachment to Nazism and of the bloody hands of the SS?
“Complexities” is a favorite word among people with positive emotional attachment to Nazim who are living in a society in which open antisemitism and Holocaust denial are not (yet) acceptable. “Complexities” often refers to the idea that while the Jews suffered, Grandma and Grandpa also suffered at the hands of horrible oppressors and therefore cannot be blamed for looking up to the Nazis as liberators. It is indeed true that the Ukrainian people suffered horrible atrocities due to communism before the Holocaust. But it is NOT true that those among them who looked up to the Nazis as liberators—and who continue to cultivate a positive emotional attachment to the Nazis—cannot be faulted. Again: why was Grandma’s and Grandpa’s suffering the fault of the Jews? The Nazis were not simply “liberators.” They sold to their followers the idea: you are superior; the Jews (and other “inferior” people) have to die. Any person who bought into this toxic and murderous ideology is at fault. And not everybody did (2,691 Ukrainians were honored by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for having risked their lives to save Jewish people). The word “complexities” or the suffering of people who felt liberated by the Nazis (and who rarely acknowledge their own thirst for power) should not be allowed to stand as a smoke screen over the Holocaust. The experience of being inside a gas chamber was not complex—it was brutally simple. The experience of being shot into a pit was not complex. The experience of being buried alive was not complex. Neither were the many pogroms that occurred in eastern Europe before the Nazis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The suffering (or desire for power) of anyone who loved the Nazis was not the fault of the Jews.
University of Alberta statement: https://www.ualberta.ca/news/news-releases-and-statements/statements/2023/2023-09-27-statment-on-the-disposition-of-an-endowment-fund.html
Righteous among the nations: https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/statistics.html
A September 29 article in The Forward by Beth Harpaz and Lev Golinkin points out that the world of positive emotional attachment to the Nazis, with its academic connections, goes deeper and broader than the Hunka family. They quote Per Anders Rudling, “a University [of Alberta] alumnus and expert on Ukrainian nationalism who teaches at Sweden’s Lund University,” who describes worse endowments. I found the Forward article after a friend brought to my attention the honoring of Peter Savaryn, whom the article describes as follows: “One of the University of Alberta’s endowments is for its former chancellor Peter Savaryn, another SS Galichina member. In 1987, Savaryn was awarded the Order of Canada, among the nation’s highest honors, bestowed by Canada’s governor general.” The Forward article also quotes Jack Porter, “a research associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and himself a Jewish child survivor of the Holocaust, born in Ukraine,” as saying that the enthusiasm of the Hunka family for having their patriarch honored in parliament is “arrogance” and not “naivete.” I agree. People with positive emotional attachment to Nazism understand that “Holocaust” is a culturally sensitive word, but in their hearts, in my opinion, they likely feel pride and resentment against the injustice of losing. Many people whose ancestors were Nazis or Nazi collaborators do NOT feel a positive emotional attachment to Nazism. But people who do feel this positive emotional attachment are not simply naïve; they are consciously or subconsciously looking for opportunities to display their pride. They also know that while Canada currently still has enough people who do not wish to see a Nazi collaborator celebrated so that what happened is considered a national embarrassment, in a few decades from now this might no longer be the case—so attempts to rewrite history publicly might be more successful. What happened on September 22, 2023 was a trial run. The battle was lost, but the war for rewriting history can, they believe, be won.
https://forward.com/news/562504/yaroslav-hunka-anthony-rota-canada-ukraine-nazis/?amp=1
What happened in Parliament is not simply the embarrassing display of ignorance. The clapping fiasco could not have been staged without some people harboring a covert positive emotional attachment to Nazism—which generates interest in the rewriting of history. A 98-year-old man does not materialize in the House of Commons out of thin air without inter-generational enthusiasm for glorifying him and what he represents. And no, the invitation to him was not the sole fault of Anthony Rota. Rota was quite possibly gamed by a passion emanating from other people—passion that he may not have fully understood. It is a passion to take the “inconvenient” problem of what happened to the Jews and other victims of the Nazi genocide and put it into “perspective,” making room for Grandma and Grandpa to be the true victim-heroes—and for people with a more “holistic” view of history (to quote an adjective I once heard from a Holocaust distorter) to assert power and control over the narrative.
The House of Commons of Canada gave the world a quick and easy recipe for a history-rewrite salad:
Ingredients:
A small number of people with covert positive emotional attachment to Nazism
Many Canadians eager to display their virtue and trained to follow social cues
Mix thoroughly and sprinkle with some apologies.
Serve quickly while hot and reassert your virtue.
They say that all is fair in love and war. But when your love is for a Nazi collaborator, perhaps it would be better to keep love at home and out of the House of Commons.
Source for image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/smartphone-with-sorry-not-sorry-text-on-the-screen-6633012/
You did a great job here of explaining what would have led this to happen in Canada.
You are right that it's naive to believe that Canada doesn't have a covert inter-generational positive emotional attachment to Nazism.
Thank you Gefen, I am impressed by your analysis of this event in Parliament - Publish it widely, if you can!