Anonymous ID: 7160f6 Sept. 29, 2023, 6:51 p.m. No.19635701   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>5704 >>5740 >>6516

August 20, 2004, Hunka was named an Honorary Citizen of the City of Berezhany by the Berezhany city council, in Ukraine.

http://berezhanymrada.gov.ua/index.php/struktura/images/15.pdf

 

The title of "Honorary Citizen of Berezhany" was awarded by the decision of the session of Berezhany City Council on 20.08.2004 No. 534 b. 1925 Secretary of the Main Committee of the Publishing House of the II volume "Berezhany Land". Until June 1943 he studied at the Berezhany gymnasium. In September 1943 he joined the ranks of the Galicia Division, the First Division of the Ukrainian National Army. In 1954 he moved to Canada, where he became a member of the brotherhood of soldiers of the First Division of the UNA, which is attached to the World Congress of Free Ukrainians. In 1994 he was an observer at the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in Mykolayiv. In 2003, he was a delegate from the UCC to the Ukrainian World Congress in Kyiv. He is a sincere patron of many cultural projects in Berezhany. He lives in Toronto (Canada).

Anonymous ID: 7160f6 Sept. 29, 2023, 7:20 p.m. No.19635908   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>5945 >>6000

>>19635888

https://twitter.com/RedCross/status/1690802853705641985

The Red Cross has nothing whatsoever to do with the transactions alleged in a circulating video of containers of money with an ICRC logo. We strongly condemn the use of a fake ICRC logo. Our emblems stand for neutral and impartial aid. Any misuse may have a serious impact on our ability to reach those in need.

Anonymous ID: 7160f6 Sept. 29, 2023, 7:27 p.m. No.19635967   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

International Paralympic Committee members on Friday voted against the continued full suspensions of Russia and Belarus, mind-boggling decisions that will allow athletes from those nations to compete as neutrals at Paris 2024.

Anonymous ID: 7160f6 Sept. 29, 2023, 7:53 p.m. No.19636186   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>6245 >>6516

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-veteran-who-helped-bring-30000-ukrainian-refugees-to-canada-to-be/

Veteran who helped bring 30,000 Ukrainian refugees to Canada to be honoured in the U.K.

Anne Panchuk, Flight Lieutenant B. Panchuk and Ann Crapleve visiting the Ukrainian Division 'Galicia' at Rimini, in April, 1947.

Anonymous ID: 7160f6 Sept. 29, 2023, 7:57 p.m. No.19636214   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>6215

https://www.thestar.com/politics/head-of-canadian-ukrainian-group-defends-man-who-fought-for-unit-created-by-nazis/article_80d13a71-3d6a-5e27-9e68-50547253f6ad.html

Head of Canadian Ukrainian group defends man who fought for unit created by Nazis

The president of the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada is defending a Second World War veteran of a Nazi unit who was recently lauded as a hero in Canada's Parliament.

The president of the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada is defending a Second World War veteran of a Nazi unit who was recently lauded as a hero in Canada's Parliament.

Jurij Klufas has not met 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka but says the veteran is being treated unfairly. He says Hunka was fighting for Ukraine โ€” not Germany โ€” and that countries, including Canada, have cleared his division of war crimes.

"If you're a soldier doesn't mean you're a member of a certain party from the country," Klufas said Friday in a phone interview. "In this case, the senior gentleman here was a soldier, in his understanding, fighting for Ukraine."

Hunka received a standing ovation in the House of Commons on Sept. 22 after being introduced by the Speaker as "a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero'' during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Ottawa.

The incident drew widespread international criticism after it was revealed Hunka was a member of a mostly volunteer unit created by the Nazis to fight the Soviet Union. The revelation forced the resignation of Anthony Rota as Speaker and an apology on behalf of Parliament by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political science professor at the University of Ottawa, says the actions of Hunka's Waffen-SS Galicia Division have been "whitewashed" in Canada.

He says supporters have tried to present the division as a patriotic Ukrainian force despite the fact it collaborated with Nazis and was involved in a variety of atrocities, including the killings of Jews, Ukrainians and Poles.

"They represent this division as fighting not for Nazi Germany, but fighting for Ukrainian independence, even though there was never any opportunity to fight for any Ukrainian independence," he said. "They were fighting under German command until the end of World War II."

He said the heroic interpretation is particularly prevalent in Canada, where many of the division's members immigrated under a controversial process that was opposed by Jewish groups.

In 1950, the federal cabinet decided to allow Ukrainians living in the United Kingdom to come to Canada โ€œnotwithstanding their service in the German army," as long as they went through a security screening.

A 1986 commission report on war criminals living in Canada found there were about 600 former members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division living in Canada at the time.

But Justice Jules Deschรชnes, who led the commission, said membership in the division did not in itself constitute a crime, and that "charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this commission."

Anonymous ID: 7160f6 Sept. 29, 2023, 7:57 p.m. No.19636215   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

>>19636214

Jewish groups have noted the existence of at least two Canadian monuments to the division, in Oakville, Ont., and in Edmonton.

In response to questions about Hunka, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said Thursday that the people of present-day Ukraine, including its Jewish population, suffered successive occupations by "foreign empires and colonizers" going back centuries.

"There are difficult and painful pages in the shared history of the communities who made their home in Ukraine," congress CEO Ihor Michalchyshyn said in a statement. "The UCC acknowledges that recent events that brought these pages to the forefront have caused pain and anguish."

Frank Sysyn, a history professorat the University of Alberta, says it's accurate to say that Hunka was not a Nazi, despite fighting for Nazi Germany, because non-Germans weren't allowed to join the party.

He said Canada's choice to allow veterans of the unit to live out their lives in the country ultimately came down to a decision that membership in the unit was not reason enough to prosecute someone, if there was no proof they committed individual crimes. Ukrainians, he added, are far from the only group of postwar immigrants to benefit from such an approach.

"Most of our Italian immigrants of the 1950s, if they were men of a certain age, had probably been in the Italian army and fought for Fascist Italy," said Sysyn, who is a member of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta professor emeritus and the author of a book about Ukrainians and the Holocaust, said many of the young men who joined the Galicia division in 1943 were motivated by the atrocities they witnessed under Soviet occupation, including the murder of thousands of political prisoners and mass deportations to labour camps.

โ€œSo for the people in this region, the Soviets were the nightmare and the Germans were relatively tolerable," he said. "So that, I think, explains why so many of them thought that what they were doing fighting against the Soviets was patriotic.โ€

He said some Galician units did participate in atrocities, including murders in Polish villages. The division had an antisemitic newspaper and accepted into its ranks โ€œpolicemen who had been very important in the Holocaust, who had rounded up Jews for execution and sometimes executed Jews themselves," he said.

He blames the Ukrainian community for failing to fully acknowledge and grapple with the country's Second World War history, including Nazi ties. However, he said many Canadians are guilty of not learning enough about the truths of the war on the Eastern front, including the rapes and murders perpetuated by the Soviets on the Allied side.

Klufas blames the branding of Hunka as a Nazi on "Russian disinformation," adding, "the fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi." He also said there was nothing wrong with Parliament applauding a man "who fought for his country." However, he conceded that it "maybe wasn't correct" in the circumstances, given that the people there didn't fully understand the issue.