dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

http://espritdecorps.ca/history-feature/whitewashing-the-ss-the-attempt-to-re-write-the-history-of-hitlers-collaborators

Deschênes and his commission stayed in Canada, never travelling to Europe to interview those who suffered atrocities at the hands of 14th SS Galicia and the Nazis. Even a cursory examination of British government archives would have revealed the report the Polish underground sent to the Polish government-in-exile in London about the massacre at Huta Pieniacka. “The 14th Division of the Ukrainian SS surrounded the village Huta Pieniacka from three sides,” the report to Poland’s government- in-exile explained. “The people were gathered in the church or shot in the houses. Those gathered in the church – men, women and children – were taken outside in groups, children killed in front of their parents. Some men and women were shot in the cemetery, others were gathered in barns where they were shot.”

The 14th SS Galicia is also implicated in other atrocities in four other Polish villages, according to historians.

During part of 1944 the unit was stationed in Slovakia where it was involved in fighting partisans and took part in crushing the Slovak National Uprising. The division then moved to Slovenia in early 1945 where it continued fighting anti-Nazi partisans. These actions undercut claims by some in the Ukrainian-Canadian community that the SS Galicia Division only defended its Ukraine homeland. The division’s operations hunting down partisans, killing civilians, and burning down villages clearly show their actions were part of the greater Nazi war machine.

More concerning is the fact that Deschênes concealed a report prepared for his commission that concluded, “At least some persons who served with the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian police/militia units that participated in killing actions (of Jews) in 1941-1943 would have found their way into the ranks of the (Galician) Division.” The commission kept that report secret and it was only years later that a heavily censored copy was released through the Access to Information law.

Some have defended Justice Deschênes, stating he was under pressure from the Canadian government to clear the division and appease the Ukrainian Canadian community.

But over the decades as Holocaust historians publish more details about the atrocities of those who served in the SS Galicia Division, it has become clear to critics that the Deschênes commission was simply a whitewash of a military unit that subscribed to and served the ideology of Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

Deschênes died in the year 2000. But his report lives on to be used by those who want to continue to whitewash the Nazi regime’s crimes and the eager collaborators who helped in those atrocities.