Kingston, Ont. political expert says Galicia Division members weren’t war criminals

There are still conflicting opinions, locally in Kingston, Ont., about whether the army unit linked to a World War 2 veteran — whose recent appearance in Parliament has resulted in controversy — was fighting for the Nazis.

House of Commons speaker Anthony Rota stepped down on Tuesday after it became clear that the decision to hail Yaroslav Hunka as a war hero was made solely by his office.

“We’re aware of the staff that he has, and the apparatus of making these decisions and these invitations, and clearly there was a failure within that,” Kingston and the Islands MP, Mark Gerretsen said.

But politics aside, at least one expert in European political history says he doesn’t agree with the way Hunka’s “Galicia Division” has been portrayed as a Nazi unit.

“They joined this military unit to defend their homeland, to fight against the Soviets, whom they’d already experienced once. They weren’t pro-Nazi, they weren’t anti-Semitic and they didn’t indulge in war crimes,” Lubomyr Luciuk said.

Luciuk is a professor at Kingston’s Royal Military College, he was also part of a commission in the 1980s which looked into claims at the time that the Galacia division were Nazi war criminals.

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He says what the inquiry found was that the claims were part of a Soviet disinformation campaign called “Operation Payback,” and that the commission found the allegations to be unfounded.

“People don’t read anymore,” Luciuk said. “When this thing blew up I said, ‘Well, look at the Deschenes Commission,’ it’s available in French and in English online…. no one looked.”

Lawyer David Matas was also part of that 1980s commission, but he disagrees with Luciuk’s perspective on the Galicia Division. Matas says the evidence strongly suggests they indeed were part of the S.S.

“Just because the Soviets say something doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Matas said from his home in Winnipeg. “For some Ukrainians, I mean they were prepared to go along with the Nazis simply because the Nazis were opposing the Soviets who were causing so much trouble.”

Matas goes on to say that the while the commission didn’t find evidence of specific war crimes by Hunka’s unit, it was clear that they were following orders under the Nazis, and deserve the disrepute that comes with that.

“I mean if you’re a member of a criminal gang, what’s identified as a criminal gang, you can be culpable for your membership,” Matas said.

Luciuk says that’s jumping to a conclusion that hasn’t been proven.

“If there’s evidence, credible, compelling evidence, that an individual, not a community, an individual committed a war crime, put it before the appropriate authorities, let them assess that evidence and if it merits it proceed with prosecution,” Luciuk said.

Regardless of the historical debate, there’s no turning back the clock on the political fallout. Anthony Rota has already stepped down, and Poland is seeking the extradition of Yaroslav Hunka.