Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t know? Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland didn’t know? The Ukrainian Canadian Congress didn’t know?That’s hard to believe.At least a handful of MPs overseeing billions of taxpayer dollars sent to fund the war in Ukraine should have quickly figured it out. But the whole lot of our elected officials was apparently blindsided.A committee heard Tuesday that nobody knew that the guy given the VIP treatment in the House of Commons last September was a Nazi, a former Waffen SS Grenadier Division combat volunteer in the Second World War.The atrocities — war crimes and horrific crimes against civilians — of the Waffen SS that enlisted willing non-Germans, led Nuremberg’s International Military Tribunal to declare it a criminal organization in 1946.Ukrainians who fought against Russia — that joined the allied forces to defeat Germany’s Adolf Hitler — fought with the Nazis.Yaroslav Hunka, 98, was introduced as a soldier who fought against the Russians. This elementary fact was a huge red flag.Yet Zelensky, Freeland and members of the Congress — people dedicated to all that was and is Ukraine — somehow overlooked this glaring detail when they, along with everyone else, honoured Hunka with thunderous applause and two standing ovations. .If Hunka’s recognition was an unannounced surprise to Zelensky and Freeland, the honourable thing for them to have done for Canada would have been to remain in their seats.“The past history of this gentleman was unknown to all of us,” testified Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.“The name of the individual we are discussing in these proceedings was submitted by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.”There are honourable people in the Congress. There are others with ideology that leans in questionable directions. Hopefully, when they appear before the committee as planned, who exactly recommended that a Nazi be honoured in the House will be identified and forced to explain.MacKinnon said this was a “horrible incident” and a “terrible error.”It was. It brought shame and international condemnation to Canada. Hunka being introduced as a “Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero” spat in the graves of the 45,000 Canadian soldiers who died fighting for freedom in the Second World War, tens of thousands of brutally massacred Poles, and six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust.Did it not that occur to Zelensky that there might be the fallout as he sat there, also welcomed as a hero in the House, with his hand out for more money to fund the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 2022? Did Zelensky willfully show utter disrespect to a country that treats him so well?Speaker Anthony Rota, who introduced Hunka, resigned as he should have.But somehow Freeland, who is Ukrainian, has fallen under the radar in this debacle. Did her personal contempt for Russia cloud her good judgement so much it brought shame to Canada? How could she possibly have not made the connection when it announced that Hunka fought against the Russians?Her maternal grandparents were born in Ukraine. Her mother assisted in drafting Ukraine’s constitution when it gained independence in 1991. She studied at the University of Kyiv, was a journalist in Kyiv, then Moscow’s bureau chief for the Financial Times. Russia’s KGB (now Federal Security Service) had a problem with her activism. Freeland was among several Canadians barred from Russia after sanctions were applied for its annexation of Crimea.But right now, the attention is on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, deservingly so. Opposition members are wondering why Trudeau didn’t resign alongside Rota.Hunka was invited, on Trudeau’s behalf, to a private Toronto reception held in Toronto during Zelensky’s visit. It was on the recommendation of the Congress. Hunka didn’t attend.Is the prime minister’s staff not required to do background checks? If not, how many other shady characters slip through the cracks and are invited to fancy receptions to eat and drink and lobby at taxpayer expense?“Why one standard for the former Speaker who the prime minister threw under the bus and not the same standard for the prime minister, who invited this very same former SS soldier to an exclusive reception?” asked Conservative MP Michael Cooper. When MacKinnon refused Cooper’s demand to apologize on behalf of Trudeau, Cooper said: “You have no shame.”Eric Janse, clerk of the House, explained that Rota submitted the names of Hunka and his son to the Parliamentary Protocol Office. Names are not security screened for reputational damage. The House’s Sergeant-at-Arms Pat McDonell said his security team wasn’t told that Rota would recognize Hunka. Besides, it isn’t mandated to conduct reputational checks on the hundreds of Commons attendees.MacKinnon confirmed there’s “no central authority” that examines political leanings, to which Bloc Quebecois MP Marie Helene Gaudreau replied that a simple Google search “should have raised a red flag.”Or maybe, a word of warning quietly whispered by Canada’s deputy prime minister? Maybe she should be hauled before the committee.Now some will justifiably argue that Hunka was just 18 years old, bitterly angry with the Russians who starved, imprisoned, tortured, sent people to unforgiving Siberia and murdered Ukrainians under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s brutal regime. And that when Hitler’s Nazi’s moved in, they gave him hope. And that he had no idea that their brutality would eventually match that of Stalin’s Red Army.We don’t know what Hunka did. We do know he volunteered to fight with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and did so from 1943-45 — long enough to figure out what SS was all about. To give him immense benefit of the doubt, even as a bystander he would have been complicit, therefore guilty.Hunka wrote poetically about Ukrainian nationalism and revolting against the brutality of Soviet occupation.In 1941, the Germans drove the Soviets out of the region. Hunka’s memoirs don’t bother to mention the ensuing Nazi slaughter aided by volunteer Ukrainians, of more than 100,000 Poles, millions of Jews, and other ethnic groups.He made a choice that other young Ukrainian men chose not to make. Hunka chose the side that tens of thousands of Canadians, some even younger than him, died heroically fighting to defeat.Then Hunka sought refuge in Canada which has afforded him a good life for more than 50 years.And he agreed to be shamelessly paraded into the House, where the same MPs who wear Remembrance Day red poppies to honour Canada’s fallen, gave him two standing ovations.And Zelensky jumped to his feet and clapped feverishly. And Freeland jumped to her feet and clapped feverishly.Because, gee, nobody knew.Can’t wait to hear how the Congress explains how it ‘didn’t know.’
