Canada’s Future Prime Minister Needs to Come Clean About Her Nazi Collaborationist Grandfather

 

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s electoral base is in Canada’s Ukrainian diaspora community, which has rebranded Nazi collaborators as nationalist war heroes

On Jan. 26, 2022, in the midst of Russia’s preparations to invade Ukraine, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland issued a statement outlining why Canada—home to the largest Ukrainian diaspora outside Russia—would support Ukraine unconditionally, outlining a Manichean view of a “struggle between democracy and authoritarianism.” “Canadians—our own parents and grandparents—fought and died,” she continued, “to establish a rules-based international order during and after the Second World War.”

Freeland’s Ukrainian grandfather on her mother’s side, Michael Chomiak, did nothing of the sort. During the War, he edited Krakivski Visti, a Nazi propaganda rag in occupied Krakow that was printed on a press confiscated from a Jewish newspaper. Freeland, of course, is not her grandfather, nor is she responsible for his actions. But she is responsible for bringing him up at every opportunity to portray him as a liberal democrat who profoundly influenced her politics.  (more...)

Canada’s Future Prime Minister Needs to Come Clean About Her Nazi Collaborationist Grandfather