Controversy over the marker resurfaced in the aftermath of veteran honored by Parliament
A monument honoring Ukrainian soldiers who served in a Nazi division during World War II has been removed from a cemetery in Ontario after years of lobbying by Jewish leaders and others.
The monument to the 14 th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) was erected in 1988 at West Oak Memorial Gardens, which is owned by St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery, in Oakville, about 20 miles from Toronto. The marker bears the lion and crown insignia of the division, which is also known as SS Galizien and SS Galichina.
Efforts to have it removed gained steam last fall after the Forward reported that a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran honored in Canada’s Parliament during a visit by Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy had served in a unit connected to the Third Reich. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ended up apologizing for the incident and House Speaker Anthony Rota resigned over it, though both politicians said they were unaware of the details of the military service of the man they saluted, Yaroslav Hunka.
Rabbi Stephen Wise, who heads Oakville’s Shaarei-Beth El Synagogue and was among those pushing to remove the cenotaph, said fallout from Hunka’s appearance in Parliament helped “push the item to the top of the agenda.” Among other things, it was visited by neo-Nazis, which raised concerns of the cenotaph transforming into a shrine for white supremacists.
Other monuments to the SS unit remain in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere. Previous investigations by the Forward led to a similar monument being temporarily boarded up in Philadelphia, as well as a monument for another SS unit being removed in Belgium.
Memorials celebrating collaborators as freedom fighters have become a key feature of the modern surge of Holocaust revisionism, which seeks to recast perpetrators as heroes. (more...)
Monument to Ukrainian soldiers who served under Nazis removed from Canadian cemetery
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