Zelenskyy and Trudeau Give Standing Ovation To Actual Nazi Soldier

Following speeches before Canada’s parliament, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a standing ovation to a reported former member of a Nazi military division.

After both Zelenskyy and Trudeau spoke before parliament, Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota prompted a standing ovation while honoring a “veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98.”

“His name is Yaroslav Hunka… he is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service,” Rota added, prompting a second round of applause.

The Associated Press later published a picture of Zelenskyy and Trudeau standing to applaud of Hunka — which included a caption identifying the soldier as a former member of the “First Ukrainian Division in World War II.”

According to Breitbart News, “The division is also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a division comprised mostly of Ukrainian volunteers after being established by Nazi Germany in 1943.”

“Although the 14th division of the Waffen SS has not been specifically found guilty of war crimes, it has been tied to several atrocities, including a reported massacre in Huta Pieniacka, a Polish village that had served as a shelter for hundreds of Jews,” the outlet later added.

While the 1946 Nuremberg trials found that the Waffen-SS was guilty of “many massacres and atrocities in occupied territories,” the Canadian government chose to allow Ukrainians who served in the Waffen-SS to be admitted into the country from the U.K. in 1950.

“These Ukrainians should be subject to special security screening, but should not be rejected on the grounds of their service in the German army,” the Canadian cabinet said at the time.

A Ukrainian-language post on the blog Combatant News that was attributed to Hunka shows that he claims to have joined the Nazi military division in 1943 — while also showing photos of Hunka during the war that included his apparent training by the SS in Munich.

In a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, Ivan Katchanovki of the University of Ottowa described the standing ovation for Hunka as “truly unbelievable” and an “epic scandal.”

“Did anyone in parliament or Zelensky realize that he served in [the] Waffen SS division?” he added.

Katchanovski has also asserted that members of the Ukrainian division were implicated in “numerous mass killings” — including “mass executions and other similar massacres of Ukrainians and Jews in Pidhaitsi and Ustyluh and Poles in Edwardopole, Korchunky, Ameryka, Smoligow, Laskow, Chlaniow, and Wladyslawin, and participation in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising in 1944.”

 

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