By Robin Alan
Many Ukrainians who were in Hitler’s forces during World War II were admitted into Canada after the war. Some of them had participated in killing communists, Poles and Jews.
In September 2023, after all members of Parliament, as well as their guest Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, gave standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka – one of the Ukrainian-Canadians who had fought in Hitler’s forces – there was extensive discussion of releasing a 1986 list of 900 names of Nazi collaborators who had been allowed into Canada.
The list, held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC), has not been released because “stakeholders” were worried about “associating Ukrainian names with Nazis” and that this would “validate Russia’s claims about its military operations in Ukraine,” referring to Putin’s assertion that the objective is de-Nazification.
The “stakeholders” consulted by the LAC included the right-wing Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) but excluded the left-wing and much older Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC) and the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre of Holocaust Studies. Holocaust survivors’ groups were also excluded.
The UCC is now seeking $150,000 in donations to prevent the federal government from making the LAC list public. Professor Jared McBride, a UCLA-based specialist in Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, said that his researchers “using now declassified American government records and other material have already compiled a list of 275 war criminals likely contained in the Canadian records.” McBride added that more names are expected to be added through additional research in the fall.
Mainstream media in Canada has had very little coverage of this. The CBC, for example, has instead extensively covered the release of Vladimir Kara-Murza from a Russian prison, where he was serving 25 years for “treason and spreading false information.”
Kara-Murza, who was made an honorary citizen of Canada because of his outspoken opposition to Russia’s war against the NATO-backed Zelenskyy regime, is now meeting with various NATO officials and political leaders. He has resumed work for the Free Russia Foundation, a Washington-based non-profit that is in part focused on trying to transition Russia to a pro-Western “democracy” once Putin’s grip on power ends.
There is speculation that Kara-Murza’s Free Russia Foundation will help fund the UCC’s attempt to legally forestall publication of the LAC list of Ukrainian Nazi war criminals. After all, as Globe and Mail Marie Woolf pointed out, release of the LAC list might validate Putin’s claim that the NATO-supported Zelensky regime should be de-Nazified.
It seems likely that LAC’s refusal to release the list of Nazi collaborators, and the UCC’s threat of legal action, will lead to increased support in Russia for Putin and for the Special Military Operation. It might also lead many Russians to conclude that Kara-Murz’s incarceration was deserved. The mainstream media in Canada, however, is not concerned with molding public opinion in Russia; its primary concern seems to be building support in Canada for the Zelensky regime.
The AUUC issued a press release on September 9, stating that it does not support the UCC’s actions and that, had it been consulted, the AUUC “would have unequivocally supported the release of the names.”
Insisting that Canada must give justice to those who suffered under Nazism, the AUUC notes that it has fought consistently over many decades for the history of Nazi collaborators in Canada to be exposed. The organization charges that “the efforts of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to block the truth from finally coming to light is a great disservice to Canadians, to Canadians of Ukrainian descent and to the people of Ukraine who suffered grievously at the hands of fascism during World War II.”
In addition to its attempts to suppress publication of the LAC list, the UCC sought to prevent public screenings of Russians at War at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose Ukrainian grandfather was a Nazi collaborator, joined the UCC attempt to prevent the screening.
Russians at War was filmed over 7 months in 2022 by a Russian-Canadian woman who was invited to join a brigade of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. The UCC attempted to have TIFF withdraw the September 13 screening, claiming that filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova was a “Russian propagandist” who used to work for the Russia Today media platform (RT). The UCC also said that it had not seen the film.
TIFF “paused” public screenings of Russians at War because of “significant threats to festival operations and public safety” but resumed them on September 17. TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey said that Festival staff received “terrifying” threats that ranged from emails and phone calls to verbal abuse. “One of our staff also received threats of sexual violence,” Bailey stated.
Russians at War was financed in part by TVO, Ontario’s publicly funded English-language educational television network. In response to UCC pressure, TVO will not air it on TV.
When film was screened at the Venice International Film Festival on September 5, the Zelenskyy regime claimed it sought to “whitewash and justify Moscow’s assault.” Trofimova, however, said that her film “belies the notion in the West that all Russian soldiers are war criminals,” and further stated that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unjustified.”
Clearly, the UCC is allocating extensive resources to prevent publication and propagation of views that might threaten public support in Canada for the NATO-backed Zelenskyy regime.
Western mainstream media often claim that the Russian state restricts freedom of expression in Russia. The developments mentioned above raise the question of whether the UCC is attempting to restrict freedom of expression in Canada.
[Photo: Chrystia Freeland holds banner of fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, 2022]
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