In The Eyes of The Beholder : Vandalizing? or Identifying?
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| Cenotaph with emblem of 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS |
On 26 May 1988, Monument to the Glory of the UPA, a memorial to members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, was erected. Soon after, a cenotaph was erected, displaying the emblem of 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), and an inscription dedicating it 'To Those Who Died For the Freedom of Ukraine'."
On October 14, 2017, the Embassy of Russia in Ottawa's Twitter account posted images of the monuments, alongside a bust of Roman Shukhevych in Edmonton, with a caption referring to them as 'monuments to Nazi collaborators'. Alexandra Chyczij, vice-president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, called these claims 'long-disproven fabrications'."
"Around June 21, 2020, the cenotaph was vandalized, with spray paint reading 'Nazi war monument'. Halton Regional Police Service initially reported that the vandalism was a 'hate-motivated offense', and refused to release images of the graffiti. Halton police later stated that the graffiti may have been targeting Ukrainians either as a whole or in the area, and that they did not 'consider that the identifiable group targeted by the graffiti was Nazis'."
St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery, Wikipedia
"The initial information collected by investigators indicated that the graffiti may have been hate-motivated, targeting the identifiable group of Ukrainians in general, or Ukrainian members of this cultural centre."Well, Himmler was, of course, quite correct in his assessment based on Nazi intelligence. And when the 14th Waffen SS Division received the order from the Nazi command, they wouldn't have hesitated to carry it out, nor to murder the Jew they so greatly detested. When the Russian Embassy highlighted the veneration in the Ukrainian-Canadian community of the Nazi-linked 14th Waffen SS Division, and spoke of the viral anti-Semitism it denoted, they knew whereof they spoke.
"At no time did the Halton Regional Police Service consider that the identifiable group targeted by the graffiti was Nazis."
Halton Regional Police
"Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost -- on our initiative, I must say -- the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia's good name -- namely the Jews."
"I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway."
SS Leader Heinrich Himmler, speech to 14th Waffen SS Division, May 1944
Fascist Germany knew it would have little problems involved in establishing some of their largest slave labour and concentration death camps in Poland, meant to carry out the Final Solution of Europe's Jewish population that would see them exterminated, freeing Europe from their presence, even as Poles themselves suffered privation and death at the hands of the Nazis. But then so did every country in Europe overrun by the Nazis of the Third Reich.
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The existence of the monument memorializing the Ukrainian Nazis has long been known. The Jewish community protested its existence even while the Ukrainian community defended it, denying the Ukrainian 14th Waffen SS was in collaboration with Nazi Germany. When the Russian Embassy in Ottawa highlighted the memorial and its purpose, it also made allusion to Canada's then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland's grandfather, a Ukrainian newspaper publisher operating in Poland, collaborating with the Nazi occupation, praising the Germans and their mission to rid the world of Jews.
Canada's frosty relations with Russia may have originated in former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's rejection of Moscow and Vladimir Putin with its invasion of eastern Ukraine, aiding ethnic Russian Ukrainian insurgents who claimed the Donbass region for Russia, and the annexation of Crimea, but the hostility between Ukrainians and Russia over the Holodomar when Soviet Russia ransacked the grain harvest in Ukraine to truck to Russia, leaving millions to starve, has been fully in the freezer since Chrystia Freeland was named Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Someone unknown, at some time in the past several weeks had painted "Nazi war monument" on the stone cenotaph commemorating the 14th SS Division's role in the Second World War. Ukraine's detestation of Soviet Russia saw it view Nazi Germany, then at war with Russia, favourably. Germany's mission to eradicate the Jewish presence also sat favourably with the Ukrainians who were quick to volunteer for the special corps at Germany's invitation, to become allies at a time when Germany was pressed for additional manpower.
These were Ukrainians who were eager to pledge their allegiance to Hitler, and become part of the Nazi Waffen SS organization, eventually to become involved in killing Polish women and children, along with Jews. When the news first surfaced of a monument being desecrated, there were researchers who knew exactly what the monument glorified and they quickly set the record straight, that this was no racist hate-motivated crime. Leading Halton Regional Police Chief Stephen Tanner to observe: "The most unfortunate part of all this is that any such monument would exist in the first place", in Canada.
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| Waffen SS troops in the second world war. The 14th SS Division was made up of Ukrainian nationalists who joined the Nazis and fought on the eastern front. Photograph: ullstein bild/Getty Images |
Allied troops from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Russia were beginning to gain the upper hand over the Axis powers, leaving Germany short-handed as the tide of the war slowly turned. Ukrainian manpower was invited to join the Waffen SS organization, allying themselves with the Germans in their genocidal mission, while helping shore up German forces battling the allies. According to professor Per Rudling of Lund University Sweden, several similar monuments exist throughout Canada memorializing Nazi collaborators.
"Beyond the Ukrainian diaspora, these monuments went largely unnoticed", he noted in his book Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement. It is time, he said, that Canadians conduct an open discussion regarding the presence of such monuments in the light of what they represent. As far as the Ukrainian Canadian community is concerned, their SS members were Ukrainian patriots, heroes fighting the Russians who had occupied and looted Ukraine.
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A Polish judge in 2017 issued an arrest warrant for 98-year-old Michael Karkoc who had been a 14th SS Division deputy company commander, for war crimes. The man, who had been living in the United States, died before a court trial could be held. The accusation against him was coordinating the massacre of 44 civilians, women and children among them, in the Polish village of Chianiow, in 1944.
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In 1941, the battalion was dispatched to Lviv, capital of one of the Ukraine's Western regions. Though no hard evidence exists proving the battalion's involvement, a pogrom took place that killed several thousand Jews, soon after the battalion's arrival. Another local militia known to have been responsible in the killings, led by Roman Shukhevych, was centrally involved. The same militia commander led a German police battalion in Belarus, implicated as well in civilian killings.
In Edmonton, at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, a bust of the venerated Roman Shukhevych has a central memorial role. "Roman Shukhevych was the (independence) leader, very much respected even after the war, to continue this battle against the Soviet regime. He’s seen as a hero. He’s completely seen as a hero, and respected to this day as a symbol of the fight for freedom", insisted Paras Podilsky, spokesman for the Complex, of the man who commanded one of two Ukrainian divisions attached to the German army, called the 'Naghtigall'."
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Labels: Canadian, Monuments, Nazi Collaborators, Ukrainian-Canadians
posted by Pieface | 8:20 PM
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