Canada's Negligent Absorption of War Criminals

"It is with deep regret that we acknowledge that Mr. Peter Savaryn was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1987, and we express our sincere apology to Canadians for any distress or pain his appointment may have caused."

"Mr. Hunka's past involvement with the Waffen-SS and his recognition in the House of Commons have been a source of great concern to the Governor General."

"The Chancellery is committed to working with Canadians to ensure our honours system is reflective of Canadian values."

"Historical appointments to the Order of Canada reflect a specific moment in time and would have been based on limited information sources available at that time."

Rideau Hall statement

The office of Governor General Mary Simon says it "deeply regrets" appointing Peter Savaryn to the Order of Canada in 1987. Mr Savaryn died in 2017, aged 90   Getty Images

"If subsequently, evidence comes to light of something as grievous as collaborating with a Nazi regime, that there should be some mechanism where it's made clear that this individual is rejected by the institution [a new process should be instituted to formally remove Savaryn's honour award]."

"It would be undoing a historical misstep by the Canadian government in covering that up [Canada's past history of a lax attitude toward permitting postwar Nazis and war criminals to enter Canada and achieve citizenship], because it would enable the Canadian public to recognize how deep this problem goes."

"This would provide much needed sunlight into a very dark period that a lot of people don't know about."

Dan Panneton, director of community engagement, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

It's somewhat disingenuous at this point to declare that not enough was known about the background of a person who was permitted to immigrate to Canada despite being identified as a member of a Nazi SS unit, to explain away how it could be possible for such a man to flourish in Canada, build a new persona and future for himself and be recognized as a credit to the community, and by extension to human endeavours when such a man's past held the reality of voluntarily serving the Nazi regime, swearing an oath of allegiance to its Fuhrer, and pursuing the goal of genocide.

When former Nazis entered Canada as new immigrants they faced no scrutiny or roadblock to entry, in the decades following World War II. Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust and arrived to Canada, were shocked to realize that their tormentors and murderers had gained entry to a country they themselves sought refuge in. Jewish social-cultural groups petitioned various governments over the years to hold these people accountable for their war crimes; at the very least to extradite them to Germany or the country of their origin.

Time after time these requests were ignored, until one prime minister consented to look into the matter, striking an enquiry and appointing an esteemed judge to oversee the resulting investigation. The two reports that came out of that enquiry have never been released to the public in their entirety. The Deschenes enquiry reached the conclusion that individuals should not be held responsible for what the battalions they were attached to engaged in, despite that the Nuremberg authorities deemed such SS divisions as being involved in war crimes. 

The 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, known as the Deschenes Commission, interviewed 774 individuals suspected of being war criminals. The interviews and the names of those involved were never released, but were held for the succeeding years as secret, classified documents. One part of the report was eventually released, but was heavily redacted. Jewish groups are now demanding that both Commission reports be released in their entirety.

Several weeks ago, a Canadian parliamentarian invited an elderly Canadian-Ukrainian citizen to the House of Commons on the occasion of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Canada where he was scheduled to address Parliament. The 98-year-old guest was revealed days after he was feted in the House as a Ukrainian military 'hero' who had fought with Germany against the Soviet Union in a voluntary ethnic brigade attached to the Nazi SS -- whose focus was the elimination of Jews during the Holocaust years -- as a former voluntary enlistee in an ethnic SS division.

 

That embarrassment was compounded mere days later by Canada's Governor General Mary Simon apologizing to Canadians yet again on the discovery that a recipient of the prestigious Order of Canada went to yet another Canadian-Ukrainian who had fought in the very same SS-Galicia Battalion and had, like Yaroslav Hunka, sworn an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. 

 

It somehow escaped the notice of these Members of Parliament that there is no correlation between Russia's current invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainians that saw fit to align themselves with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, fighting at that time with the Allies against the Fascist Axis coalition.

Over a week after Yaroslav Hunka was cheered in the House of Commons, Jewish groups are calling for Ottawa to release a decades-old report from the Deschênes Commission containing details about alleged Nazi war criminals living in Canada.  CBC

Once again, it was not that Rideau Hall -- and the office of the Governor General, similar to the lack of oversight by Canadian parliamentarians or the prime minister's office, or the House of Commons' security, to look into the background of someone invited to the House -- themselves undertook a simple background check of those they were championing. It was a Jewish news source, the venerable old Forward that brought the Nazi backgrounds of these two men to the tardy attention of Canadian authorities.

 

The International Community, which has a far better memory in Europe of the horrors of wars fought on their soil, has viewed these compelling errors of judgement and lack of memory on the part of the government of Canada with incredulous bemusement. Inexcusable lapses which saw an event as lunatic as introducing a former Nazi whose battalion was involved in the roundup and murder of Jews, to a Jewish president of a nation once again embattled by a territorial-hungry neighbour.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives for a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)