Galizien
A Nazi applauded in Parliament
I have, from the time I was a young, had a fascination with the Schutzstaffel (SS), and especially the foreign elements of it. This is not a fascination with accompanying admiration, rather one of horror.
How could people see the most brutal fascist régime of all time, and join it? Well join it people did, in the hundreds of thousands. You can find more on this HERE.
So you can imagine my eyebrows raised when, on the 22nd of September, the Canadian Parliament stood in ovation to not just Volodymyr Zelensky, but another; Yaroslav Hunka. This caught my eye because Hunka was applauded for being a veteran of World War II, in which he fought the Russians.
This is deceptive. Russia was a component of the USSR at the time, not an independent nation, and if he was a veteran who fought the Russians, what army was he a veteran of?
The Waffen-SS.
A member of the Waffen SS is applauded in Parliament
Associated Press were the ones that first broke his service with the ‘1st Ukrainian Division’ and this too is deceptive. The original name of Hunka’s unit, is ‘14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS [galizische Nr. 1].’
The 14th Division ‘Galizien’ was formed in late 1942 after Nazi Germany expanded the Waffen-SS to ameliorate the manpower crisis on the Eastern Front. It was called “Galician,” a region of North-West Ukraine, because the very word “Ukrainian” was forbidden by the SS. Recruitment was underway by 1943 and the Division was stood up in April of that year in Poland.
There were as many as 80,000 volunteers for the Galizien, but being a single infantry division, they only needed 13,000. The rest were used in security operations, or as a replacement pool for the Division.
Even before 1943, the founders of Galizien had a heinous history. The origin of the Galizien was that of the Battalion Ukrainische Gruppe Roland and Bataillon Ukrainische Gruppe Nachtigall. These two battalion size organizations were Special Forces controlled by German Intelligence (Abwehr), and used in the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR
The members of these two battalions included many members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), including a future leader, Roman Shukhevych. The OUN were not technically Nazis, but ethno-nationalists, anti-communist, fanatically antisemitic, and very right-wing.
Their first act was the 1941 Lviv Pogrom. Thousands were killed.
Let’s not split hairs, they were and are Nazi swine, with a different national origin.
The first task of the Galizien, and the one most suited for collaborationist units in general, was Bandenbekämpfung, or bandit-fighting. This is a euphemism the Nazi authorities used for counter-insurgency, and was likely some of the most vicious of the entire war.
Mass executions, taking and shooting of hostages, mass rape, and the destruction of entire settlements, this is what Bandenbekämpfung meant. This was Galizien’s first role. They are implicated in numerous massacres in Ukraine and Poland during this period.
In 1944 the USSR launched Operation Bagration, a colossal offensive that crushed the German Army Group Center, and liberated more territory than any other Allied offensive thus far. The Galizien was put into the line as part of the XIII Army Corps, whereupon it was crushed at Brody, losing 4/5ths of it’s total personnel.
The Division was then rebuilt with new volunteers, and sent to fight the Yugoslavian Partisans. In August of 1944, the partially-reconstituted Galizien went on to fight the Slovak National Uprising. While fighting the Slovakia, the Division was attached to the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, a unit of notorious evil, surpassed perhaps only to that of the Totenkopf Death Camps staff, and to the Vlasov Detachment, a group of Soviet deserters who were used concurrently to the Dirlewanger and match their notorious reputation.
In March 1945, the unit was renamed 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army. As part of this arrangement, it was given Ukrainian command under Pavlo Shandruk. This was an on-paper change, as the Germans had lost all of Ukraine by this date.
During the period of the Galizien’s career between Brody and surrender, they are implicated or directly participated in:
Huta Pieniacka massacre (Poles, 1,200 aprox)
Pidkamin massacre (Poles, 2000 aprox)
Palikrowy massacre (Poles, 385)
Numerous atrocities in Slovakia
Unspecified actions in Yugoslavia1
The Galizien eventually made their way to the Western Front and surrendered to the allies. Normally, the combatants were handed over to their respective home governments, or those they were fighting. However, Shandruk claimed they were actually Galician Poles. There is evidence to suggest they were allowed this guise further after Shandruk met with Wladyslaw Anders of the Polish Army in exile (as opposed to the larger Soviet backed Polish Army), but my reading material ends there.
The Galizien veterans were subsequently resettled outside of the Soviet Union. Many immigrated to Canada, where they set up monuments you can visit today, where they celebrate the Waffen-SS. Shandruk moved to the USA, and died in New Jersey in 1979.
And thus, we come to 2023, and the Canadian Parliament is applauding a veteran of this odious unit. A man, who probably has an SS blood group tattoo on his upper left arm. A man who is celebrating taking part in the Holocaust.
It has taken 22 months of war propaganda from a war we are categorically not fighting, for us as a country to go from “Nazis are bad” to “Nazis that killed Russians should be applauded.”
I am sickened to be a Canadian this week.
I want resignations. I don’t accept the excuse for one iota that they didn’t know who they were applauding. If our Members of Parliament have forgotten which side Russia was on in World War II, then that alone is enough to expect immediate resignations. If they never knew, then maybe they’re too ignorant to run a G7 country.
All they had to do was not applaud a proud Nazi, and they failed.
I will leave you with a final word from someone who knew better than anyone the purpose of this formation.
“Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – those 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.”
- Heinrich Himmler addressing 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS [galizische Nr. 1] -
Sources:
Williamson, Gordon, The Waffen-SS (3) 11. to 23. Divisions (2004)
McNab, Chris, Hitler’s Elite, 1939-1945 (2013)
McNab, Chris, Hitler’s Armies, a history of the German war machine, (2011)
Postwar, the Yugoslavian Government, fearing civil war in event of the Holocaust being public, suppressed the evidence of Nazi/collaborator war crimes in Yugoslavia.
Thank you for writing this. It's one thing to share a screenshot of a tweet and another to share a well thought out and articulated piece like this
Thanks for keeping us informed. I saw this dear old feller being given a standing ovation, and naturally equated those accolades with the ones we award our veterans on November 11th. The average viewer and reader of that press coverage would make the same mistake. How many obscene old bastards like this one are we harboring in this country because we are ignorant of history?