Frank Sysyn, a history professor at the University of Alberta, says it’s accurate to say that Hunka was not a Nazi, despite fighting for Nazi Germany, because non-Germans weren’t allowed to join the party.
He said Canada’s choice to allow veterans of the unit to live out their lives in the country ultimately came down to a decision that membership in the unit was not reason enough to prosecute someone, if there was no proof they committed individual crimes. Ukrainians, he added, are far from the only group of postwar immigrants to benefit from such an approach.
“Most of our Italian immigrants of the 1950s, if they were men of a certain age, had probably been in the Italian army and fought for Fascist Italy,” said Sysyn, who is a member of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta professor emeritus and the author of a book about Ukrainians and the Holocaust, said many of the young men who joined the Galicia division in 1943 were motivated by the atrocities they witnessed under Soviet occupation, including the murder of thousands of political prisoners and mass deportations to labour camps.
“So for the people in this region, the Soviets were the nightmare and the Germans were relatively tolerable," he said. "So that, I think, explains why so many of them thought that what they were doing fighting against the Soviets was patriotic.”
He said some Galician units did participate in atrocities, including murders in Polish villages. The division had an antisemitic newspaper and accepted into its ranks “policemen who had been very important in the Holocaust, who had rounded up Jews for execution and sometimes executed Jews themselves," he said.
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Klufas blames the branding of Hunka as a Nazi on “Russian disinformation,” adding, “the fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.” He also said there was nothing wrong with Parliament applauding a man “who fought for his country.” However, he conceded that it “maybe wasn’t correct” in the circumstances, given that the people there didn’t fully understand the issue.
Also an extremely inaccurate comparison because SS units like Galicia were volunteer only but Fascist Italy conscripted men of fighting age into their army. I refuse to believe that a professor doesn’t understand the difference between being compelled to serve and volunteering to serve, so I must conclude he’s saying this shit deliberately to mislead.
I don’t want to imply that anyone with a certain heritage is inherently sympathetic to a specific ideology, but I would not be surprised if he had Ukrainian gusanos as ancestors.
To be honest, Ivan Katchanovski is also Ukrainian-Canadian professor and he has been actively protesting all this Nazi shit for a long time. Of course, Western MSM ignore him and boost open Nazis.
If he isn’t careful with how vociferous he is, he may become the next Norman Finkelstein and blackballed by academia. Your identity can only protect you for so long if you rail against zionism/ukrofascism too hard and draw too much attention to the issue.
Klufas blames the branding of Hunka as a Nazi on “Russian disinformation,” adding, “the fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.” He also said there was nothing wrong with Parliament applauding a man “who fought for his country.”
the fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi
WTF. This is trying to apply the clean Wehrmacht myth on Waffen-SS volunteers. That the professor is saying only members of the NSDAP were Nazis is something that would be crossed out as wrong due to reduction in any homework you have to write at school or uni over here.
Most of western europe immediately collapsed into nazi-sympathizer comprador regimes without much resistance, almost like a large portion of the population secretly wanted it to happen. Vichy cucks and quislings.
Partisans who fought the occupiers are the only cool people in those nazi-occupied countries.
Everything that is politically inconvenient for our ruling hegemony in this moment is Russian disinformation at worst, Soros funded as a middle ground, and Chinese propaganda at best. You don’t even have to justify or prove it. Just claim it and it becomes as real as the ground under your feet.
Yep. And not just the GOP and their tiki-torch-weilding fans, either. The fascism is fucking deeply rooted in U.S. politics, and always has been.
ecological and economic catastrophes in the future that liberalism is wholly unsuited to deal with…they’re getting everybody else ready intellectually and emotionally for why that’s gonna be okay when it happens why they’re not really people…when we’re putting all this money into more walls and drones and bombs and guns to keep them away and so that we can watch them die with clear conscience
This is what liberals (Democrats in particular) really mean when they say they want to “treat climate change like a national security issue”. People are suckered into thinking it just means they are going to take it seriously and prioritize it. No. It’s the same sense in which they have always used the term “national security”. It literally means they are going to crack down harder on immigration, make sure that capitalist enterprises close to the security state profit like crazy (e.g. securing them the Arctic trade routes), shoot “looters” when they are just trying to survive after climate disasters, crack down on the climate movement as it demands systemic change, etc. Aviva Chomsky did a really good talk a couple years ago about immigration and went into this very clearly.
Could you imagine this treatment for ISIS? “Well, he volunteered to join ISIS but we don’t know if he specifically did any crimes and you could see why am Iraqi would join ISIS to fight against Americam occupation. Anyway, ISIS beheaded a ton of people lol.”
This shit is why liberal inteligencia are a disease. They serve the purpose of defending fascism. No western academia is free of this shit. I know this is Canada and not the EU, but this is why the entire “progressive” smiling liberals and socdems are so fucking evil. They are the moderate wing of fascism STILL
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Also an extremely inaccurate comparison because SS units like Galicia were volunteer only but Fascist Italy conscripted men of fighting age into their army. I refuse to believe that a professor doesn’t understand the difference between being compelled to serve and volunteering to serve, so I must conclude he’s saying this shit deliberately to mislead.
Would you be surprised if I told you that the good professor has Ukrainian heritage?
I don’t want to imply that anyone with a certain heritage is inherently sympathetic to a specific ideology, but I would not be surprised if he had Ukrainian gusanos as ancestors.
To be honest, Ivan Katchanovski is also Ukrainian-Canadian professor and he has been actively protesting all this Nazi shit for a long time. Of course, Western MSM ignore him and boost open Nazis.
Yeah, funny how that works.
If he isn’t careful with how vociferous he is, he may become the next Norman Finkelstein and blackballed by academia. Your identity can only protect you for so long if you rail against zionism/ukrofascism too hard and draw too much attention to the issue.
we deal with the same thing in australia, it’s fucked, and a lot of their descendants have kept their nazi proclivities
check this for example
Australian Croatian Club back in the spotlight after portrait of WWII fascist Ante Pavelić inadvertantly included in soccer team photograph
inadvertently doing a lot of heavy lifting here
“You are mad about our Ukrainian fascists, but have you thought that we have Italian fascists too?”
Yeah it’s amazing to me how he doesn’t see that this makess it worse
Seriously
“not a nazi”
He’s only a real Nazi if he comes from the Nazi region of Germany, otherwise he’s a sparkling fascist
Can we applaud Russian soldiers then?
WTF. This is trying to apply the clean Wehrmacht myth on Waffen-SS volunteers. That the professor is saying only members of the NSDAP were Nazis is something that would be crossed out as wrong due to reduction in any homework you have to write at school or uni over here.
White people coming out as big fans of Nazis after decades of pretending to hate them might be the biggest outcome of this war.
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They weren’t hurting the right people
Most of western europe immediately collapsed into nazi-sympathizer comprador regimes without much resistance, almost like a large portion of the population secretly wanted it to happen. Vichy cucks and quislings.
Partisans who fought the occupiers are the only cool people in those nazi-occupied countries.
The first battle Americans fought on the ground in WWII was against French troop fighting for the nazis in Africa IIRC
No, they were the real nazis
Everything that is politically inconvenient for our ruling hegemony in this moment is Russian disinformation at worst, Soros funded as a middle ground, and Chinese propaganda at best. You don’t even have to justify or prove it. Just claim it and it becomes as real as the ground under your feet.
Normal response: “The SS guy who slaughtered poles was a Nazi.”
Liberal response: “well, ackshually, we have to first consider Plato’s dialogues. For example,”
Liberal trend in 2023 - mental gymnastics to defend Nazis.
Liberal trend in 2024 - mental gymnastics to defend being Nazis themselves
Askshually sweaty I’m not german so I can’t be a nazi
going back in time to 2017 to tell all the libs that they’re gonna become the Charlottesville tiki torch guys to own Putin.
Yep. And not just the GOP and their tiki-torch-weilding fans, either. The fascism is fucking deeply rooted in U.S. politics, and always has been.
This is what liberals (Democrats in particular) really mean when they say they want to “treat climate change like a national security issue”. People are suckered into thinking it just means they are going to take it seriously and prioritize it. No. It’s the same sense in which they have always used the term “national security”. It literally means they are going to crack down harder on immigration, make sure that capitalist enterprises close to the security state profit like crazy (e.g. securing them the Arctic trade routes), shoot “looters” when they are just trying to survive after climate disasters, crack down on the climate movement as it demands systemic change, etc. Aviva Chomsky did a really good talk a couple years ago about immigration and went into this very clearly.
Could you imagine this treatment for ISIS? “Well, he volunteered to join ISIS but we don’t know if he specifically did any crimes and you could see why am Iraqi would join ISIS to fight against Americam occupation. Anyway, ISIS beheaded a ton of people lol.”
This shit is why liberal inteligencia are a disease. They serve the purpose of defending fascism. No western academia is free of this shit. I know this is Canada and not the EU, but this is why the entire “progressive” smiling liberals and socdems are so fucking evil. They are the moderate wing of fascism STILL