Nazi Veteran Honored in Canada Was Part of Wave of Collaborators Harbored in West

Poland says it’s preparing to seek the extradition of a 98-year-old Ukrainian Nazi after he received a standing ovation in the Canadian House of Commons last week following a speech by visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Yaroslav Hunka was invited by the speaker of the House, who has since resigned his post, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized for the episode on Wednesday. Hunka fought during World War II with a Nazi unit composed of Ukrainian volunteers who were involved in numerous atrocities, including massacres of Jewish civilians. But Hunka is not an outlier, according to Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, who says Canada took in many Ukrainian Nazi collaborators after the war. That includes the grandfather of Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who spent years painting him as a victim rather than the Nazi propagandist he was. “Of course Hunka didn’t think anything would happen, because you had the deputy prime minister who was caught whitewashing a Nazi collaborator, and nothing happened,” says Golinkin.