Full Comment - The difficult history behind the Nazi soldier in Parliament

00:00:00.000 a nazi in the house of commons in canada it seems unthinkable it seems like a bad joke or

00:00:11.440 the plot line of a horrible pulp fiction novel and yet there we were on september 22nd 2023

00:00:17.720 as yaroslav hanka was introduced by house speaker anthony rhoda after a speech to a joint session

00:00:23.700 of parliament by ukrainian president volodymyr zielinski we have here in the chamber today

00:00:28.720 ukrainian canadians ukrainian canadian world veteran from the second world war who fought

00:00:35.240 the ukrainian independence against the russians and continues to support the troops today

00:00:42.000 even at his age of 98 yes a nazi in the house of commons said many of us myself included

00:00:50.220 outraged that the trudeau government had given the russian government a propaganda win

00:00:55.060 vladimir putin's russia has been claiming since the beginning that they needed to invade ukraine to

00:01:00.400 take out all the nazis in that country and here was canada's entire parliament cheering on a man who

00:01:06.320 had fought in a nazi unit were we too quick to rush to judgment though were we too harsh

00:01:12.440 what is the truth about the 14th waffen s escalation division and how so many members ended up in canada

00:01:18.980 hello and welcome to the full comment podcast my name is brian lilla your host and the conversation

00:01:24.340 you're about to hear won't be an easy one for some miroslav shandri is an academic and author and the

00:01:30.340 man behind the book in the maelstrom the waffen s escalation division and its legacy the book was

00:01:36.080 published in march 2023 before these events in parliament took place but it's an in-depth history

00:01:41.620 of the unit we'll discuss what happened in parliament the history and legacy of a military unit that he

00:01:47.660 admits is one of the more controversial units of its day and the context that the events of so many

00:01:53.500 decades ago took place in as i said this conversation will cause controversy for some

00:01:58.740 on more than one side in fact but what we hope is that it also sparks a conversation about canada's

00:02:05.620 less than perfect past and what we can learn from it professor shandri is a professor emeritus at the

00:02:11.280 university of manitoba but we connected with him in new york where he's currently lecturing at

00:02:17.080 columbia university miroslav shandri thanks for the time you're very welcome let me start with

00:02:23.280 the incident that precipitated our decision to reach out to you the honoring of yaroslav honga

00:02:32.740 in the parliament of canada while ukrainian president vladimir zelensky was there

00:02:37.720 were you watching when it happened and if so what what did you think no i wasn't watching i'm speaking

00:02:46.560 to you from new york where i'm teaching at columbia university but what i thought was this was some

00:02:55.240 colossal mess somebody had just goofed um this should not have happened uh there's certainly uh

00:03:05.720 it the the optics were terrible for ukrainians the optics are terrible for canadians um and uh

00:03:14.900 certainly uh i am aware and other ukrainians are aware that the division is not celebrated and it's

00:03:23.300 it's just not uh allowed uh even in ukraine today uh any any just any attempt to to celebrate the

00:03:33.200 division or to to congratulate its members it's just simply not allowed i mean ukraine is a is fighting

00:03:40.540 for democracy fighting for a for independence it wants to be a modern ukrainian country it's not

00:03:47.860 interested in any kind of um relationship with uh a group that uh fought for uh for for the nazis and

00:03:59.380 that's been stated by the president by uh on the president's website and by many many ukrainians

00:04:06.040 now of course every single member of parliament stood up and clapped and there's many with ukrainian

00:04:13.280 backgrounds proud ukrainian canadians on i can say at least the liberals and the conservatives i'm not

00:04:21.520 sure about the ndp but at least the liberals and conservatives several and one of them was in the front row

00:04:27.000 um cheering along that of course being christie freeland she's not the only one but should those

00:04:34.640 mps have known when they heard what speaker anthony rhoda was saying that he's fought in the first

00:04:42.060 ukrainian division should they have known went oh wait a minute i i won't clap well i think they're all

00:04:49.040 blindsided no one in their right minds would have thought that um this was a member of the

00:04:56.160 galicia division i think they simply assumed that the rota uh had checked uh and knew who this person

00:05:05.460 was um the information only came out later would you say that the 14th ss division galatian were they

00:05:22.200 nazis or did they fight with nazis because that's been part of the discussion you you know you've

00:05:28.080 written the definitive book on them so how would you describe them well you're absolutely right the

00:05:33.980 word nazi or ss is used as a term of abuse technically no ukrainian could be a member of the

00:05:41.460 national socialist german workers party the nazi party only germans could be members

00:05:48.560 similarly only germans or germanic people of germanic background could be members of the ss that

00:05:56.720 was simply not uh possible for slavs who uh the germans considered subhuman during the war

00:06:06.020 so that's a mistake that's not uh that's just a a term of abuse but as you say they were aligned

00:06:14.980 uh as a military formation they were aligned with nazi germans so uh that's uh that's uh why

00:06:24.320 this term comes up there is this other way of thinking about the term nazi and that is

00:06:32.100 an ideological uh an ideological view of uh of uh the the you know the adjective nazi

00:06:43.620 um for the most part ukrainians were not interested in uh nazi ideology uh totalitarianism

00:06:53.560 racism fascism the whole point of them joining the division if we're talking about the militia

00:07:00.780 division the whole point of them joining the division was to get the training uh the uh

00:07:09.620 the knowledge of modern warfare and create an army of their own which at the appropriate time or the

00:07:17.020 opportune moment they could uh turn into a struggle for independence that's the ideology that they

00:07:24.620 um accepted that's that's what they told themselves that was not what the germans said when they were

00:07:33.560 recruiting them but the germans knew that that was what ukrainians were telling themselves and that

00:07:40.320 privately the recruiters were saying we have to go along with uh with the uh overt uh uh statements

00:07:51.780 that the germans are making but privately we are creating our own army which we hope to use uh in in

00:07:58.960 at the end of the war in the chaos at the end of the war to fight for independence now whether that

00:08:04.720 was ever possible it isn't a different question this could have been this should be seen today as

00:08:11.580 a pipe dream it was never a possibility is there documentation showing that because i know you you

00:08:17.120 write in the book uh that there has been a long standing since the end of the war a long standing

00:08:25.200 attempt to rewrite the narrative and it started in in the camps in italy and in britain it can

00:08:32.780 continues today to a degree and in ukraine um do you know that that's what they were saying to

00:08:39.460 themselves privately uh or is that part of the um rehabilitation narrative of this division

00:08:47.260 no i think i think they were saying that to themselves the people who uh volunteered

00:08:54.320 were usually high school students people who completed completed high school education

00:08:59.840 a lot of them and they were patriots uh they had been um they had seen what uh the soviet union had

00:09:08.300 done to galicia to galician society in the 22 months um that preceded uh the german invasion

00:09:17.840 they were very angry at what had happened within the soviet union um and they were uh quite prepared to

00:09:26.600 fight against the the country they they thought was their primary enemy which was the stalin and the

00:09:35.360 soviet union so i think that was the the the motivation it was repeated uh during the recruitment uh it was

00:09:47.760 uh this uh this uh narrative was repeated in the memoirs in many documents afterwards

00:09:56.480 and uh there's no reason to doubt that

00:10:00.120 in back us up then because you said the invasion of galicia and i think a lot of people won't know the

00:10:09.820 history that at that point in time ukraine was divided between areas occupied by

00:10:17.740 the soviets and until the war areas controlled by poland and in the galatian division was from the

00:10:26.340 side covered by poland did they see themselves as ukrainians galatians what did they see themselves as

00:10:32.240 oh definitely as ukrainians there was a very large minority in poland about one one third of poland

00:10:42.260 interwar poland was uh minorities and there was a very large the largest minority were ukrainians

00:10:49.740 some people say around five million and they had been promised after the um first world war

00:10:59.340 and the creation of a renewal of the polish state they had been promised autonomy uh the entente powers

00:11:09.600 uh instructed poland as it took charge of eastern galicia that uh ukrainians should be given

00:11:18.180 autonomous rights uh cultural rights and so on and they had been denied this so they were

00:11:27.480 upset they were they knew that uh educational opportunities uh uh professional opportunities

00:11:38.620 had been limited um and uh they were they could not see themselves winning autonomy uh through the

00:11:51.860 democratic process some did there was a democratic party in galicia ukrainian democratic party which

00:11:59.760 worked through parliament but many people thought that this uh this had uh been a a failure this attempt

00:12:07.640 to create um to win rights to create autonomy had been a failure in the interwar years and then

00:12:15.000 when when the soviet union um divided poland uh divided up poland with germany they saw they got their first

00:12:27.580 taste of uh soviet rule and it was horrific uh all institutions all ukrainian institutions were closed

00:12:35.640 something like 190 000 people were either uh shipped to siberia or arrested or or killed

00:12:45.120 uh you know it was a devastation of of that society and the people in that part in in galicia the

00:12:55.440 ukrainians inside what had been interwar war poland they would have been acutely aware of what was

00:13:02.000 happening to their their brethren in the eastern part of ukraine that's correct which was millions

00:13:09.760 killed in the preceding decade yes uh the if you read the ukrainian galician newspapers they covered

00:13:19.920 the famine in which four million people died uh they covered the destruction of the um what's known in

00:13:29.240 ukraine as the uh as the cultural renaissance an entire generation of writers and cultural figures

00:13:35.700 who um who created a a new literature a new cultural profile in the 1920s they were all destroyed in the

00:13:47.060 1930s so yes they were aware of this and they were they were uh primed uh to fight the soviet union

00:13:56.220 this is one of the things i've been thinking about is um how how do you react when your choice is

00:14:09.400 stalin or hitler i mean these are two of the worst choices that i can think of in you know in our modern

00:14:18.620 era but that's what these these young people were faced with and so you know they've been criticized

00:14:25.980 the ukrainians have been criticized for fighting with the soviets they've also been criticized for

00:14:31.720 fighting with the germans um you know i i know there was a small group of people basically running a

00:14:41.300 resistance fighting force but that that was small wasn't it i mean your basic choice was join the germans

00:14:48.180 or join the the soviets well this is one of the tragedies of uh ukrainian society when you do not

00:14:57.540 have when you're a stateless nation uh you're always uh struggling from a position of weakness

00:15:04.680 and the tragedy for ukrainians during the war was they ended up in every army they were drafted

00:15:11.100 they were conscripted uh every every force uh drew in ukrainians and that's actually one reason why

00:15:19.400 uh the the people who created or wanted to create the glacier division uh argued that this way we'd have

00:15:28.400 at least ukrainian officers uh we would have some control uh over over this army but you're absolutely

00:15:36.280 right the choices were uh terrible they were all bad you i mean the story i always tell people is

00:15:45.380 imagine imagine early in 1944 as the red army front is advancing what you what you could might

00:15:55.020 or to have done you could have you could have uh been been uh sent to germany along with two million

00:16:04.980 other ukrainians to for slave labor to work in factories and and farms uh under allied bombing you

00:16:12.820 could have joined the so-called bowdienst which was forced labor building fortifications repairing roads and

00:16:19.760 railways it was back-breaking work 12 hours a day half an hour off for lunch

00:16:25.260 oh not really a lunch at all but just just um uh a quick break uh half a day off on sundays

00:16:34.800 you could have waited and and uh escaped to the forests to join the so-called partisans

00:16:42.000 but there was lawlessness in the forests too there there were gangs roaming around uh some some boys

00:16:49.700 tried that and were sent back uh the the the people in the forest the partisans said look we can

00:16:55.980 barely feed ourselves uh go back and try and get some education or you could you could wait for the

00:17:02.540 soviets to advance and the horror there was that the red army immediately took all able-bodied men

00:17:09.600 uh from the age of 17 to 45 put them on the front ranks often with one rifle between

00:17:18.880 half a dozen of them and just uh sent them against the germans they were mown down the the the uh

00:17:26.000 the casualties were horrific uh that that ancient russian tradition of

00:17:32.340 cannon fodder that they're still using today in the invasion of ukraine just

00:17:37.040 keep putting bodies out there to make the the enemy use all their ammunition

00:17:43.140 that's absolutely true and so in that situation um the the boys and there are many stories like this

00:17:51.080 the boys were uh that the germans uh found which simply put against the wall and told you either

00:17:58.220 we're not going to leave you for the reds to put on their front line you can either uh join the

00:18:05.100 division or we'll shoot you here and they actually did that so quite a few of the uh uh the recruits if

00:18:12.880 you want to put it that that way from 1944 were actually just saving their own lives they entered the

00:18:23.160 division just to to escape uh uh an even worse fate was the glacier division involved with war crimes

00:18:32.660 uh well there have been many many investigations uh and all of them have not have not found uh the

00:18:44.420 accusations to be uh to for the evidence uh of the accusations to to be true now i have to i have to put a

00:18:55.520 caveat in there um not all the people who entered the division uh were were thoroughly

00:19:04.180 checked there were some people who didn't have thorough checks but the basic the basic uh facts are that

00:19:13.240 as a division as a military unit they did not uh commit war crimes or these war crimes have not been

00:19:21.280 found but some individuals who joined may have committed war crimes before they joined uh in other words

00:19:32.940 they attach themselves to the division later in the war and there is one group it's the fourth and the

00:19:44.560 fifth so-called galician volunteer the galician ss volunteer regiments the fourth and fifth regiments

00:19:51.660 who um most of the accusations of war crimes pertain to those two groups and the confusion is this

00:20:03.220 those two groups were taken from the initial batch of recruits to the division

00:20:10.200 about 13 000 were sent to the division but about 6 000 or six six and a half thousand

00:20:17.580 were sent to these uh regiments and the two regiments were used for what's called police work

00:20:26.020 the division itself was only to fight on the eastern front only to fight as a frontline division that's

00:20:33.560 how it was formed but without knowledge of the military board and the the liaison people

00:20:39.780 uh and the ukrainian community this this group of six or so thousand were sent to the uh to the

00:20:47.420 volunteer uh regiments and uh they all the accusations that i have come across uh of war crimes pertain to

00:20:59.740 these two divisions now this is where the confusion comes in first of all they had the name galician

00:21:06.300 in the title secondly they were many of them were given the galician division insignia the badge and

00:21:13.860 they wore it so you can see how victims or people who saw them just assumed they were members of the

00:21:21.640 division and that confusion still uh still continues

00:21:25.800 so we do have though

00:21:31.580 university of alberta giving back donations um from the honka family looking at donations from others um

00:21:45.540 the governor general apologizing for giving the order of canada to peter saverin who was chancellor

00:21:54.000 of the university of alberta at one point um and claims that well they were actually very close

00:22:04.200 collaborators with the nazis so what what are we to take from the competing allegations then

00:22:13.240 well the life these people had after the war uh was a different life we're talking about people who

00:22:24.860 were uh upright members of their community of canadian the canadian community people who contributed to

00:22:33.180 the development of multiculturalism in canada uh they donated money for various causes good causes

00:22:40.960 educational causes um and uh this was never questioned what we're talking about is uh uh a past a perception

00:22:51.360 that these men may have done something during the war in spite of the fact that they had been

00:22:58.160 uh checked uh there had been a long uh process of uh of uh interviewing and looking at

00:23:08.000 at different members not all of them but many of them had been looked at uh so what we're talking

00:23:14.300 about is a sudden knee-jerk reaction by people who are not were not aware uh that such a division

00:23:24.320 existed uh had not looked at the duchenne commission's report or knew much about the second world war

00:23:33.280 or ukrainians in the second world war so i think there's been uh some degree of uh uh education that

00:23:42.600 has taken place since this uh this incident in parliament but you know people are still catching up

00:23:49.680 with uh with learning uh what this division actually was and of course the word waffen SS

00:23:57.080 uh and throwing around terms like nazi immediately uh makes it look like these people were monsters

00:24:05.760 which is exactly what some of the press has said you know they've used terms like monsters and

00:24:10.560 and uh you know the worst uh the most guilty uh parties during the war none of this really is true

00:24:20.660 but i mean it's it's on the cover of your book though in the maelstrom and the subhead

00:24:26.280 subtitle is the waffen SS galatia division and its legacy right so were they a waffen SS division

00:24:33.620 oh yes no no no definitely they were the 14th waffen SS uh division and uh that title uh it was their

00:24:46.400 official title but there were three groups in the waffen SS uh there were the germans there were the

00:24:52.560 germanic um divisions formed from germanics germanic nations of a germanic background and then towards

00:25:00.860 the end of the war after 43 the germans needed the manpower so at that point they allowed slabs and

00:25:08.040 other other other non-germans non-germanic peoples to form some divisions and the designation there

00:25:16.800 was slightly different it was their waffen SS of the waffen waffen SS and that signified that they

00:25:25.160 were non-germans and non-germanics but yes they were uh they were uh the official designation was

00:25:33.720 waffen SS we have to take a quick break but when we come back i want to dig more into this yeah

00:25:40.180 we've got a lot of accusations flying around you're saying we've got to learn a bit more history

00:25:45.880 there are calls to take down memorials and cemeteries um and questions about how so many people

00:25:52.840 from an SS division got into canada so hopefully we can unpack that when we come back

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00:26:23.380 your travel agent today conditions apply so were the men who were in the galatia division nazis or not

00:26:32.680 i have written several columns describing them as nazis because in my view if you're in the waffen ss if

00:26:40.480 you're fighting the wall as part of the waffen ss then yes that would qualify you as a nazi and i know

00:26:47.400 there is the um the argument that says well no only germans could be members of the party but

00:26:55.500 you're you're fighting for that would you say that myself and many other columnists and reporters have

00:27:02.940 been unfair in using that description well technically they were not nazis they could not be nazis as i've

00:27:13.780 said because they could not be members of the nazi party but they were aligned with the nazi germany

00:27:21.600 and so from the point of view of uh of a person facing the uh the uh the german army

00:27:30.820 yeah they were fighting for nazi germany and that's one of the

00:27:35.780 uh actually this debate this discussion that you're entering now is uh one of the discussions

00:27:44.880 that took place within the division itself the historians of the division the veterans who wrote

00:27:51.780 the the histories and who uh were the spokespeople from the division had a long debate um and many of

00:28:02.400 said it was a huge mistake to join the uh the division the galicia division because they never

00:28:12.260 had an opportunity and never would have had an opportunity to break away and uh and uh create an

00:28:20.120 army for fighting for independence secondly they said that they were used by the germans

00:28:26.160 there's no question about it the germans used them for their own aims and purposes uh and a lot of

00:28:33.720 people within the division were quite aware of that and and said that's why it was a huge mistake

00:28:39.320 so they themselves uh the the thinkers the the thoughtful people in the division uh were prepared to say

00:28:50.860 that yeah we we made a big mistake we actually fought for the nazis

00:28:55.720 was there oh you you said they they hoped to um

00:29:03.520 uh form their own army and fight for uh freedom eventually but was there also a sense that well

00:29:12.040 maybe this hitler guy will be better than that stalin guy

00:29:14.620 no i don't think that was the case all of these people were recruited after 43 they could see that

00:29:24.800 uh stalin was coming and hitler would lose the war this was after stalingrad after north africa

00:29:34.500 defeats of the germans in north africa they were aware that um uh at the war's end that there would be

00:29:43.940 there would be chaos but they had also seen what the germans were capable of they had seen jews rounded up

00:29:51.620 taken outside towns and shot they had seen their own people hung um you know on town squares

00:29:59.320 they had seen people being you know hit in the face because they uh they uh refused to move off the

00:30:08.420 sidewalk in front of a german uh some people being whipped uh trying to enter a a streetcar or a train

00:30:18.240 that was marked only for germans they were well aware uh of what the germans were capable of

00:30:25.680 though i don't think ideologically they were interested anything like uh support for germany or nazism

00:30:33.760 you have to also bear in mind that one of the conditions that ukrainians gave for creating the

00:30:39.920 division was that they should have chaplains christian chaplains and these people were there

00:30:45.960 precisely to uh to um negate uh nazi ideology and the germans themselves knew that why the ukrainians

00:30:56.820 had had uh had uh had volunteered they knew that they wanted their own army so they abridged and and uh

00:31:04.280 adapted the uh weltanschauung the instructions the ideological instructions they focused not on

00:31:12.600 talking about the superiority of germans or the inferiority of other races what they talked about

00:31:20.360 was the need to fight bolshevism to fight on the eastern front so uh all these all these uh tendencies

00:31:30.200 showed that really the discussion within the division itself was not in any way favorable to nazi germany

00:31:38.740 they they had their own agenda and they spoke about the possibility within the division they spoke about

00:31:46.620 the possibility of breaking away and joining the underground uh of killing their german officers

00:31:53.720 and uh and trying to fight their way to to the adriatic or to to the allies these were discussions

00:32:03.280 that took place obviously outside of german earshot but within the division and at the end of the war

00:32:10.580 many of them were quite prepared to uh to fight on the allied side they hoped in fact they would be

00:32:17.920 allowed to fight on the allied side and frankly some of them did uh one group uh uh was able to break out

00:32:28.240 uh of their camp in uh training camp in uh in france and joined the french resistance and fought in the

00:32:36.660 french resistance other soldiers uh joined the french foreign legion at the end of the war

00:32:42.360 some fought for some became members of the u.s army uh some of them were trained by the british

00:32:50.920 and parachuted into into ukraine uh in the later 40s these latter the last ones were picked up

00:33:01.300 uh by the soviets and uh and shot because kim philby was uh was giving away the information

00:33:08.980 and uh and uh the soviets were prepared for them

00:33:13.600 so what did they do it was about an 18 month time frame that this division was fighting correct

00:33:21.960 what was their main function were they infantry were they um anti-aircraft gunners were they artillery

00:33:30.880 um or or or were they all of the above what what exactly were they doing well it was it was an

00:33:38.060 infantry division but it was mechanized they had uh some uh some uh cannon and and and uh some support

00:33:46.340 um mechanized support but many of the cannons were actually horse drawn so they fought as an infantry

00:33:56.240 group they fought in the battle of brody uh to try and plug a gap uh that uh had been created when uh the red army

00:34:07.360 was advancing and out of 10 000 who went in only 3 000 came out 7 000 were either killed or disappeared

00:34:16.960 into the underground um and then at that point in 1944 the division was reformed it was uh people were

00:34:27.560 added to it from various units and the reformed division then was sent to slovakia because there

00:34:35.260 had been a mutiny uh in the slovak slovak army uh that mutiny was supported by two airborne divisions

00:34:44.460 from the soviet union and then they were shipped quickly to yugoslavia where they fought tito's

00:34:51.960 partisans and then shipped back again to austria where they held the front against the advancing red army

00:34:58.360 um and took some very heavy casualties at that point about 1 600 men were killed then they quickly

00:35:07.320 when the war ended they quickly moved uh west and uh surrendered to the british or or the americans

00:35:14.640 i'm sure you've heard um or seen some of the interviews that people have given

00:35:22.040 from canada's jewish community who are quite upset um over not only miroslav hanka

00:35:31.020 being applauded in uh parliament but that so many members of the division were allowed into the

00:35:40.460 country i think it was irving abella in a old interview said it was easier to get into canada

00:35:46.220 uh after the war if you were a member of the ss than if you were a jew and that uh the canadian

00:35:54.040 officials um actually you know if you could show your ss tattoo that showed that you were a good

00:36:01.080 anti-communist and so welcomed into the country there's obviously a lot of hurt and a lot of pain

00:36:08.060 there um what would what would you say to to those people who are are upset by by the history and who

00:36:18.740 think that um we let in a group of people that that we shouldn't have or or that this glacier division

00:36:28.320 was uh actually part of war crimes which which you dispute well i'm not quite sure that uh they did

00:36:39.700 not commit war crimes some there are some incidents that are still being investigated uh and looked into

00:36:46.380 but they have been cleared essentially the division per se has been cleared however obviously they were

00:36:54.260 part of the german war machine and one could say even more um when they were holding the front

00:37:02.080 in slovakia there were still 30 000 jews in slovakia that were being rounded up and sent for destruction

00:37:10.520 to germany so in a sense they were uh holding the front while jews were still being uh found and

00:37:21.620 destroyed and in that sense they were complicit in the holocaust that's you know that's that's a fact

00:37:28.500 so one has to understand the you know the the uh the conditions and the reasons why these people

00:37:38.300 signed up but also one has to understand uh the role they played uh directly or indirectly and

00:37:46.760 one one has to sympathize with uh jews who saw what was happening understand what was happening

00:37:55.920 and can see that these these men made a choice to support germany but i will say um one thing about the

00:38:07.220 uh the entry into canada there were many many groups who were allowed to emigrate at the end of the war

00:38:15.620 there were after all 38 waffen ss divisions there were many wehrmacht divisions many of these people were

00:38:24.060 uh had been prisoners of war they were all released they were all allowed to emigrate if they if they

00:38:32.160 so wanted some were checked many were not in fact you know the german war machine and the german

00:38:40.000 economy the german society continued to function throughout the war and millions of people were

00:38:47.360 involved in um in allowing that uh that that uh society to to exist many of them also emigrated at the

00:38:58.640 end of the war so if you're talking about checking thoroughly you should talk about checking all of

00:39:05.400 these people um there is because we are now far from the war many many decades later there is less

00:39:14.740 knowledge about the details of and the atmosphere in which uh uh these events happened well what was the

00:39:25.200 thinking of the canadian government at the time then towards this division well they decided in 1950

00:39:33.820 because it had been checked uh as far as they were concerned uh it had been checked by the british

00:39:40.020 uh and previously by other groups that uh that was good enough for them uh the british however

00:39:48.520 um were not entirely frank about the way to describe the division uh the british themselves wanted to be rid

00:39:59.500 of uh uh these prisoners of war uh and to move on so so did let me just stop you there to clarify

00:40:08.220 something did the i i think the number is about 2 000 members of the division came to canada is that

00:40:17.240 accurate uh it could have been uh were they people who were um held by the british as prisoners of war

00:40:26.940 they they were in the united kingdom at that point oh yes uh they were originally held until from 1945

00:40:35.720 to 1947 they were held in rimini in italy yes then there was a possibility that they would be sent back

00:40:44.360 when the british left because the italian government was under pressure to send back anybody who had

00:40:51.060 won a german uniform the british however had seen what happened to prisoners or people who had fought

00:41:01.820 uh in german uniform when they handed them back and quite often they were back to the soviets

00:41:07.320 back to the soviets they were machine gunned for example there were about 40 000 cossacks so-called

00:41:13.820 cossacks russians from the don area who were handed over and they were simply machine gunned

00:41:22.960 uh british officers had seen this happen and were appalled uh they they they did not want

00:41:31.460 this to happen to the ukrainians and at that point also uh the vatican intervened uh uh general anders

00:41:43.760 vladyslaw anders of the polish second corps intervened many of his soldiers were uh people from galicia

00:41:53.060 they had been part of that group that had been arrested and sent to siberia by the soviets

00:42:00.700 and then when the german soviet war began stalin said that they could they would be allowed out of the

00:42:07.680 siberian camps if they fought in an army that the polish uh general anders was creating he had been plucked

00:42:17.840 from a concentration camp and told that he could be a general they fought very bravely they they fought

00:42:24.520 uh all the way through uh uh up southern italy and uh these people were had some sympathy for

00:42:35.480 their fellow galicians who were in ukrainians in the galician army in fact there are some amazing

00:42:43.200 stories where the father was in the anders army after being in siberia fought on the allied side the son

00:42:53.480 had joined the division and was imprisoned in in rimini in italy and the father was sent to to to guard

00:43:01.920 to to sit outside the the barbed wire the cage and could speak to his son these people helped uh and there

00:43:12.660 was as you said the cold war was beginning and attitudes towards these people had changed so

00:43:21.380 you you had said that the british weren't forthright so did they didn't tell their canadian allies the full

00:43:31.760 story then yes i mean if you look at the documentation there is uh some fudging uh of the issue

00:43:42.400 uh so they were not uh they would say that the this was uh not quite uh a waffen ss division

00:43:55.460 that they that this was a wehrmacht division uh there was some there's some um trickery i think

00:44:05.340 that uh that was involved in fact however the ukrainians did not want to be in the waffen ss they wanted

00:44:14.060 to be a regular wehrmacht division and they were told for administrative purposes that the only

00:44:20.580 the only division they could join um um the only place where slavs uh non-germans non-germanic units

00:44:32.780 could join would be the waffen ss so this was used uh in a way to make it appear that these people were not

00:44:42.620 uh quite what uh what what what they were what do you say about issues like the the monuments in

00:44:53.180 uh in oakville in uh in edmonton that have been described as

00:45:02.940 uh glorifying nazis what because they talk about this uh division and in fact you know stories out

00:45:13.640 about it being a uh a nazi war monument i know you you write about it in the book about how

00:45:21.180 uh the russians when when this came out i guess about six years ago now uh the russian embassy

00:45:29.180 was quick to link it to christia freeland and say see um the ukrainians are a bunch of nazis

00:45:36.260 what do you say about that well to take your last point uh that is exactly what um

00:45:44.400 uh what is happening uh this this issue is being instrumentalized to try and link the present

00:45:52.080 struggle in ukraine for for independence and for for democratic society to try and link it

00:46:00.100 to the second world war and to and to uh you know blacken uh all the ukrainian emigration

00:46:07.440 or any any any critic of putin's regime that's certainly the case but the bigger issue the the

00:46:15.760 more important issue right now is that um these monuments should not be in any way places of

00:46:24.560 celebration you know these soldiers have a right to uh to rest in peace but what is happening uh

00:46:35.440 around these monuments is that they're being used first of all to um stoke this uh anti-ukrainian

00:46:44.720 hysteria but secondly also because some people uh uh in uh in far-right communities are actually uh

00:46:56.720 uh coming to the monument to celebrate uh uh nazism and this has created a terrible situation uh i think

00:47:08.400 basically the the the uh the solution to this is to prevent any kind of uh celebrations around around

00:47:18.000 these monuments or or any kind of uh uh opportunity for propaganda to be uh to be uh to exploit these

00:47:26.880 monuments uh i i think eventually probably they will have to be either covered up or uh removed just

00:47:35.840 to prevent this from happening that's that's really uh uh the the bottom line

00:47:43.280 uh professor shandri it's uh it's been a fascinating conversation and i'm sure we've

00:47:49.200 kicked off a debate and we'll both hear from lots of people that uh that have listened to this but you

00:47:54.640 won't be shocked by that because as you said in your book this is perhaps one of the most uh

00:47:59.200 controversial divisions um that came out of the war and uh and the controversy and the debate will

00:48:06.560 continue yeah i was surprised i called it in in the maelstrom and uh the legacy of the division has

00:48:15.440 been been vigorously debated for a very long time and now this this incident and in the canadian parliament

00:48:24.400 has put put the division back in the maelstrom of public debate in uh with a vengeance all right

00:48:32.800 thank you very much for your time it's a pleasure this has been the full comment podcast a post

00:48:39.120 media production this episode was produced by andre prue with theme music by bryce hall

00:48:44.000 kevin libin is the executive producer remember you can subscribe to full comment on apple podcast

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00:48:55.120 and by telling your friends about us thanks for listening until next time i'm brian lily

00:49:02.800 you

Full Comment - October 23, 2023

The difficult history behind the Nazi soldier in Parliament

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