Letter to the Editor Arguments About "Minimal Compliance" Mira Katz

he case of Chrystia Freeland's grandfather and her own pro-Nazi views has seen some who call themselves journalists jump through hoops to come to her defence. Some have emerged who are so happy with her Liberal Party and literary activities but nonetheless seem troubled as to why she has remained silent about her grandfather's Nazi affiliations. One journalist goes so far as to say that Freeland is one of Canada's foremost intellectuals who helped her paternal uncle write an essay about the Nazi collaboration of her maternal grandfather but somehow managed to stay silent about who he actually was and his pro-Nazi activities. He even throws darts at anyone who suggests the record shows he played a role in assisting the German Nazis. The journalist concludes his item saying "what Freeland did amounts to a kind of intellectual minimal compliance."[1] "Minimal compliance"! How can the journalist say that "a true intellectual, one of the very best in the country," is herself capable of some "kind of intellectual minimal compliance" with the truth? It boggles the mind. This journalist's pathetic apology for Ms. Freeland precisely describes what the apologists said Michael Chomiak, her grandfather, did in serving the genocidal Nazi regime. They say Chomiak was only in "minimum compliance" with the Nazis, as he was serving the glory of a greater cause to maintain the culture of the Ukrainians in Krakow and other German-occupied areas. The fact that this was done with the full knowledge that his Nazis handlers were pursuing the indiscriminate slaughter of all those resisting their barbaric war is to be dismissed. It is unconscionable! Note 1. Michael Harris, "From Russia with loathing: Freeland and the media," iPolitics March 9, 2017. (TML Weekly No. 9, March 18, 2017)