The OUN not only pledged its allegiance to Hitler but itself committed countless war crimes. Konovalets is still idolized by the UWVA, as evidenced by a religious meeting held on May 26, 2019 at St. Andrew's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Toronto, "to honour the memory of two great men:" Symon Petliura -- head of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) (1918-1921), who is widely known for organizing pogroms and massacres of the Jewish population of the UPR and was shot in Paris in 1926 -- and Konovalets. According to its website, "The UWVA of Canada accepted the responsibility for continued maintenance and care of Col. Konovalets' grave site in Rotterdam, and proudly continues to do so to this very day." In Canada, the UWVA evolved into the Ukrainian National Federation (UNF) formed in 1932. Kossar, its leader, was listed as a person to be arrested and interned at the outbreak of World War II. Instead, the government of Mackenzie King intervened to create a new organization, the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, in which all the anti-communist organizations were expected to unite as part of smashing indigenous mass communist and progressive organizations. Two of the founding factions were explicitly pro-German -- the UNF and the United Hetmen Organization -- and inculcated with the fight against "Jewish Bolshevism.” This new organization was apparently based on a quid-pro-quo arrangement -- get behind the war effort, and in return the Canadian government would support their “cause” in post-war peace negotiations. This cause was their demand that they be installed as the leaders of an autonomous Ukraine -- similar to the one at the end of World War I -- following the hoped-for dismemberment of the Soviet Union. Kossar was amongst those summoned to Winnipeg by the government in November 1940 to participate as a founding member in the creation of the state-organized Ukrainian Canadian Committee, which was renamed Ukrainian Canadian Congress in 1989. During the war, the Mackenzie King government had to show a certain restraint, because it had begun to reluctantly cooperate with the Soviet Union in the war. Nevertheless, the two factions participated in the November 21-22, 1943 conference in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, near Zhytomyr, ostensibly on the initiative of the OUN(B) to form the so-called Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). For its part, under the genocidal occupation of Ukraine by Hitlerite Germany, Wikipedia records that the Kiev-based Ukrainian Bandurist Choir was given permission in 1941 to tour "areas around Kiev and parts of Western Ukraine" and in 1942 "was used by the Nazis as a morale booster, performing for the Ukrainian OST-Arbeiters (slave-workers from the East) in German work camps." After WWII, they emigrated to Detroit where they reconstituted their group. This is the fifth year in succession in which the Trudeau Liberals have dispatched units of the Canadian Forces to lend official credibility to the Etobicoke event and the freedom fighters heroized by the reactionary organizations, beginning with a cadet unit from the Royal Military College and representatives of three branches of the Canadian Forces in 2015.
This activity reaches far beyond the Toronto suburb. On June 18, 2018, Colonel Brian Irwin, Defence Attaché at the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv; Kareem Marcos, Deputy Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine; and Janur Peter, embassy staffer, participated in an extensive meeting with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Mariupol to discuss military strategy and training. According to the Azov website, "At the end of the meeting, the Canadian representatives thanked Azov members for their attention and expressed their hopes for further fruitful cooperation." Also part of Colonel Irwin's meeting was "the head of the Military School of the commanders named after the colonel Yevhen Konovalets." Konovalet is one of the officer training academy's idols and his portrait frequently adorns its military iconography. Azov Battalion, a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, has been internationally condemned for war crimes and terrorism, most recently in an open letter by 40 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The meeting was not reported by the media in Canada until September 2019. On August 21, 2019, flanked by three officers from the Canadian training brigade code-named Operation Unifier, Canada's then-ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk took part in a grotesque ceremony in the city of Sambir in Western Ukraine, unveiling a monument dedicated to executed members of World War II Nazi ally OUN and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The monument is erected on the grounds of a broken-down Jewish cemetery, where more than 1,200 Jews were shot and dumped into mass graves in 1943 by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators. The ceremony was condemned by the Ukrainian Jewish Committee. "It's a blatant insult to the memory of the Jewish victims," Eduard Dolinsky told Radio Canada International. "It's like erecting a monument to murderers on the graves of their victims." Postmedia reported that "Global Affairs Canada said the Sambir event was intended to assist efforts by the Jewish community in Canada and Ukraine to build public support to create an eventual memorial for the Jewish cemetery in the town. That was the reason for Waschuk's attendance and to suggest otherwise would be false, the department said." This disdain for telling the truth is tantamount to saying "the Jews made us do it." The victimizers are equated with the victims, the fascists with the Jews, who must prostrate themselves in the name of "reconciliation" and "building public support." In November, Canada once again cynically abstained on a UN resolution condemning the revival of Nazism, the glorification of Nazi criminals, their accomplices, and those who today fuel ethnic strife and xenophobia. In approval of the resolution, 121 countries voted "Yes," 55 countries abstained, and two countries (the U.S. and Ukraine) voted "No." The political agenda of the ruling elite in Canada has always lumped the Soviet Union and communism in with Nazi Germany and nazi-fascism with the aim of supporting nazi-fascism and opposing communism. Prior to forging the alliance with the Soviet Union after the German occupation of France and attacks on Britain, Canada declared the Soviet Union an enemy when it was forced to sign the non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, having been isolated and abandoned by the great European powers when they signed the Munich Agreement which permitted Hitler's attacks on Czechoslovakia and Poland and their subsequent expansion to all of Europe. But Canadian soldiers did not fight in World War II to support the fascist cause: they fought to defeat it. Their participation in commemorations such as the one which is organized every year in Etobicoke undermines their integrity and the honour of all Canadians who gave their lives in the anti-fascist war. It deserves a public outcry against it. Note1. A term that became infamous when the Nazis used it to describe non-Aryan "inferior people," often referred to as "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs -- mainly Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians. (Sources: Michael Sayers & Albert E. Kahn, Sabotage! The Secret War Against America, Harper & Brothers, 1942, 1st edition; New Pathway; Radio Canada International, Postmedia, Ukrainian National Federation; Wasyl Vera, The Ukrainian Canadian Committee; Its Origin and War Activity, MA thesis University of Ottawa, 1967; Saul S. Friedman, Pogromchik: The Assassination of Simon Petlura, Hart Publishing, 1976) (TML Weekly,November 10, 2019 - No. 26) (To access articles individually click on the black headline.) Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |