No. 48
December 12, 2024
Another Shameful Day for Canada
Canada Unveils Virulently Anti-Communist
Monument to "Victims"
Whose Names
Cannot Be Uttered
Information picket at the
Ottawa site of the anti-communist monument, August 21, 2020
• Canada's Unsound Rationale for an Anti-Communist Monument
• No to the Glorification of Nazism and Falsification of History
• Trudeau Government Refuses to Release Names of Suspected War Criminals Given Refuge in Canada
• About the Lists of Suspected War
Criminals from
Deschênes
Commission
From the Party Press
TML
Monthly 2023
• Research Report for Deschênes Commission Underscores Steep Price of Anti-Communism
Another Shameful Day for Canada
Canada Unveils Virulently Anti-Communist Monument to
"Victims"
Whose Names
Cannot Be Uttered
The Government of Canada refuses to utter the names of the millions of victims of genocide committed both during its colonial past and its present national and international stands in lockstep with the U.S. imperialists. It erects no monuments to murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited people but shields Nazi war criminals and collaborators.
Monuments to many worthy causes should legitimately claim pride of place at the centre of Ottawa, across from Library and Archives Canada. That would make Canadians proud. Monuments to all those who fought the British from the time of Conquest into the 21st century -- Indigenous Peoples, Québécois, Métis, peoples from China and India and many others, to the workers who have given their lives for Canada to prosper, to the Canadians who gave their lives as cannon fodder in World War I and in the fight against German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism in World War II. This includes those whose countries were occupied by them at that time, as well as all those who have sought refuge in Canada as a result of U.S. imperialist wars of aggression, occupation and torture regimes since World War II.
But no, now it is unveiling a virulently anti-communist no-name monument for which it can provide no justification, no rationale. It is a vain attempt to perpetuate the hoax that Canada does not glorify Nazism and the falsification of history to cover up the crimes it is participating in and condoning today, such as the genocide of the Palestinian people. It is a shameful act exposed by the very fact that the sole mission of its "project partner," the organization which calls itself Tribute to Liberty, is to rehabilitate Nazis and Nazi collaborators and agitate for the destruction of Russia.[1]
A
spokesperson for Canadian Heritage said on December 2 that the official
inauguration of the misnamed "Memorial to the Victims of Communism --
Canada, a Land of Refuge" will take place on December 12, in
partnership with "the project's main promoter," Tribute to Liberty.
It claims that this
monument does not glorify Nazism and Nazi-collaborators but "the
millions who suffered under communist regimes." To prove this, it says
the monument will not bear one single name of said "victims," the
reason being that Canadian Heritage has been advised that a majority of
the names which were to be engraved on the memorial are Nazis, Nazi
collaborators and war criminals, including members of the Waffen SS
during the Second World War, or have no connection with Canada and
should be removed.
The monument was to be unveiled on November 2, 2023, following one postponement after the other due to the inability to raise funds from Canadians to build this abhorrent monument. Instead, it was postponed once again when Canadian Parliamentarians shamelessly gave two standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka, an avowed Waffen SS soldier, in the House of Commons on September 22, 2023. This act caused such universal condemnation, at home and abroad, that the government has been trying to backtrack ever since, brushing it aside as an inadvertent mistake or oversight or even Russian "fake news."
Nonetheless, the backlash was such that the government was forced to reckon with the fact that the names submitted to be inscribed on the walls of the anti-communist monument were those of Nazis and Nazi collaborators and heinous criminals who have carried out reprehensible crimes.
In October, a report prepared by the Department of Canadian Heritage was made public. It recommended that 332 of the 550 names planned to go on the memorial be removed because of their Nazi connections, or because they had no connection to Canada. In fact, they too were Nazis or Nazi collaborators. It pointed out that in 2021, officials from Global Affairs Canada told Canadian Heritage that many anti-communist and anti-Soviet advocates and fighters were also active Nazi collaborators who committed documented massacres.
Regarding the removal of such names, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center called upon Canadian Heritage to take a clear stand: "What we want is a clear commitment from the minister that the names of those who helped the Nazis or were involved in the Holocaust not be honoured on this memorial. We feel this is a very reasonable request and it is concerning we cannot get a simple answer."
A
spokesperson for Canadian Heritage has confirmed that there will be no
names on the memorial. It states that it will "ensure all aspects of
the memorial are compatible with Canadian values on democracy and human
rights." Which aspects would those be?
Funding has been received from organizations and countries promoting Nazis and erecting monuments for their rehabilitation. Canadian officials who collaborated with Tribute to Liberty from the inception include Jason Kenney. He was Minister of National Defence, Minister for Multiculturalism, Minister of Employment and Social Development, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, and Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity) in the government of Stephen Harper, which is when the project first got underway. Kenney's declared hero is Aloysius Stepinac, a Croatian prelate of the Catholic Church, who during World War II supported the Nazis and their Ustashi collaborators. In the name of high ideals, Stepinac actively supported brutal crimes against millions of people -- including the mass murder, forced expulsions and forced conversion to Catholicism -- of Serbians, Jews, Roma, Croatians who opposed collaboration with the Nazis and others. After the war he was convicted of war crimes for these activities and imprisoned.[2]
Such statements from Canadian Heritage do not account for why the names of Nazi soldiers and collaborators were suggested in the first place. As well, all claims that Canada abides by criteria of democracy and human rights have lost whatever credibility they may have had. This is the case not only in the wake of ovations to Nazis in Parliament and Canada's funding and training of neo-Nazi brigades in Ukraine to commit crimes against the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine and destroy Russia. Even more significantly, Canada's claim to defend human rights has been exposed by Canada's refusal to disengage with the U.S./Zionist genocide. So too with its ongoing attempts to criminalize those who defend our humanity and want to see an end to genocide and war crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
The fact that government officials are forging ahead with this nefarious monument, come what may, leads Canadians to wonder what world they think they live in. They seem to think Canadians will let them get away with such an egregious abuse of their positions of power and privilege. It tells Canadians what to expect going forward given Canada's takeover by the U.S. Pentagon and the aggressive military alliance it leads, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The unveiling of this monument is their dirty deed. It is precisely the Nazis and Nazi collaborators who the United States placed at the head of this warmongering NATO alliance following World War II who are striving to make a comeback.
This monument should be abolished. That is the bottom line from which Canada cannot escape.
Notes
1.
Approval of Tribute to Liberty's Anti-Communist Monument by Harper
Government.
2. Jason Kenney's Hero – Archbishop Stepinac of Nazi-Occupied Croatia
(With files from Ottawa Citizen. Graphics: JRD-YDR.)
Canada's Unsound Rationale
for an
Anti-Communist Monument
There is a suggestion that once the names of Nazis and Nazi collaborators have been withdrawn from the anti-communist monument the Government of Canada has decided to unveil in Ottawa on December 12, together with the organization called Tribute to Liberty – whose entire existence has been to rehabilitate Nazis and Nazi collaborators – the monument is a legitimate tribute to Canada's so-called victims of communism and Canada as a "refuge" for those "persecuted by communism." The implication is that every single Canadian whose country of origin the government of Canada has declared a "communist dictatorship," is a victim of communism and came to Canada to find refuge. This is simply not the case.
Such
a rationale imposes a false identity on the millions of people who came
to Canada, calling them victims of communism irrespective of who they
are, why they came to Canada in the first place, their political and
ideological views, their aspirations, etc. Many have raised the
pertinent
question of why Canada has not instead raised a monument to the
anti-fascist fighters in World War II, many of whom have made Canada
their home since the anti-fascist war.
Another rationale given is that so long as the names of the Nazis and Nazi collaborators have been removed, the monument is justified because it praises Canada as a liberal democracy which is against communist dictatorship. This rationale is based on liberal hypocrisy and conciliation with the crimes against humanity which the Anglo-American imperialists have carried out since the beginning of the 20th century. The pretense by subsequent Canadian governments that Canada espouses the values of peace, freedom and democracy has died in Gaza where Canada is complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Historical evidence shows that it has always provided safe haven for scoundrels and dictators saving themselves from the wrath of their own people. The refuge given to Nazi war criminals and collaborators is only the tip of the iceberg. From Korea, to Vietnam and Indo-China, to Iran and mafia elements from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the countries of Asia and Africa, Canada has welcomed them all. This includes Zionists who sent hundreds and thousands of Jews to the killing machines during World War II, in exchange for favours given by the Hitlerites to save a chosen few who were sent to Palestine. All of this is well recorded but hidden from the realm of public discourse in Canada.
Canada's unacceptable rationale was entrenched during the Cold War launched by the U.S. and Anglo-American imperialists after World War II.
After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, and even during its drafting and the adoption process, the Anglo-American imperialist forces launched the Cold War based on the lie that the "West" is the "defender" of human rights, and that socialism and communism are not. It was a patent falsity, but it has obviously served as the backdrop for many of the crimes committed against the peoples fighting for national and social liberation since World War II.
Not only did the Anglo-American imperialists refuse to denazify the zones under their control but they actually protected the Nazis, gave them safe haven and positions of influence and authority while they persecuted the communists, slaughtering them en masse as they did in Korea in 1950-53 and Indonesia under their puppet Sukarno in 1965-1966, or keeping them in concentration camps for 40 years as they did in Greece and south Korea while carrying out witch hunts, coups d'état and wars of aggression in the name of the containment of communism. They established NATO as an aggressive U.S. imperialist-led war alliance and its North Atlantic Council to make sure that only political systems to their liking were permitted in Europe, based on definitions of rights and types of government which they themselves approved and imposed.
Anti-communism and the defeat of the Soviet Union and countries of the former people's democracies, not defence of democracy and human rights, was their motivation and the most heinous crimes were justified on this basis.
At the time the Universal Declaration on Human Rights was adopted, this expressed itself in the clash between the countries that comprised the socialist camp and those that comprised the capitalist camp. The socialist countries fought against permitting rights to be treated as an abstraction while there was no obligation to put in place the economic and social conditions required for their realization. The capitalist camp refused to have any legal requirements holding governments accountable to guarantee the rights. It rejected providing for collective rights, including the rights of nations to self-determination.
According to the U.S. imperialist mantra, communism was based on the violation of human rights. Overthrowing communism was thus to prove the superiority of the U.S. democracy and its defence of human rights. To this day the U.S. imperialists and their partners in crime continue to erect monuments to condemn the alleged crimes of the communists while the crimes they have carried out in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights are to remain forgotten.
Canada figures prominently in this history which it is trying to escape today by unveiling anti-communist monuments such as the one in Ottawa, protecting the fact that it shielded Nazis and Nazi collaborators after World War II, and considers the genocide of the Palestinian people a democratic act in defence of Israel.
But
history has its own cunning. Reality exists. Human beings not only
exist but they strive to humanize the social and natural environment as
a matter of their being human. This is what settles scores with the old
conscience of society.
The anti-communist monument, which remains a tribute to the U.S. imperialists and their Nazi collaborators, should be abolished. Canada refuses to discuss its rationale for keeping it because it cannot justify what cannot be justified. Using its positions of privilege and power to pursue this shameful project will only add to the huge stain which already besmirches Canada's reputation worldwide.
More than 1.1 million Canadians joined the Canadian Armed Forces in World War II. Millions of Canadians come from countries which were occupied by the Nazis, Mussolini's fascists or the Japanese militarists and fought against them. Many were part of the resistance forces including the communists. Either this monument should honour their cause and sacrifice or it should be abolished.
(Graphics: JRD-YDR)
No to the Glorification of
Nazism and
Falsification of History
The outrageous announcement by Heritage Canada that today, December 12, it is unveiling the anti-communist monument, without any of the names of those it purports to honour, reminds many of Parliament's previous support for Nazis. More than one year has passed since the entire Parliament rose to give not one but two standing ovations and a wave from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Yaroslav Hunka, who had been a member of the Nazi Waffen SS Galicia. In introducing Hunka, who was in the gallery on the initiative of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), the Speaker said:
"We
have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the
Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the
Russians and continues to support the troops today, even at his age of
98. He's a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all
his service.
Thank you."
Canadians heard these words, saw the standing ovations, the wave from Zelensky, and expressed their outrage through thousands of pages of messages sent to Trudeau and Members of Parliament, articles, social media posts, letters to the editor, and in many other ways. This is an expression of the need to settle scores with the old conscience of society, which is part of acquiring an outlook and the modern definitions needed to create forms of governance which uphold rights by virtue of being human.
Since then, the Liberals and all the cartel parties have continued to scream "Russian propaganda" in an attempt to convince Canadians to accept their "apologies." The speaker clearly made the connection between Hunka's "service" in the Waffen SS and support for the "troops today" – the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia -- and put them forward as one and the same fight. To suggest that it is Russia which is making such a connection is beyond pathetic.
The fraudulent nature of the apologies which were made at that time is further confirmed by the announcement by Library and Archives Canada that it will not release the names of the suspected war criminals who were welcomed to Canada, and the government's announcement that it will unveil the anti-communist monument in Ottawa, with no names on it. These efforts to sanitize the anti-communist monument in Ottawa are a desperate attempt to divert from Canada's role in the glorification of Nazis and falsification of history. This includes Canada's support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine today and its belligerent support for the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine, while claiming that Russia's aim of denazification is not legitimate.
However, the state has failed to convince Canadians and Quebeckers that they should accept the glorification of Nazis and falsification of history. Instead, large numbers of people have denounced the betrayal of the memory of the Canadians and all those who fought and died to defeat the fascist scourge, and all of the victims of German and Italian fascism and Japanese militarism. Nor have they been able to convince Canadians and Quebeckers that opposition to this glorification of Nazis and their collaborators and to the neo-Nazi battalions in Ukraine today is "Russian propaganda" and that Russia is guilty of foreign interference in Canadian affairs.
Canadians, Quebeckers, Indigenous Peoples and Métis rely on their own collective history, experience, consciousness and memory of the colossal fight to defeat fascism and struggles of the peoples for independence and national liberation.
Long-Standing Pro-Nazi Stand of Canadian Government
For close to 80 years, the Canadian state has recruited, welcomed, funded and protected Nazi war criminals and their collaborators, progenitors and apologists. They did so in pursuit of their agenda of virulent anti-communism and destruction first of the Soviet Union and now Russia.
Among the war criminals and collaborators who were welcomed to Canada were some 2,000 former members of the Nazi Waffen SS Galicia. This took place at the behest of the British Foreign Office which was keen to divest itself of the approximately 8,000 members of the SS Galicia who had been brought to Britain. The British Foreign Office issued a directive to Commonwealth countries in 1948 that it had now become necessary to convince people to "leave the past behind" so as to target the Soviet Union and communism as the enemy.
Everyone is to forget that Anglo-American imperialists wanted to destroy the Soviet Union and suppress the people fighting for their national liberation. This was their aim when they egged on Hitler in the hopes that he would destroy the Soviet Union, Germany would be weakened, and they would come out on top. The aim has not changed.
Nazi collaborators and their descendants who lionize them have not just been hiding in plain sight in Canada for close to 80 years. They have been firmly embedded in the cartel parties, the universities and other institutions. They have erected monuments to war criminals, including outside of their buildings, generously funded by federal and provincial governments. Right from 1940 when the federal government brought the reactionary Ukrainian organizations together to form the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, now the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), their organizations have received state funding and support.
War criminals and leading Nazi collaborators remain confident that the state will protect them and that the monopoly media will endlessly repeat their claims that they had no choice but to "fight communism" or that they were fighting for an "independent Ukraine" and so on. They even describe the Red Army which liberated the countries of eastern Europe and drove the Nazis out as imposing "occupation."
The UCC and their ilk have become so cocky that they fully expected that they could present "service" in the SS as heroic. Their hubris was based on their long service to the U.S. imperialists in their drive to dictate to the whole world as the "indispensable nation."
The Zionists have a saying, "The old will die and the young will forget." How wrong they were, as the world has united to say, We Are All Palestinians! Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney certainly thought so as well when they decided it was time to have a monument in a prominent public space dedicated to war criminals and Nazi collaborators, claiming that they were the "victims of communism." Chrystia Freeland clearly thought so when she made sure that the Tribute to Liberty organization received $6 million in public funding to build a monument in Canada to the Nazis.
The bargain made by the government in 1940 with the reactionary and even openly pro-Nazi Ukrainian organizations which formed the UCC was that the new organization would support the war effort. In return, they were given the buildings, presses, and mailing lists stolen from the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA). The ULFTA's anti-Nazi leaders were arrested and put in jails and detention camps. The UCC was given a government promise of support for their post-war aims to dismember the Soviet Union and establish an "independent" ethnically cleansed Ukraine. And today the UCC forces appear to be fully integrated into cabinet decision-making about Canada's role in the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
These pro-Nazis raised their children and grandchildren to idolize mass murderers, pogromists and fascist ideologues. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many rushed to Ukraine to work to promote a vision of an "independent Ukraine" in the image of their Nazi "heroes." So cocky had they become that they made their private papers public, revealing their own criminal deeds.
Chrystia Freeland's grandfather Michael Chomiak's private papers in the provincial Archives of Alberta reveal that as chief Ukrainian propagandist for the Nazis in occupied Poland, he shared their vile anti-Semitism, racist and fascist outlook. So too are those of the unapologetic Waffen SS member Peter Savaryn, whose Order of Canada was revoked after the Hunka scandal. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta (UAlberta) continues to operate with impunity to promote its falsification of history. It has received more than $1.4 million from, or in the name of, former members of the Waffen SS, including Yaroslav Hunka, and acknowledged these donations publicly. Forced to make an insincere apology, UAlberta and the CIUS have simply stopped reporting their donors.
Members of the Nazi Waffen SS, known and suspected war criminals and Nazi collaborators from across Europe did not slip into Canada accidentally, or by hiding their identities. Historian Irving Abella pointed out that as the Cold War picked up steam, SS tattoos were not a barrier to entry into Canada. Far from it, it was the anti-fascists, the communists and resistance fighters who were the object of "vetting" and considered "undesirable" elements.
The fascists and Nazi collaborators were recruited to spread anti-communist lies, disrupt the workers' movement, and directly support U.S. imperialism, which assumed the mantle of Nazi Germany. Top Nazi generals and scientists were integrated into the war machine, their genocidal propagandists into the universities, and other war criminals imposed on national minority communities as "leaders," in both the U.S. and Canada.
The hubris of these pro-Nazi forces is such that Chrystia Freeland thought she could get away with dismissing the fact that her grandfather, who she wrote was one of the greatest influences in her life, was the leading Ukrainian language propagandist for the Nazis in occupied Poland during World War II. All she had to say were the magic words "Russian propaganda" to make those speaking the truth the target. Add "fighting for Ukraine" and that would be that. Far from it, her Nazi roots have not been forgotten.
Canadians and Quebeckers reject Nazism, just as they reject government claims that those who oppose genocide in Gaza and support the resistance are "anti-Semitic."
Holodomor, Another Pro-Nazi Falsification of History
When all else fails to "justify" the oaths these Ukrainian Nazis swore to Hitler and their war crimes and crimes against humanity, there is the myth of a deliberate genocide against Ukrainians called the "Holodomor." The name Holodomor is deliberately crafted to invoke the Holocaust. It is used to claim that food shortages in Ukraine, which also occurred in other parts of the Soviet Union in 1932, were a deliberate act of genocide, a man-made famine to destroy Ukraine. The food shortages were actually caused by the attempts of the remnants of the old Czarist regime to mobilize the kulaks (rich peasants and landlords) against collectivization of agriculture which benefited the mass of poor and landless peasants, as well as natural causes.
The claim of a man-made famine was first made by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and taken up by the yellow Hearst press in the U.S. to undermine the prestige of the Soviet Union. It was revived in the 1980s to divert from the growing demands to open the files on suspected war criminals in Canada. Today it is used to divert from crimes of the present.
The Canadian state, to its eternal shame, has made commemorating a genocide which never happened official state policy while refusing to condemn the U.S./Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people and now the Lebanese people which is taking place in full view in the present. It is also used to falsely claim that Ukraine was a "captured nation" within the Soviet Union, again a concept first used by the Nazis. It is to cover up that now the U.S./NATO aggressors are quite prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian in their drive for global hegemony.
In the current period, when anti-Russian oligarchs established neo-Nazi battalions in Ukraine, the Canadian Armed Forces helped to train them. These gangs, backed by the U.S./NATO forces orchestrated the Maidan coup in 2014 and then proceeded to carry out terrorist acts and ethnic cleansing against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Both the Canadian state and organizations which it recognizes as "representing Ukrainians in Canada" continue to play a significant role in supporting neo-Nazi ideology, hatred of Russians, and the honouring of Ukrainian war criminals and Nazi collaborators from World War II. Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland and others openly shout the slogans of the criminal Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) — Glory to Ukraine and the refrain, Glory to the Heroes.
A terrible price is being paid by the Ukrainian people, who are designated by the U.S. hegemon and its allies to "fight to the last Ukrainian" in order to weaken or dismember Russia. The children and grandchildren of the Nazi collaborators and war criminals, were taught to support "heroes" that expressed the most virulent racist and anti-communist hatred in their quest to establish a Ukraine "cleansed" of all "alien elements." These included anti-fascist Ukrainians, Poles, people of Jewish heritage, Roma and other national minorities, communists, partisan resistance fighters, and what they called "Judeo-Bolshevism."
In Nazi-occupied Poland, communists played a leading role in the resistance movement, where people of Polish and Ukrainian nationality including those of Jewish heritage fought side by side together with other national minorities. After the war they were accused of all manner of crimes.
Today it is no different, as the official circles defend Israel's "right to defend itself" – a right which does not exist in international law, not to mention a depraved claim rejected by the whole world, while declaring the Resistance fighting against occupation and for national liberation to be "terrorists."
The verdict of the world's people with the defeat of German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism was Never Again which means that democracy could not permit the existence of fascism. It was violated by the imperialists after World War II, but it has not been erased from the conscience of humanity. Those standing against genocide and today's Nazism are contributing to settling scores with the old conscience of society, reflected by the government's actions. By speaking in their own name as many defending Palestine are doing, and working to develop modern definitions of democracy, new forms of governance which uphold rights by virtue of being human can be developed.
Trudeau Government Refuses to Release Names of Suspected War Criminals Given Refuge in Canada
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has informed that the names provided to the Deschênes Commission of around 900 suspected Nazi collaborators and war criminals who were given refuge in Canada following World War II will not be released. The decision was not made publicly, but in a letter to participants in LAC's "stakeholder consultations" on the release of Part II of the report of Canada's 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals (Deschênes Commission).
LAC
received requests under the Access to Information Act from
several organizations as well as broad public demand for the release of
the files together with the entire report of the Deschênes
Commission,
parts of which have never been released.
"After a comprehensive review in accordance with the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act — which included targeted consultations with external stakeholders and various Government of Canada departments — a decision has been made to withhold the Part II Report of the Deschênes Commission in its entirety," LAC said in a statement to the newspaper Daily Beast.
LAC staff consulted with a "discrete group of individuals or organizations" about whether the list should ever be made public. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) was consulted, and possibly other organizations which are known to defend war criminals and Nazi collaborators. Organizations which carry out research and education on the Holocaust expressed their outrage that they were not included, as did the Canadian Polish Congress and the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians.
The Trudeau government has provided no explanation as to who instructed LAC to hold consultations exclusively with organizations whose members are likely on the list of alleged war criminals in Canada. Serious questions remain as to who has seen the list and what information was quietly shared with the "discrete group of individuals and organizations." Has Deputy Prime Minister Freeland seen the list? Is her grandfather on it?
Esprit de Corps magazine reported that the "discrete group of advisors [...] claimed that such action [to reveal the names] could result in criminal prosecution of the alleged crimes. They also worried that the list could prove to be embarrassing to the Canadian government and the Ukrainian community in general. In addition, they raised concerns the list might be used by Russian president Vladimir Putin for propaganda purposes." It is not the Ukrainian community in general the forces pushing the monument are concerned about, but the pro-Nazi Ukrainians like the UCC.
The UCC threatened to launch a legal challenge to block the release of the lists of suspected war criminals. They always hide that Ukrainians in large numbers were part of the anti-fascist resistance and also reside in Canada. More than 40,000 Canadians of Ukrainian origin fought with the Canadian Armed Forces to defeat fascism in World War II.
The UCC has been given official recognition by Canadian governments since WWII, which helped these Nazi collaborators expropriate the legitimate Ukrainian organizations established prior to World War II and their assets to form the UCC. Today with Chrystia Freeland in the position of Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, their standing has been further enhanced to the level of involving them in official functions and even decision-making. The pro-Nazi UCC continues to be well-funded by the Government of Canada and appears to have been integrated into cabinet decision-making on Canada's participation in the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine.[1]
The names of the suspected war criminals that Canada chose not to further investigate is not a private matter but a concern to all Canadians. This is true no matter who is added to the secret "consultations."
The Trudeau government is committing historical fraud when it tries to rewrite history to cover up the crimes being committed in the present. The government is desperate to hide that its open support for neo-Nazi ideology and forces in Ukraine in the present is a continuation of the history of support for Nazi collaborators and war criminals and honouring of Ukrainian war criminals and Nazi collaborators from World War II. This is crucial to maintaining its disinformation that the U.S./NATO proxy war to dismember and weaken Russia is about defending "freedom and democracy" and that the Russian aim of denazification of Ukraine is illegitimate.
The disinformation is also to deny the courage and sacrifice of the Soviet Union whose heroic peoples rose as one and broke the back of the Nazi war machine at tremendous cost, with the deaths of 26.6 million. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was an integral part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) whose people gave their lives to defeat Nazi-fascism. The vile distortion of history by the government of Canada, among others, is such that the Red Army which defended and liberated country after country is referred to as an "occupying" force while the Nazis are portrayed as "liberators."
The Trudeau government is in contempt of Canadians and Quebeckers who sent thousands of pages of messages and letters denouncing the standing ovation given by the entire Parliament as well as the Ukrainian puppet President Volodymyr Zelensky himself to Yaroslav Hunka, a former Nazi Waffen SS member. This only further reveals that the Liberals and other cartel parties are not worthy of ruling Canada and that their protection of the Nazi collaborators and promotion of the notion that Canada is a refuge for "victims of communism" is part of integrating Canada into the U.S. war machine and diverting attention from their crime of supporting the genocide against the Palestinian people.
Note
1. This November, while her fellow cabinet Ministers were heading to Azerbaijan for the COP29 Climate Change Conference to make their claims about reducing emissions from the oil and gas sector, Deputy Prime Minister Freeland was in Edmonton speaking to the UCC, where she proclaimed that Canada will be leading the charge to remove Russian oil from all world markets and replace it with oil from Alberta. She stated that "this is the first room where I will be talking about this."
(With files from True North, Esprit de Corps, Daily Beast, Ottawa Citizen.)
About the Lists of Suspected War Criminals from Deschênes Commission
Canada's 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals (Deschênes Commission) did not conduct investigations of its own to find war criminals in Canada. The Commission compiled a list of around 900 names from "various sources" consisting of a Master List of 774 suspected war criminals, an Addendum of 38 names brought to the Commission's attention during its proceedings, and a list of 71 German scientists and technicians who were permitted to immigrate to Canada. It did not include the 50 or so names submitted by the Soviet Embassy. It did not cast a wider net and did not look for individuals by cross-referencing war criminals' lists compiled after the war using Canadian immigration records.[1] It did not include a list of the 2,000 or so members of the Ukrainian Nazi Waffen SS Galizien, although some of their names may be on the list.[2]
The Commission concluded that of these suspected war criminals, 341 had not come to Canada, 86 did come to Canada but had since died, 21 were admitted to Canada but had since left Canada, for a total of 448 who were not at the time living in Canada and whose files should be closed. No investigation was to be conducted as to how the suspected war criminals who had allegedly died or left Canada had been allowed into Canada, and what was known about them.
This shows how the Commission refused to address, much less settle scores with, the role of the Canadian state in the service of British and then U.S. imperialism and their promotion and protection of Nazis after WWII.
The Commission also violated the decisions of the Nuremberg Trials that the Nazi SS was a criminal organization, and those who voluntarily joined the SS division could be indicted for war crimes. The Commission not only rejected international law but falsely stated that members of the Waffen SS had been "cleared" by British authorities, a claim that was thoroughly debunked by its own investigation.
The Deschênes Commission recommended that a further 154 files should be closed because there was no prima facie evidence of war crimes. A prima facie case is one where there is enough proof of guilt to proceed to trial or judgement. In no way were these suspects exonerated; the files were closed without any further investigation. Added to this were the cases of four individuals that the Commission did not find. In all, 294 files remained.[3]
A further 97 cases were disposed of for "lack of evidence" because the Commission refused to collect any. Conservative backbenchers and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) organized to delay the Mulroney government from making requests of foreign governments. When the Commission finally decided that it would travel to foreign countries where the crimes took place, the government refused to make requests through normal diplomatic channels.
The Commission further stalled by making irregular demands about how hearings would be conducted. When the governments of the Soviet Union and Poland accepted all the demands, the Commission declared it was "too late" and there was "no time."
The 38 names added during the Commission proceedings which formed an Addendum, were dispatched with a recommendation that the "appropriate authorities" pursue these cases, since the inquiry was "out of time." Nothing was done about the names of the scientists and technicians, again based on "lack of time." All outstanding cases were left to the discretion of the government, which eventually charged four individuals, took one case to trial which ended in an acquittal, and dropped the charges against the remaining three individuals.
Notes
1. "Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present, Part I," Alti Rodal, Library and Archives Canada.
2. The Canadian government has never revealed whether it has a list of members of the Waffen SS Galizien, who were admitted to Canada en masse or whether this information was deliberately destroyed along with many other immigration files in the early 1980s. A list of the approximately 8,000 Waffen SS members who were brought to Britain, including the 2,000 or so who immigrated to Canada has remained classified. The Ukrainian Canadian Committee, now the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, had as its member organization the Brotherhood of Former Soldiers of the First Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army (Waffen SS Galizien). The UCC lobbied strongly for their admission into the UCC, but that any lists they certainly possessed be kept classified.
3. When the Deschênes Commission began its work, the Ukrainian Canadian Committee hired lawyer John Sopinka, himself of Ukrainian descent, to make their submission. He argued that evidence collected by the Soviet Union should be prohibited. He reasoned that the collection of evidence from defeated Nazis and their collaborators held in captivity due to their war crimes violated Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, never mind that such evidence would also have included testimonies from the victims of the Nazis themselves. In the UCC's submission to the Commission, Sopinka wrote:
"Where a court concludes that the evidence was obtained in a manner that infringed or denied any rights or freedoms guaranteed by the Charter, the evidence shall be excluded if it is established that, having regard to all the circumstances, the admission of it in the proceedings would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
"In my submission, the taking of Soviet evidence in the course of any proceedings under any circumstances which the Soviets could be expected to agree to, would be in violation of the principles of fundamental justice and bring the administration of justice into disrepute."
In 1988, Sopinka was involved with the World Congress of Free Ukrainians to promote the Holodomor myth on the world stage. That same year he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
(With files from Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives)
From
the Party Press
TML Monthly
2023
Research Report for Deschênes Commission Underscores Steep Price of Anti-Communism
Demonstration in 1997
against the presence of Nazi war criminals in Canada. In 1997 the
Canadian government acknowledged admitting 2,000 members of the
Ukrainian Waffen-SS division.
The September 22, 2023, standing ovation for Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Hunka in Parliament was the product of more than a century of persistent, inbred and now ingrained anti-communism among Canada's ruling elite. This outlook was spearheaded by the Anglo-American imperialists from the time of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the rise of the communist and workers movement in Canada itself. In part, it was based on an alleged biblical claim that opposition to private property is a sin and thus it not only defends Canada's constitutional order politically but also in terms of Canadian values.
This outlook is deliberately passed on from one Parliament to the next to the point where it has now become an internally unquestioned official policy of all institutions of the state. This imbues all those who take office with a profound ignorance because they are taught to never question the outlook they swear allegiance to uphold. It also exerts pressure on the entire society at this time when the takeover of political affairs by police powers is posing ever-greater dangers to the rights of the people.
This is why ruling elites make excuses for themselves when they are caught making standing ovations to the likes of Hunka in Parliament. It is difficult to see how any of those who applauded him with two standing ovations are going to talk their way out of this when the entire outlook is anti-communist. Their refusal to modernize Canada's political system is such that they are fully engaged in providing pretexts to justify the expansion of government of police powers and carrying on with their history of suppression and persecution of those fighting for the affirmation of the rights of the people, for an end to war and aggression, for their political empowerment and so on. In recent times, since at least 2016, with all-cartel party support, the government has set the stage to attack every just cause of the people as a subversion by foreign influence in Canada's political affairs.
Despite this, the standing ovation for Hunka brought out renewed demands for the elimination of memorials in Canada glorifying Nazi collaborators and war criminals. As well, various organizations have demanded that the government report on the full extent of the Nazi collaborators given safe haven by the Canadian government after World War II, including revealing the full report of the 1986 Deschênes Commission (officially known as the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada). Minister of Immigration Marc Miller tried to preempt this by calling for a "less redacted" report. On September 27, Miller said officials are looking into declassifying parts of the Deschênes Commission report to make it public in a "less redacted" format. He said "Canada has a really dark history with Nazis in Canada ... There was a point in our history where it was easier to get in as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person. I think that's a history we have to reconcile." He claimed that he had read the 240-page public report of the Deschênes Commission twice since the standing ovation, adding that because he doesn't know what is contained in the classified documents of the report, he can't yet say if he backs their full release but the government "could possibly examine again [the release of the records]."
The Commission was established in February 1985 "to inquire into the matter of alleged war criminals in Canada." It was comprised of two parts, Part I for publication and Part II "which is destined to remain confidential," Deschênes said in his submission to the government in December 1986.
One of the related documents that has been made public under an Access to Information Act request is a research document produced by Alti Rodal in September 1986. It is a 617-page heavily redacted report entitled Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940's to the Present. It is an instructive read to gauge the anti-communist outlook and intent which informed the government of Canada's inquiry and why the results it reached were to let the vast majority of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who sought refuge in Canada off scot-free.
Rodal writes that the aim of her study was "to provide an accurate and relatively detailed account from the archival record, of the polices of the government with regard to immigration, displaced persons/refugees, and war criminals, and the setting and evolution of these policies from World War II to permit a better understanding of how the present situation with regard to the war criminals came about." She states, "The historical record is critical to understanding and, to a certain extent, to catharsis." The Deschênes Commission's creation, she says, "offered an opportunity, unlikely to be repeated, to come to grips with some of the important questions of a formative period of Canada's history, a period just past but one which continues to cast a shadow on the present and succeeding generations."
More than 35 years later, many Canadians would add that the shadow Rodal referred to "on the present and succeeding generations" far from becoming lighter is becoming darker and more ominous than ever.
At first perusal, a particularly damning aspect of the Rodal research is how it debunks the attempts of Prime Minister Trudeau, Deputy-Minister Freeland and a host of others to suggest that all of this history is a Russian concoction. This is the case even though various personalities who were calling for the admission of Nazi collaborators suggested at the time that the Soviet Union was unjustly characterizing these collaborators as potential war criminals.
In this vein, Rodal's report underscores the integration of Nazi apologists and collaborators into the Canadian institutions and organizations set up to deal with immigration into Canada from amongst the post-WWII displaced persons (DPs) and the primary role that anti-communism played in the manoeuvres to get Nazi-collaborators into Canada.
One example is the role played by Alfred Valdmanis. Before coming to Canada in 1949, Valdmanis served as special assistant to Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schact and became Latvian Minister of Finance under the pro-Nazi Ulmanis government where he helped deport Jews to concentration camps and form the Nazi-commanded Latvian Waffen-SS to fight the Soviet Union. Valdmanis moved to Canada in 1949 and became an advisor to the Canadian Department of Immigration, where he called for 20,000 Waffen-SS members to be admitted to Canada. In 1950 he became Newfoundland's Director-General for Economic Development where he negotiated a number of economic projects with German monopolies that had backed the Nazis such as Krupp and Hoechst. In 1951 he was accused of being a war criminal but denied the charges and was never arrested or tried for war crimes.
The Rodal report includes a section entitled "The Valdmanis Story" that speaks of how "In a lengthy presentation to the Senate Standing Committee [on immigration] in April 1949, Valdmanis ... pleaded on behalf of immigration to Canada of anti-communist Balts, and in particular on behalf of Baltic Waffen-SS members, who were rehabilitated and released in December 1945 and January 1946, because, he explained, they had nothing to do with the SS."
These are excerpts from the April 27, 1949 Senate hearings where Valdmanis made his appeals for admission of Nazi collaborators. He begins with a brief biography: "I am a Latvian, and am still a citizen of that country [...] My former position in Latvia was a member of the government of that country. I held my government post until Soviet Russia took over the Baltic countries, and I was among the Russian prisoners. Of course the, first thing that country did after it crushed the Baltic countries was to imprison the former government." He continues by stating, "The younger people of the government were held for a special trial. As you will recall, when the Russian-German war broke out, the Germans conquered the Baltic countries. The population of Latvia and Lithuania rose in eight or nine days to meet the situation and then the Germans took over. The Germans liberated Russian political prisoners, of which I happened to be one."
Senator Turgeon asks: "You were liberated by the Germans in their occupation?"
Valdmanis responds: "Yes. It was July 1941 when I was liberated by the Germans when they took over Latvia and all the Baltic countries. We thought that liberation meant real restoration of independence and freedom. As a matter of fact when Field Marshal Von Kuechler, the German commander on the eastern front, made the proclamation we understood he was acting in the name of Hitler. He announced the German army was coming as liberators. Because of this announcement the population of the Baltic countries rose against the Russians. It is a fact that some Baltic refugee groups are wrongfully labelled 'Baltic SS men.' To my mind these people would be the best immigrants to come to a country like Canada."
He goes on to say to the Senators that he needs to explain the "conditions in the Baltic countries." "You will excuse me for using this expression, but 97 to 99 out of 100 [per cent] of the population said that if the devil himself should come back from hell to drive out the Russians he would be welcome. So in June 1941 a man stood up and ordered his army to invade Soviet Russia -- this man was Hitler. His armies were welcome in the Baltic countries as liberators, particularly after Field Marshall Von Kuechler made the announcement that they were a liberating army."
Valdmanis tells the Senators that the people soon realized "that the Germans had not in fact liberated them and restored to them their freedom. [...] We were between the Russians and the Germans."
Rodal says in her report that "Interest in [the Valdmanis] story in this report relates to the prominent role he played in the resettlement of refugees/DPs both with the IRO in Europe and later in Ottawa, as well as in the impact he would have had on Canadian public perceptions of the Displaced Persons/refugees."
In this regard, Valdmanis told the Senators that "In 1945, after the collapse of Germany, I joined for a short while the staff of [British] Field Marshal Montgomery, and worked on matters affecting prisoners-of-war. I had a particular interest in this work, because among these prisoners-of-war in the hands of the English there happened to be some 20,000 Baltic young people, the so-called Baltic Waffen-SS.
"When this question was solved, the Chief of Staff of Field Marshal Montgomery recognized that these men had not been SS men and had nothing to do with the SS, and in January, 1946, they were released from German prisoner-of-war camps and became bona fide refugees and displaced persons. I then joined the staff of General Eisenhower, later that of General McNarny, and finally, General Clay. Through Field Marshal Alexander [...] Later I went over to the American headquarters and was attached to the Civil Affairs Division of the Headquarters of the European Command, United States Forces, as an adviser on refugee and displaced person matters. In September 1947, at the instigation of the American army, I went over to Geneva to become a senior staff member of the International Refugee Organization."
Speaking of the Canadian regulations regarding admission of the Waffen-SS as it then stood, Valmanis was asked by Senator Wood: "We do not admit them here?"
Valdmanis: "No, you do not."
Senator Wood: "You are trying to sell us on the idea that we should admit them; is that your idea?"
Valdmanis: "Yes. It is my belief that these people are the ones you want from the standpoint of the Canadian immigration policy. They are almost all single; they are young and physically strong. They are strongly anti-communist, additionally so for the reason that they cannot go back because they have fought the Russians and know how the Russians would deal with them. [...] Honourable senators, if I may speak for these refugees and displaced persons I wish to say that there are a great number of them who would make extremely fine citizens in your country."
Rodal writes that Valdmanis was "a cause célèbre" and his profile "kept Eastern European immigrants in the public eye." Her report speaks of the opposition to Valdmanis at the time: "The pro-Communist Polish ethnic press responded to Valdmanis' presentation to the Senate Committee with an article claiming that as a former advisor to the wartime President of the Bank of Germany, Valdmanis 'was infected with Nazism.'"
She writes that "The Senate Committee heard two sets of opposing voices with regard to Ukrainian DPs. The pro-Soviet Ukrainian and Polish spokesmen reiterated the Soviet line that the DPs in Germany were either war criminals or collaborators, or persons free to return to their homeland. They criticized Canada's policy of ethnic preference, which substituted immigration of people of a particular religious or political background for a policy of broad immigration based on Canada's needs and perspectives. 'We submit that this type of "selective immigration" is contrary to Canada's democratic traditions and insofar as it serves as a mask to cover the bringing over to Canada of the pro-Nazi remnants in Europe it is subversive and fraught with dangers to Canadian democracy and security."
These are some of the conclusions drawn by Rodal in the summary of her research:
"Cold War considerations had conditioned the approach of the Western Allies in the years immediately following the war with regard to Nazi collaborators from Eastern European countries. As a result, many were able to evade screening and/or apprehension, either because of the absence of documentation and information in their regard, or because, as anti-Communists, they elicited sympathy in the West."
"As in the United States and Britain, a determining consideration shaping policy and attitudes particularly in the 1950s, with regard to Nazi collaborators from countries which after the war were ruled by Communist regimes was the passion with which these persons professed anti-Communist sentiment.
"The former Nazi collaborators who have established in Canada the veterans' organizations or branches ... appear to have retained a toned-down version of the fascist and racist elements which characterized their ideologies and actions during the war years. Occasionally, these elements are manifest in the foreign-language publications put out by these organizations. In the Canadian atmosphere, however, their presentation is generally one of single-minded anti-Communism."
The work done has exposed the extent to which the post-WWII dregs of Nazism were brought into Canada and how they were used as a bulwark in the integration of Canada into the NATO war apparatus and in this regard, the connections that are being brought out that this fight against anti-communism is at the heart of many dangers facing Canadians. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada invites anyone interested to join in the work for this project.
(TML Monthly Supplement No. 25, November 2023)
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Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca