Yaroslav Hunka and the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, Part 1

Yaroslav Hunka front center.

Yaroslav Hunka, Peter Savaryn, and any other members of the Waffen-SS in Canada are Ukrainian Patriots and Heroes for fighting the Communists on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. 

According to a CBC transcription of the recorded speech, The Speaker of the House Mr. Anthony Rota, introduced Yaroslav Hunka as follows:  

We have here in the chamber today, Ukrainian-Canadians, Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought the 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.

That was a terrible, misworded and in many ways false introduction. Yaroslav Hunka was not a Ukrainian-Canadian during the war, nor is he, in any way, shape, or form, a Canadian war hero. Yet the gasps of horror and frantic clutching of pearls that have occurred since Mr. Hunka was introduced, missed the key errors in the introduction and focused only on the "Nazi" and are primarily a result of ignorance or twisting of history.

Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda, beginning in the 1970s, intensifying in the early 1980s and continuing today, has been swallowed whole and constantly repeated, including by reputable Media, who did not fact check. Combined with the fearsome lobbying power of Jewish organizations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, B'nai Brith, Jewish Defense League, and Anti-Defamation League, these lies and half-truths have served to embarrass Canada and smear honourable men. Putin is laughing at his success.

Even media reports that attempted some balance deferred to the Jewish perspective at the end because they knew they would be smeared as Nazi sympathizers if they did not.

If you do nothing else, please listen to this 12-minute radio interview with Dr. Henry Abramson, Dean at Touro University in Brooklyn and a specialist in the history of the Jews of Ukraine This is the clearest repudiation of the Nazi label on Hunka, Savaryn, and every Canadian citizen who served in the Waffen-SS Galichyna/Ukrainian Division. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2269612099736

The Cyrillic letter Г is pronounced and transliterated H in Ukrainian and G in Russian. Hunka may be printed as Gunka or Galicia as Halicia in some articles. Members of the Galicia or Galichyna/Galychyna (Halicia or Halichyna/Halychyna) Division are referred to as divisionists and in translations from Ukrainian language articles as officers.

The Schutzstaffel or SS was divided into two parts, Allgemeine-SS ("general SS") and the Waffen-SS (“armed SS”). The Allgemeine-SS was responsible for the Einsatzgruppen (the death squads responsible for the “final solution”), and the Schutzmannschaft (collaborationist native policemen serving in areas of the Soviet Union and the Baltics occupied by Germany, of which there were about 71 Ukrainian battalions).

Actual membership in the SS under Heinrich Himmler was limited to those who could prove Aryan descent. They swore an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich, that I will be loyal and brave. I pledge obedience unto death to you and those you appoint to lead. So help me God.

The international divisions of the Waffen SS did not swear allegiance directly to Adolf Hitler as did the German SS. Initially, they swore the same oath as all the other foreign divisions. "I swear to fight Communism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler as Supreme Commander-in-Chief." In Mid-1944, it was changed to "I swear under the guidance of Adolf Hitler as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to fight for Ukraine, for its liberation from the Bolsheviks."

Note: Every member of the German military swore an oath to Hitler: Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, Deutsche Marine, SS. So are they all Nazis and should every Canadian and American who was in the German military be treated like Yaroslav Hunka?

The Waffen-SS were originally elite Nazi military divisions such as the Totenkopf or “Death’s Head” division whose leaders were tried and executed for war crimes. However, from 1943 onwards as they were losing the war and needed manpower, divisions were created that included non-German and Slavic peoples. For example, in parallel with "Galichyna", the Germans formed divisions from Latvians, Bosnians, and Estonian units. Russians, such as “Kaminski’s Brigade", also fought in the Waffen-SS, as the 29th volunteer division of the SS troops Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA, in June 1944. and "distinguished itself" during the suppression of Warsaw Uprising.

The governor of Galicia, Otto Vechter created Waffen-SS Galichyna Division in April of 1943. Thousands joined the Galichyna Division because they hated the Bolsheviks, having been occupied from 1939 to 1941. Motivation of Ukrainians was primarily to protect their country from the Bolsheviks, and the hope that creation of a national Ukrainian army could potentially work for the creation of a Ukrainian state with support from the Allies.

The Ukrainians immediately went to German military training camps and officer academies. Several hundred Ukrainians graduated from these military academies. The division could not have participate in punitive operations in 1943 or early 1944 for the simple reason that it was undergoing military training in Germany.

Their first major action, in support of the German army was the Battle of Brody which took place in Lviv Oblast in July 1944. Several German divisions, including Galichyna were heavily outnumbered and surrounded by the Red Army. Fewer than 5,000 of the Galichyna divisionists managed to escape to Neuhammer (now Świętoszów in Poland) where they had been trained initially.

Germany decided to restore the division. Galicians had three choices: go to Germany as workers, dig trenches at the front lines, or join the Galichyna Division and fight the Communists. About three or four thousand people were trained, this time including many from Soviet Ukraine. In November 1944, the division was officially renamed the 14th Volunteer Division of the SS "Ukrainian No. 1".

It was in the summer of 1943 that Yaroslav Hunka joined the Division at the age of 18. He could vividly recall the terror of Soviet occupation from September 1939 to July 1942. “The NKVD had eyes and ears everywhere. Friend to friend and brother to brother could not speak sincerely for fear of betrayal. . . In 1943 the German Army was retreating West. The thought that the Soviet ‘beasts in human form” would be returning drove us into action. At the call of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), many joined the ranks of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army). Others, at the call of the Ukrainian Central Committee, went as volunteers to the "Galichyna" division”.

As the German Army was driven west, the Galichyna, now Ukrainian, division continued to fight communists. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians had fled the Bolsheviks to Slovakia so volunteers from the division went there to fight the Communist partisans, and also in the Balkans for the same reason. On the last day of the war, about 10,000 members of the Galichyna/Ukrainian Division, now calling themselves First Ukrainian National Army, surrendered to the British at Graz.

They were sent to a camp in Northern Italy while the British figured out what to do with them. At the Yalta Conference in February of 1945, Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed with Stalin to repatriate all citizens of the Soviet Union. The divisionists saving grace was that in September 1, 1939. Galicia was not part of the USSR. And they protected as many as possible of their colleagues from Soviet Ukraine by claiming they were in fact from Galicia.

After two years in Italy, some 10,000 divisionists went to Britain where they were held for another two years in various camps. The British understood that these people were not Nazis. They were conscientious people who sided with Hitler to defeat Stalin. After 1948 they gradually dispersed, with a large number going to Canada including Yaroslav Hunka, some to USA, some to Australia while some stayed in Britain.

Continued in Part 2.