A veteran who fought for Nazi Germany and was recently celebrated in the Canadian parliament received a medal.
The Ternopil region in western Ukraine announced on Tuesday (March 19, 2024) that it had honored Yaroslav Hunka, a Nazi soldier from World War II who was applauded by Canadian parliamentarians last September.
The medal was presented on Hunka’s 99th birthday to his great-grandniece.
Hunka served in the 14th Waffen SS Division, composed of Ukrainian volunteers and responsible for crimes against Poles, Jews, and Soviet resistance.
Ternopil official Oleg Sirotyuk presented the ‘Yaroslav Stetsko’ medal for service to Hunka’s relative Olga Vitkovska, expecting her to eventually pass it on to her great-granduncle in Canada.
The regional council voted on February 6 to award Hunka the medal, citing his “significant personal contribution to assisting the Armed Forces of Ukraine, active charitable, and public activities,” according to a document quoted by the Ukrainian magazine Suspilne.
A week later, Canada rejected Russia’s request to extradite Hunka, who is accused of genocide for his role in World War II. Hunka was an honored guest in the Canadian parliament last September, during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The then-Speaker of the Canadian Parliament, Anthony Rota, introduced him as a “Canadian hero” who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,” after which Hunka received two enthusiastic ovations.
Numerous Jewish groups, as well as Russia, Poland, and the UN, condemned the incident. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed Rota (the Speaker of the Parliament) for the scandal, resulting in his resignation.
About a month after the incident, Moscow accused Hunka of genocide and issued a warrant for his arrest. Russian diplomats pointed to the incident as evidence of the “strong influence” of neo-Nazi ideology in Canada.
The Ternopil region is part of Galicia, a historical province after which the 14th Waffen-SS Division was named. It was previously under the control of Poland and Austria-Hungary.
Yaroslav Stetsko was a senior member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) under the leadership of Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis during the early stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Stetsko was the head of Bandera’s Nazi “Ukrainian National Government,” declared on June 30, 1941, in Lviv under German occupation. However, Adolf Hitler refused to recognize the OUN-B government and ordered the arrest of its members.
After the war, Stetsko fled to the West and became the leader of OUN-B, as well as a prominent anti-communist activist. In 1983, he was received at the White House and honored as the “last Prime Minister of the free Ukrainian state,” according to then-President Ronald Reagan.
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