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On Friday, Sept. 22, the Canadian House of Commons gave a Ukrainian former Nazi soldier, Yaroslav Hunka, a standing ovation during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit. Lawmakers were unaware of Hunka’s Nazi past until a local Jewish group issued a statement.
Straight Arrow News contributor Adrienne Lawrence argues that today’s culture allows Nazis to live “without fear of consequence” for their actions and that we need to navigate back to a time when they were uncomfortable spreading their hate.
How negligent must a lawmaker be to accidentally invite a presumed war criminal to the highest-ranking legislative body to be honored with a standing ovation? Although I do not have an answer to that perplexing question, I do know that this former SS soldier willingly accepting the invitation of parliament is the bigger problem here.
The climate we created has literally emboldened Nazis to shamelessly walk among us without fear of consequence. Unless we want a repeat of World War II, the free world must do better in fighting the rise of Nazism and other forms of white nationalism.
To give you a better idea of how we got here, Yaroslav Hunka is the 98-year-old who welcomed applause from the Canadian Parliament earlier this month. He had been invited by the representative of his district — who also was the speaker of the House of Commons — kind of a BFD position to drop the ball this hard. Yeah.
Anyway, the speaker thought that it’d be a nice touch to have Hunka present, because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be present. In ranting and raving about Hunka’s greatness, the speaker called the nonagenarian a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and so on. The speaker bestowed all of this praise in front of Zelenskyy, Parliament and the free world, only to later learn from local Jewish groups that Hunka served with the 14th Waffen SS Division. The man was a well-known Nazi.
