About the Canadian Parliament honoring that Waffen-SS veteran ... (2 of 2)

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and her grandfather

Yesterday I posted about the scandal of the Canadian Parliament honoring Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka as someone who "fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians."

Also a bit embarrassing: Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party - who previously was Foreign Affairs minister who has taken a very pro-Ukraine position - had a grandfather with a patchy (i.e., Nazi) political history:

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland knew for more than two decades that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather [Mykhailo Khomiak/Michael Chomiak] was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland that vilified Jews during the Second World War.

Ms. Freeland's family history has become a target for Russian forces seeking to discredit one of Canada's highly placed defenders of Ukraine.

Ms. Freeland, who has paid tribute to her maternal grandparents in articles and books, helped edit a scholarly article in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies in 1996 that revealed her grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi propagandist for Krakivski Visti (Krakow News).¹

The Russians made propaganda use of this fact when she was Foreign Affairs Minister. Sheldon Kirshner commented on the flap in The Times of Israel:

It’s clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Chomiak, in common with a number of tainted Ukrainian nationalists, worked for Nazi Germany, hoping that their cooperation would lead to the creation of an independent Ukraine.²

Or at least claiming that’s what they hoped.

Kirshner continues:

Freeland, a keen student of history, is well aware of this checkered aspect of Ukrainian nationalism. Now that her grandfather’s past has been exposed, she should stop being evasive and address the issue directly, openly and honestly. She should not hide behind anti-Russian slogans. She should not cynically pretend this story falls under the heading of “fake news.”

Lord knows, people can scarcely be held responsible for their grandparents’ actions long before they themselves were born. But it’s not surprising that the Russian government picked up on this as a polemical point.

This Democracy Now! report on the scandal also mentions Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather³:

Freeland’s uncle writes about her grandfather’s wartime activity

Freeland assisted her uncle, John-Paul Himka, on a scholarly article published in 1996 about Krakivski Visti.⁴ It was clearly run under the limits and directives imposed by the German occupation government. Himka seems to try hard to provide exculpatory explanations for a paper that operated as follows:

At times the editors had to publish material that they knew tobe false and pained them to print. For example, the editorial board was well aware that Ukrainian forced labourers in work camps in Germany were treated as slaves, but nonetheless they had to publish enthusiastic reports about the workers and the conditions in which they lived. The editors went ahead and printed the false reports because the German authorities had made it clear that disobedience would result in the appointment of a German as editor of the paper. In that case offensive materials would appear more frequently and the precious Ukrainian cultural work carried on by the paper would be undermined.

He even writes:

[A] daughter of the chief editor [Freeland’s grandfather], who interviewed her father about his wartime experiences, has informed me that Mykhailo Khomiak and the editorial board as a whole worked to some extent with the anti-Nazi resistance; in particular, they issued false papers for members of the underground. Such activities, of course, are not directly reflected in the official editorial records. The sources, then, are fragmentary and one-sided, and this must be kept in mind by readers of this study. [my emphasis]

In other words, he had no direct evidence at all for this exculpatory second-hand claim from the guy’s own daughter, but he included it anyway.

Himka notes that Krakivski Visti was “closely associated” with the Ukrainian Central Committee (UTsK) that was the chief German collaborationist organization headed by later. Volodymyr Kubijovyć. Himka describes the UTsK as “a buffer between the German occupation authorities and the population of the [German administrative] Generalgouvernement,” the German occupation government in Poland.

Himka also describes a series of anti-Jewish articles published by Chomiak’s paper by an anti-Semitic Ukrainian publicist, Oleksander Mokh, with titles like, “The Jews are Depraving Europe."

Mokh’s articles were general and theoretical in character, since the editors asked him to refrain from dealing with the specifics of the Ukrainian case. He cited a varied corpus of anti-Semitic literature - West European and Polish - and frequently referred to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." …

The editorial board of Krakivski visti felt that it had been able to remain objective in publishing the anti-Jewish series. Having it specifically in mind, the editor-in-chief wrote to Volodymyr Levynsky on 10 July, as the series was drawing to a close: "It seems to us that we approach every issue in the most objective manner and try to shed light on the problems that life itself suggests or forces upon us. [my emphasis]

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, obviously ridiculous. Yeah, “a buffer between the German occupation authorities and the population,” i.e., a paper pimping Nazi propaganda.

Himka informs his readers, “That the editors solicited and published articles against the Jews does not of itself indicate lack of sympathy with the Jews' plight or a willing complicity in the Nazi crimes,” and goes on to elaborate the same tired excuses that Nazi collaborators used after the cause they supported was crushed. This is ridiculous.

This comment of Himka’s also tells a lot about his perspective: “Yet, that more than submission to coercion came into play in the preparation of the anti-Jewish series is suggested by the conviction on the part of the editors that they could use the series to promote the Ukrainian cause.” In other words, they thought promoting Nazi genocide against Jews was okay as long as it helped “the Ukrainian cause.” You know, like the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS helped “the Ukrainian cause” by killing Jews, Poles, and Slovaks.

Himka even goes on to argue that Ukrainian hostility to Jews was - you guessed it, the Jews’ own fault:

lt must … be understood that there was a history of genuine Ukrainian-Jewish conflict in Galicia that had nothing to do with ideological anti-Semitism.

It wasn’t “ideological”, you see: they just hated Jews!

Many Ukrainian peasants, and their spokesmen in the leadership of the national movement... were certainly correct in their analysis that the economic interests of large sectors of the Jewish population were antithetical to the interests of even larger sections of the Ukrainian population.

Here Himka is arguing that they had dang good reason to hate them Jews! (At least he doesn’t accuse George Soros, who turned 11 years old in 1941, of running the show.)

Leaders of the Ukrainian national movement resented the fact that the Jews tended to assimilate culturally to the politically dominant nationality …"

This is the standard anti-Semitic Jews-are-always-enemy-foreigners trope.

[Ukrainians] had experienced so much national discrimination and political violence directed against themselves that they were somewhat desensitized to what ·was happening to the Jews around them during the Nazi occupation. In intenwar Poland the Ukrainians were a persecuted minority.

Translation: Ukrainians are the Real Victims, why should they give a **** about Jews anyway?

Finally, he adds:

[T]he full magnitude of the unprecedented crime against the Jews, its exceptional character, was not comprehended.

The morale of this story: We’re still feeling the effects of Cold War politics that too often looked the other way at rightwing extremism among groups actively supporting the Cold War and taking Nazi sympathies and far-right eastern European “diaspora” figures.

My view of the lacking quality of the EU’s website EU vs. Disinfo was reinforced by looking at their coverage of that issue. In a short 2022 piece, it reported, “There is no evidence that Chomiak wrote any of the anti-Jewish diatribes published in the Krakivski Visti newspaper.”⁵ Who claimed he did? But he was the editor-in-chief of the paper publishing them working under the direction of the German occupation government in Poland. Himka articles certainly leaves the impression that Chomiak was deciding which ones to publish under the German occupation guidelines.

It adds, “After the war he told his family he had worked with the anti-Nazi resistance, helping its members get false papers.” EU vs. Disinfo didn’t add the qualification that even Freeland’s sympathetic uncle did. But it did cite a more recent comment from Himka, who was still covering for Chomiak, “He was the editor of a legal newspaper in Nazi-occupied Poland. He never signed anything in the paper. He never made policy or that kind of thing. It wouldn't be his call.”

In an earlier piece, the site quotes an partially exculpatory passage from Himka about the grandfather’s paper containing that the paper’s production was “a bit of a mixed bag.”⁶

Jeremy Appel has a usefull discussion of the common context of Krakivski Visti and Yaroslav Hunka’s SS Division. He also notes of the revisionism in Canada around far-right Ukrainians during the Second World War:

… it’s part of a broader trend in the Ukrainian diasporic establishment of rehabilitating the image of Nazi sympathizers as anti-Communist freedom fighters, which is why monuments to the 14th Waffen exist in Oakville, Ontario, and Edmonton, Alberta, as well as in Detroit and Philadelphia.

It’s also why, in 2019, a $30,097 endowment fund for the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) was established in Hunka’s name without controversy until now.⁷

The Chrystia Freeland story was of course picked up after the Yaroslav Hunka fiasco by some dubious sources, including a piece by Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone 09/26/2023. (I’m not including the link because Grayzone really is such a dubious source now.)

1. Fife, Robert (2017): Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper. Globe and Mail 03/07/2017. <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/freeland-knew-her-grandfather-was-editor-of-nazi-newspaper/article34236881/> (Accessed: 2023-05-10).

2. Kirshner, Sheldon (2017): Canadian Foreign Minister Should Acknowledge The Truth. The Times of Israel 03/09/2017. <https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/chrystia-freeland-should-come-clean-with-the-truth/> (Accessed: 2023-05-10).

3. Nazi Veteran Honored in Canada Was Part of Wave of Collaborators Harbored in West. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 09/29/2023. (Accessed: 2023-05-10).

4. Himka, John-Paul (1996): Krakivski visti and the Jews, 1943: A Contribution to the History of Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Second World War. Journal of Ukrainian Studies 21:1, 81-95. Freeland is credited in the article.

5. Canada's foreign minister is a descendant of a Ukrainian Nazi. EU vs. Disinfo 04/12/2022. <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/canadas-foreign-minister-is-a-descendant-of-a-ukrainian-nazi> (Accessed: 2023-05-10).

6. Foreign Minister of Canada lied about her grandfather's Nazi past and connections with Auschwitz. EU vs. Disinfo 05/10/2018. <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/foreign-minister-of-canada-lied-about-her-grandfathers-nazi-past-and-connections-with-auschwitz/> (Accessed: 2023-05-10).

7. Appel, Jeremy (2023): The Coincidences Behind Canada’s Nazi-Honoring Debacle Are Deeply Unsettling. Jacobin 09/30/2023. <https://jacobin.com/2023/09/canada-chrystia-freeland-nazi-veteran-honoring-debacle-parliament> (Accessed: 2023-01-10).