In the scandal surrounding the honoring of a Ukrainian SS veteran, Canadian Parliament Speaker Anthony Rota announced his resignation on Tuesday. Rota told a House of Commons hearing in Canada that he had made a “mistake” by inviting the 98-year-old to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s parliamentary speech. Rota not only invited Jaroslaw Hunka, but also called him a ‘hero’, to which he received two standing ovations from the parliamentarians.
After the speech, it emerged that Hunka, who lives in the Rota constituency, had served in the Nazi criminal force Waffen-SS during World War II. The affair was grist to the mill of Russia, which is trying to portray its war of conquest in Ukraine, which violates international law, as an operation to ‘denazify’ the neighboring country.
Trudeau urged Rota to “think about its future”
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” the Liberal politician said. The resignation takes effect tomorrow, Wednesday. Rota made the comments after Foreign Minister Melanie Joly publicly called for him to resign. Trudeau was more reserved but equally unequivocal, urging his party colleague to “think about his future.”
The affair overshadowed Zelensky’s visit to Canada. It was initiated by the organization Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC), which shortly after the speech expressed outrage that Rota had honored Hunka, a “Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran” who fought for Ukraine’s independence from Russia. Rota concealed the fact that Hunka served in a Waffen-SS unit during World War II.
Rota subsequently apologized. “I would especially like to express my deepest regrets to the Jewish communities in Canada and around the world,” the Liberal politician said this weekend, according to Canadian media reports.
Hunka served in the Waffen-SS Galicia division
According to the FSCW, Hunka served in the 14th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the Waffen-SS-Division Galizien. Classified as a criminal organization after the end of the war at the Nuremberg Trials, the SS had national associations involved in war crimes in many occupied countries. In support of the Nazi claims against Ukraine, Russian propaganda repeatedly refers to the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), who temporarily collaborated with the Germans, was sentenced to death in absentia in the Soviet Union and by a KGB in Munich agent was murdered. .
Source: Krone
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