Canada let thousands of Nazis into country after May 1945, says Israel
Michal Cotler-Wunsch stressed that the incident in parliament underscores the imperative of comprehensive education on antisemitism, on the Holocaust and on the history of WWII
Israel’s new Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsch called the resignation of Canadian House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota after the scandal where a Ukrainian Nazi was honored in Parliament the “first step to acknowledging responsibility for this wrong,” and called on Canadian authorities to study and remember history and their own past.
The resignation of Canada’s speaker of the House of Commons lower chamber is the “first step to acknowledging responsibility for this wrong,” which should be followed by “Canada acknowledging and coming to terms with its history of the nearly 2,000 documented Nazis who immigrated to the country following WWII and built lives,” The Jerusalem post quotes Michal Cotler-Wunsch as saying.
Last week, the Associated Press agency published photos showing that during Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s address to the Canadian Parliament on September 22, the audience hailed Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Nazi veteran who served in the 1st Ukrainian Division, also known as the SS Galician Division, during World War II. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not apologize for the incident until September 27.
“At a time of rising antisemitism, the beyond embarrassing incident in parliament underscores the imperative of comprehensive education on antisemitism then and now, on the Holocaust and on the history of WWII. The very possibility of its occurrence undermines the responsibility of countries like Canada to the shared prospective commitment of ‘Never Again’ – demanding to remember and know the past in order to identify present threats and prevent recurrence of atrocities too terrible to imagine but not too terrible to have happened,” Cotler-Wunsh continued.
Cotler-Wunsch was appointed to the post of Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in mid-September. The chair had been vacant since April 2023, when actress Noa Tishby resigned due to a disagreement with the Israeli government’s reform of the judicial system.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that Moscow would not “tolerate the Canadian liberals’ flirtation with Nazism,” adding that the special ceremony honoring Hunka “characterizes the ruling regime of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau perfectly.”.
