Ukrainian vet debacle reignites call to remove controversial Oakville monument

An Oakville cemetery is once again facing calls to remove a monument that pays tribute to a Ukrainian unit that was recently thrust into the spotlight when controversy erupted over a decision to honour one of its veterans in the House of Commons.

An Oakville cemetery is once again facing calls to remove a monument that pays tribute to a Ukrainian unit that was recently thrust into the spotlight when controversy erupted over a decision to honour one of its veterans in the House of Commons.

The monument in question is located within West Oak Memorial Gardens, a 100-acre cemetery at 1280 Dundas St. W. that is owned and operated by St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery. In 1988, a large statue commemorating what is known as the First Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army was erected at the burial ground, which is the largest Ukrainian cemetery in Canada.

Yaroslav Hunka, the 98-year-old Ukrainian man at the centre of this controversy, served in that military unit, which was founded in 1943 and is also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and the SS 14th Waffen Division. This unit was a Second World War Nazi German military formation made up of mostly Ukrainian volunteers and fought in Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, and the former Yugoslavia. It was disbanded in 1945.

READ MORE: How was veteran Yaroslav Hunka's military unit linked to the Nazis?

In a statement, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) for Holocaust Studies reaffirmed its "longstanding" opposition to the presence of “monuments and memorials to Nazi collaborators,” saying that "such monuments have no place in our society" and are an “affront to the memory of the Holocaust.”

“The monuments to the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division in Oakville and Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Edmonton distort the Holocaust while glorifying the memory of individuals who participated in crimes against humanity,” Dan Panneton, the international Jewish human rights organization’s director of allyship and community engagement, said in a statement provided to CP24.com.

“The reaction to recent events in the House of Commons clearly demonstrates that Canadians are not interested in being associated with this history, and that such monuments have no place in our society.”