After the recent visit to Canada of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, interested parties renewed worn out claims about the presence of “Ukrainian Nazis” in Canada. The media joined the sensationalist chorus, while national leaders of all political stripes issued a flurry of apologies with promises “to access the issue”.
Now, back down the memory lane to 9 February 1985 when, in response to loud charges that Canada was harboring “thousands of Nazi War criminals”, the Canadian government established the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada headed by Justice Jules Deschênes. The Ukrainian Canadian diaspora was especially singled out by the accusers.
However, Justice Deschênes’s public report on the findings of his Commission, released on 12 March 1987, censured in no uncertain terms those who had spread the said unfounded allegations.
Nevertheless, in 2023 the stale ruse about “Ukrainian Nazis” in Canada provided support for Russia’s narrative about the reasons for its current war on Ukraine, namely, to “de-Nazify” the country – as declared by Putin himself, while gloating at the unseemly events around this stratagem unfolding in Canada and beyond.
For the benefit of ALL who value historical facts about Ukraine in World War II, rather than sensationalist and self-serving bluster, we propose that the following sources be consulted:
Luciuk, Lubomyr Y. Operation Payback: Soviet Disinformation and Alleged Nazi War Criminals in North America. Kingston: The Kashtan Press, 2023 (Third revised edition); and
Isajew, Wsevolod W., Andrew Gregorovich and Oleh Romanyshyn. Between Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine in World War II: The Untold Story. Toronto: Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center, 2013.
In addition, visit “Project Facts” at: https://www.lucorg.com/oppose-russian-disinformation-and-propaganda/
To facilitate the accessibility to this information, we will henceforth publish in Ukrainian Echo and post on our websites relevant key material drawn from the sources indicated above.
National Executive
League of Ukrainian Canadians
