The Office of the Governor-General of Canada apologized on Wednesday after the discovery that a 1987 recipient of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s top honors, was a veteran of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS, stating that honoring Nazi soldiers is not “reflective of Canadian values.”
The discovery that Order of Canada recipient Peter Savaryn served in the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a Nazi division serving in Ukraine, followed the outrageous standing ovation offered to a soldier from the same unit, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, in Canada’s Parliament in late September.
Now-former Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota invited Hunka to a special session of the legislature attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust, as an apparent form of celebrating Ukrainian warriors in light of the ongoing Russian invasion of that country. Zelensky, radical leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the lawmakers of the Canadian Parliament gave Hunka a standing ovation as Rota described him as a “veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98.”
The fighters in Ukraine at the time “against the Russians” were Nazis.
Rota resigned after Hunka’s history with the Waffen-SS surfaced. Trudeau, who has a prolific history of wearing racist “blackface” costumes, has refused to take any responsibility for the affair, blaming “Russian disinformation” for the outrage.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota (L), and Speaker of the Senate Raymonde Gagne (R) take part in a signing ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, on September 22, 2023 (PATRICK DOYLE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images).
Pressure continues to mount on Trudeau’s government to expose the people living in Canada, such as Hunka, who may have committed war atrocities as part of the Nazi forces and took refuge in the country, facing no consequences. Among the most prominent demands of human rights groups in the country has been the publication of the results of a 1968 investigation into the Nazis Canada allowed to move into the country after World War II. The Deschênes Commission report included a classified list of individuals believed to be Nazis living in Canada at the time, potentially as many as 2,000 from the Ukrainian division of the Waffen-SS alone.
While debate over revealing the results of the Deschênes Commission intensified, the Office of the Governor-General of Canada revealed on Wednesday that it had found a Waffen-SS soldier among its honorees: Peter Savaryn, honored with the Order of Canada in 1987 and later offered the Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee medals posthumously in 2002 and 2012. Savaryn died in 1997.
Peter Savaryn (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies)
“It is with deep regret that we acknowledge that Mr. Peter Savaryn was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1987, and we express our sincere apology to Canadians for any distress or pain his appointment may have caused,” the Office of Governor-General Mary Simon said. “The Chancellery is committed to working with Canadians to ensure our honours system is reflective of Canadian values.”
The Governor-General’s Office describes the Order of Canada as a recognition for those “who make extraordinary contributions to the nation.”
“The contributions of these trailblazers are varied, yet they have all enriched the lives of others and made a difference to this country. Their grit and passion inspire us, teach us and show us the way forward,” the Office details on its website.
In addition to fighting in Heinrich Himmler’s Waffen-SS, Savaryn “was a leading Progressive Conservative in Alberta and prominent member of Edmonton’s Ukrainian community who championed multiculturalism and played a key role in establishing schools with Ukrainian-language instruction,” the Globe and Mail reported on Wednesday. The newspaper noted that, as a member of the Galicia division, Savaryn (and Hunka) “swore an oath to Hitler,” indicating that the division was not just fighting against the Soviet Union but in favor of Hitler’s genocidal ideology.
The Governor-General’s Office blamed “limited information sources available at the time” of Savaryn receiving the Order of Canada for the embarrassment. As Savaryn died nearly two decades ago, his appointment to the Order is not currently valid, but the Governor-General said that his posthumous honors are under “review.”
The Deschênes Commission report was completed a year before Savaryn received his appointment to the Order of Canada, meaning the potential exists that, if not redacted, the report may have exposed Savaryn and prevented the country from honoring a Nazi soldier.
“The Jewish community expects more than an apology after parliament last week celebrated a 98-year-old former member of the Waffen-SS. Canadians deserve to know how and why Nazi war criminals were able to settle in this country,” the Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith asserted on September 29, shortly after Hunka’s standing ovation. B’nai Brith is among the growing number of organizations and public figures urging Ottawa to publish the Deschênes Commission report.
“We really want these records to open up so we can understand Canada’s past and begin to heal from it,” Richard Robertson, manager of research and advocacy with the Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada, told Jewish Insider on Monday. “There are wounds in this country, and we have a right to the information. Our main issue is to ensure that this never happens again.
Trudeau offered a non-committal response to these demands on Wednesday, claiming he is “looking very carefully into” releasing the full report.
“We have made sure that there are top public servants who are looking very carefully into the issue, including digging into the archives, and they’re going to make recommendations to the relevant ministers,” Trudeau told reporters.
Trudeau’s Liberal Party members have suggested that revealing who the Nazis were who were allowed to live in Canada is a delicate issue because it may bring “pain” to the families of the Nazis.
“We have to look at what the redactions are in the Deschenes report. I’m sure there’s much of it that can be unredacted. We just need to find a consensus. You can’t just willy-nilly say, ‘Release everything,’” Liberal member of Parliament Anthony Housefather said, “because I don’t know what’s exactly there and there are privacy interests.”
Housefather said the report may “bring pain to a lot of Eastern European communities, conceding that Canada has a “horrible past with Nazi war criminals.”
“We opened our country to people after the war in a way that made it easier to come if you were a Nazi than if you were a Jew,” Housefather lamented.
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