Poland Mulls Extradition Of Ukrainian Nazi WW2 Veteran From Canada

A Polish government minister has initiated a move to seek the extradition of Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian man who served in a German-Nazi division during World War Two and recently received a standing ovation in the Canadian parliament.

"In light of the scandalous events in the Canadian parliament, where a member of the criminal Nazi SS Galizien formation was honored in the presence of President Zelensky, I have taken steps to potentially extradite this individual to Poland," said Przemysław Czarnek, the Minister of Education.

Czarnek publicly shared a letter he sent to the head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state historical institution with prosecutorial authority, requesting an urgent inquiry into whether Yaroslav Hunka is wanted for crimes against the Polish nation or Poles of Jewish origin. "Such crimes would provide grounds to request his extradition from Canada," Czarnek added in the letter.

Hunka has been at the center of an international controversy after being lauded as a "war hero" by the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which resulted in a standing ovation. This caused protests from various groups, including Jewish organisations and Poland's ambassador to Canada, who pointed out Hunka's affiliation with an SS division of Ukrainian volunteers serving under Nazi-German command and accused of war crimes.

Anthony Rota, the Speaker, subsequently issued an apology, citing a lack of awareness about Hunka's wartime history. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had also participated in the ovation, characterized the incident as "upsetting and embarrassing."

Soldiers from the Ukrainian SS division Hunka belonged to were implicated in the massacre of about 850 ethnic Poles in the village of Huta Pieniacka, a region that was part of Poland before the war but now falls within Ukraine, according to the IPN.

Hunka himself was among roughly 600 members of the division permitted to settle in Canada after the war, and he currently holds dual Ukrainian-Canadian citizenship.

In the 1980s, a Canadian commission of inquiry found that allegations of war crimes against the Ukrainian SS division had "never" been substantiated.

In 2017, Polish IPN prosecutors sought the extradition of another member of the Ukrainian SS division, Michael Karkoc, who had settled in Minnesota after the war. However, he passed away in 2019 at the age of 100 before the extradition process could be completed.

Poland and Ukraine, despite their close alliance against Russia's invasion, have frequently clashed over World War Two history, particularly the massacres of ethnic Poles by Ukrainian nationalists under German-Nazi occupation. However, in a significant development, the two countries' presidents, Zelensky and Andrzej Duda, jointly commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Volhynia massacres in July this year, during which up to 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed by Ukrainians.