Canadian university cleared to shut down Ukrainian Nazi fund

Canada’s University of Alberta has won a legal battle to dissolve a research trust named after Ukrainian SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, whose standing ovation in the Canadian parliament from lawmakers, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky sparked an international scandal.

The controversy erupted during Zelensky’s 2023 visit to Ottawa, when then-House Speaker Anthony Rota introduced Hunka, who served in the Waffen-SS Galicia Division during World War II, as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” to rapturous applause from the packed parliamentary chamber.

Hunka’s division was formed by Nazi Germany in 1943 largely from Ukrainian volunteers and has been linked to brutal anti-guerrilla operations in Poland and Soviet Ukraine and massacres of civilians. Nevertheless, the assembled Canadian lawmakers gave Hunka two standing ovations, joined by visiting German Ambassador Sabine Sparwasser.

After Hunka’s past came to light, the incident became an international embarrassment for Ottawa, drawing condemnation from multiple countries, Jewish rights groups, and the UN. Rota eventually resigned, while Trudeau issued a public apology.

Shortly after the scandal erupted, the University of Alberta acknowledged that it administered a research fund named after Hunka, a CAD30,000 ($21,500) endowment established with a donation from his son to support research into the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. It had remained largely obscure until the scandal, with no known beneficiaries.