Nazi war memorials in Canada

[Pickman's model]

There shouldn't be any

But there's at least one

It's been graffitied

And the cops are investigating it as a hate crime

Graffiti on memorial to Nazi SS division now being investigated as vandalism

Graffiti on a memorial in Oakville to those who served in a Nazi SS division is now being investigated as vandalism

ottawacitizen.com

 

[Smangus]

Wow , that's really a thing, how the fuck did that get put up.

 

[JimW]

Wow , that's really a thing, how the fuck did that get put up.

Think they saw themselves as Ukrainian patriots preparing an army for a future independent nation, weren't bothered what that meant signing up for. See it's in a Ukrainian cemetery so family or old comrades in arms/partners in crime.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It’s weird that grafitti saying “Nazi war memorial” on a Nazi war memorial is considered a hate crime.

 

[NoXion]

Looks like the article has already been updated:

Graffiti on a memorial in Oakville to those who served in a Nazi SS division is now being investigated as vandalism instead of as a hate-motivated crime, but the region’s police chief is questioning why the monument exists in the first place.

Should never have happened in the first place, of course.

 

[Teaboy]

Initially I was all wtf but than on reading "Ukrainian cemetery" it suddenly makes a bit more sense. But what the hell? This is not Argentina or some country that was removed from the conflict this is Canada. How many Canadians died defeating these ideological mass murderers of innocents? What stupid arse liberal shit allowed that thing to be put up?

 

[Yossarian]

What stupid arse liberal shit allowed that thing to be put up?

Local authorities don't want it there but I don't think there's much they can do about a monument in a private cemetery, I hope the next person to target it brings a pickaxe.

 

[nogojones]

This was the unit my dad was in. It's only in the last couple of years that I've figured out which specific division he was in. It wasn't something that he proudly discussed and I recall that even though he was encouraged to do so he refused to apply for pension he was entitled to from Germany. The way the division was used by the US and British intelligence services after the war is also pretty shameful. My old man didn't really mix much with his old comrades. I can only recall meeting them once at his cousins funeral and still have some of the propaganda that they gave him there. One I still have is a copy of Anti-Bolshevik News - the editor of which at the time was George Bush Snr.

For decades Ukrainian nationalists have portrayed the unit as just "nominally" under the control of the SS and they were just Ukrainian patriots who wanted freedom from the historic yolk of Russia. This view was propagated happily by the Americans as a way of stoking nationalist feelings during the cold war, it's only in the last 20 or so years that a more honest history has been looked at.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

When the Nazis invaded the Ukraine they were initially received with open arms by many ordinary Ukrainians. The Ukrainian population had suffered famine during the period of ‘War Communism’ during the Russian Civil War after the Bolshevik Revolution, further and worse famine during forced collectivisation in the 1930’s, vastly disproportionate murders and deportations during the campaign against ‘kulaks’, similar during anti-Cossack campaigns in the 1920’s. Their initial lack of knowledge of the nature of Nazism can be explained by their rejection of Soviet anti-German propaganda and by their only too real knowledge and experience of Soviet communism. There had been hundreds of localised rebellions in the Ukraine in the early decades of communism. Anyone from outside could have been welcomed as a liberator, Nazi or not.
What Ukrainian nationalists have, by and large, failed to own up to subsequently has been their own involvement in mass murder. In this they are not alone, but it stinks.

 

[Sir Belchalot]

Short clip from a Storyville documentary showing ceremony in Ukrainian cemetery:



Read My Father, The Good Nazi recently about the deluded son of Otto Wächter who set up the SS Division Galicia who is shown in the clip.

 

[dylanredefined]

"First the Russians came and killed people then the Germans came and killed people then the Russians came and killed anyone left" Ukrainian explaining history of an abandoned village to me.
To a lot in Eastern Europe the Stalins Red Army was no better than the Nazis. They were wrong ,but, its like the south's lost cause I guess they get remembered for resisting the reds. Even if they were murderous war criminals. Why Canada permitted the memorial is beyond me.

 

[skyscraper101]

I legit had to check if the 'Ottawa Citizen' wasn't a parody news site when I read this.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

To a lot in Eastern Europe the Stalins Red Army was no better than the Nazis. They were wrong

You might think differently if you were a Volga German, a Crimean Tatar, a Chechen or a Kalmyk Mongol. All these and other ethnic minorities were deported en masse by the Soviet authorities to Central Asia as collective punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Men, women and children. Some were locked in cattle trucks with no food and water for journeys that lasted days. For Chechens and Crimean Tatars in particular around 50% died. It helps explain the bitterness and indiscriminate violence surrounding the a Chechen attempt at independence in the 1990’s.

 

[alex_]

To a lot in Eastern Europe the Stalins Red Army was no better than the Nazis. They were wrong.

It was a pretty close run thing.

Try telling some poles that the red army saved them from the Germans.

alex

 

[Wilf]

This little aside intrigued me:

There are several such monuments throughout Canada to those who collaborated or helped the Nazis with a number of them being erected in the 1980s,

What was going on in Canadian society/politics in the 80s for this to happen??

 

[Spymaster]

Initially I was all wtf but than on reading "Ukrainian cemetery" it suddenly makes a bit more sense. But what the hell? This is not Argentina or some country that was removed from the conflict this is Canada. How many Canadians died defeating these ideological mass murderers of innocents? What stupid arse liberal shit allowed that thing to be put up?

It wouldn't surprise me if most of the local non-Ukrainian Canadians didn't know about it. It's in a Ukaraianian cemetry so most have probably never been into it. As far as many Ukrainians were concerned the division was one of Ukrainian soldiers fighting against the Russian occupiers.

 

[Teaboy]

It wouldn't surprise me if most of the local non-Ukrainian Canadians didn't know about it. It's in a Ukaraianian cemetry so most have probably never been into it. As far as many Ukrainians were concerned the division was one of Ukrainian soldiers fighting against the Russian occupiers.

Oh yeah I know what the Ukrainian side of things is. I've spent a lot of time in that neck of the woods and other surrounding countries. I've traipsed around numerous museums and quite a few cemeteries including a pretty spectacular one in Lviv. That one has fair bit of SS shit as well as lots of blood & earth symbolism.

I was just wondering what it was doing in a Canada of all countries? I get that it's a private cemetery but I wouldn't thought it'd be allowed in the UK but its got me thinking. I wonder how much stuff we do have over here like this?

 

[nogojones]

Oh yeah I know what the Ukrainian side of things is. I've spent a lot of time in that neck of the woods and other surrounding countries. I've traipsed around numerous museums and quite a few cemeteries including a pretty spectacular one in Lviv. That one has fair bit of SS shit as well as lots of blood & earth symbolism.

I was just wondering what it was doing in a Canada of all countries? I get that it's a private cemetery but I wouldn't thought it'd be allowed in the UK but its got me thinking. I wonder how much stuff we do have over here like this?

There's a lot of Ukrainians in Canada. My Dad had the opportunity of going there once he was released from the POW camp, but chose to stay in Scotland. His sister - who he thought had died, escaped from the gulag, made her way accross Europe and ended up there, marrying another Ukrainian exile

 

[likesfish]

Eastern Europe and their SS Units it's complicated the Nazis were Bastards as were the Soviets and the Russians didn't fuck off till the 90s.
Hence part of the remerberance of local SS units is sticking two fingers up to the Russians.
Lot of the anti semitism killing of poles etc would have happened without any need for Nazi ideology in Yugoslavia the SS actually intervened because they thought the croats went to extremes. the SS think you've crossed the line.
Posionous mixture of ethnicity/nationalism.

Not sure how voluntry were the volunteers were if a nice man in a hat with a skull on it asks you to join up to fight Communists refesual might not be taken well.

 

[nogojones]

Eastern Europe and their SS Units it's complicated the Nazis were Bastards as were the Soviets and the Russians didn't fuck off till the 90s.
Hence part of the remerberance of local SS units is sticking two fingers up to the Russians.
Lot of the anti semitism killing of poles etc would have happened without any need for Nazi ideology in Yugoslavia the SS actually intervened because they thought the croats went to extremes. the SS think you've crossed the line.
Posionous mixture of ethnicity/nationalism.

Not sure how voluntry were the volunteers were if a nice man in a hat with a skull on it asks you to join up to fight Communists refesual might not be taken well.

The first forming of the division in 1943 was all volunteers, 80,000 odd volunteered and 13,000 were selected. They got a good kicking on the eastern front and were then reformed in 44 after loosing 2/3's of their men. The 2nd recruitment drive in 44 cast the net wider with German NCO's seconded in, ex police, forced labourers, a little bit of conscription and concentration camp guards. From what I know, this is when my old man signed up. He had just turned 18 and was in a forced labour camp. He saw it as a way out

 

[likesfish]

Forced labour or food and a uniform odds aren't great either way.

 

[Yossarian]

This little aside intrigued me:
What was going on in Canadian society/politics in the 80s for this to happen??

I don't think it was connected to any wider trend in Canadian society - the 80s was probably when veterans of this division and their sympathizers who had settled in Canada started to die from age-related illnesses.