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Sept 2023 UKR Vet Recognition Incident (merged from several threads)

Who has Ukrainian heritage in cabinet? Hmmmm oh maybe CF?
Not even that - LOTTA Ukrainians moved here during those years, and there are some who say immigrants tend to vote Team Red.
... Not a easy point in history to apply right or wrong to, both the Nazis and Soviets were very similar in their brutality and oppression, at least you could say a Ukrainian at that point wouldn’t have known much/anything about the german side yet.
For sure - been wrestled with back in the old country since independence.
 
And RUS media's on this (archived link here)...
View attachment 80251
... as well as some Jewish response, too ...

As mentioned upthread and elsewhere, complicated optics of the history here. Hate the Germans? Fight for the Commies who end up keeping you under their boot for some time following "liberation". Hate the Commies? Fight for the Germans with some folks who were happy to help them out in the final solution (not to mention pissing off Poles and Slovaks along the way) as a way to get rid of the Reds that starved you not long before the war.

And the transition from Nazi fighters to staunch anti-Communist fighters? Via Wikipedia with the usual caveats ....

As for atrocities, again via Wikipedia ...

It can be very, very broadly compared to the whole Confederate issue in the U.S.: were the soldiers just doing their best for something they believed in while feeling jerked around, or were they happily defending and upholding slavery? Often all in the eye of the beholder.
Coming from Wikipedia- so take with some grain of salt -

From the end of September 1944, the division was used against the Slovak National Uprising.

Units of the 14th SS Division Galizien were sent to help quash the Slovakian rebellion. Various divisional battle groups (Kampfgruppen) were formed to actively search out and destroy Slovak partisans.[21]

In the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, there are numerous police and SS intelligence reports which consistently reported serious problems between the Ukrainian SS men and the local Slovak population. According to one such report of December 1944, "In general much is currently being said amongst the Slovak population about the Ukrainian soldiers now stationed in Slovakia. It can be taken from these discussions that these soldiers in general are not much liked. In Slovak circles, hostile to Germany, they are considered mercenaries, who are not fighting for the ideals of a new Europe, rather simply for personal enrichment through robbery and plunder. Even circles friendly to Germany complain passionately about this formation.
 

Jaroslav Hunka's own words
 

Jaroslav Hunka's own words
Very good catch there (although those not happy with this'll say "of course a UKR vets' org site'll say that") - thanks for adding to the discussion & (as Paul Harvey used to say) "the rest of the story".

English translation from Ukrainian (via Chrome) of him telling his own story attached ....
 

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Quite frankly people seem to have a childs view of war and geopolitics and our role in it. All heroes and villains. At no point in WW2 was the Soviet Union a true ally. That people cant see or understand that people would fight against one invader over another or the reasons to do so. The Poles I think suffered greatly for this. Yaroslav Hunka might have been a Nazi-Nazi or just a Nazi but it was more than a mistake to invite him IMO
 
For sure - been wrestled with back in the old country since independence.

Isn't that the root of the discussion between Donbass and the rest of Ukraine today?

You would be hard pressed to describe the historical borders between the Elbe and the Volga. On the other hand the villages, towns and cities endure.
 
I'm disgusted. This Nazi scum was a member of the Waffen-SS. This has nothing to do with Ukraine/Russia now.

As a reminder, the Allgemeine-SS and all its parts, including the Waffen-SS, was condemned as a criminal organization after the end of the war. Its members were also condemned as such.

Hulka has no excuse and no amount of white-washing will take away the fact that he was part of an instrument of terror of the Third Reich. Whoever invited him into the HoC fumbled.

EDIT TO ADD: If the Speaker is the fall guy, then a boner of this magnitude deserves more than an apology.
 
Isn't that the root of the discussion between Donbass and the rest of Ukraine today?

You would be hard pressed to describe the historical borders between the Elbe and the Volga. On the other hand the villages, towns and cities endure.
the end of empire, cant say im upset
 
I'm disgusted. This Nazi scum was a member of the Waffen-SS. This has nothing to do with Ukraine/Russia now.

As a reminder, the Allgemeine-SS and all its parts, including the Waffen-SS, was condemned as a criminal organization after the end of the war. Its members were also condemned as such.

Hulka has no excuse and no amount of white-washing will take away the fact that he was part of an instrument of terror of the Third Reich. Whoever invited him into the HoC fumbled.

EDIT TO ADD: If the Speaker is the fall guy, then a boner of this magnitude deserves more than an apology.
The Speaker never even promised to "do better" in the future.
 
I am so proud that my government invited the Jewish president of a key partner country - and likely the greatest wartime head of state since Churchill - and then parade out an SS veteran in front of him for a round of applause as clearly nobody knew who he was. It'll be interesting to see whose heads roll for this - won't be the PMs or his COS....

 
In spite of the Speaker taking responsibility I still want to know who invited this scumbag to the ceremony ? And who vetted him?
They do vet people ?
 
Which empire?

There have been a bunch of them over that last few thousand years. They come and they go. And there will be more in the future.
All of them. Maybe there will be more but as of the last couple hundred years they seem to be losing to ethnic nationalism
 
Just a reminder here:

Admiral Jarok: "What you call massacres were called the Norcon campaign in my world. One world's butcher is another worlds hero. Perhaps I am neither one."

Star Trek T.N.G. "The defector"

I always like to keep an open mind that people can and have changed.
 
Just a reminder here:

Admiral Jarok: "What you call massacres were called the Norcon campaign in my world. One world's butcher is another worlds hero. Perhaps I am neither one."

Star Trek T.N.G. "The defector"

I always like to keep an open mind that people can and have changed.
I don't give a shit if he shits canned goods and gives them to the poor. He wore the uniform of the Waffen-SS as a volunteer (they were for the large part all volunteers). I don't care if he hated the Soviet Union and wanted a Free and Independent Ukraine.

The fact of the matter is that he was part of a criminal organization and was in the HoC to be celebrated for fighting the Russians (sic) in the Second World War. (Note: his Division fought against enemies of The Reich, including Slovakian Partisans, and also was used as an instrument of terror.)
 
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