In September 2023 the Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to 98 year old Yaroslav Hunka, who at the time was being applauded for his role in fighting the Soviets during WW2. This soon became a national and international embarrassment when it was realized that while Hunka did indeed fight the Soviets he did so as part of an SS regiment. In the aftermath of this scandal it came to light that Canada in fact opened its borders to Ukrainian veterans of the Waffen-SS in the post-war period. To dive into the complex history of this story I’ve brought on to the show one of the leading experts on this subject, historian Per Anders Rudling. In this part one of a two episode special Per takes us through the history of the First Ukrainian Division (also known as the 14th Waffen-SS Division Galician) and talks about how and why SS veterans were allowed into Canada and what this meant for our later understanding of their role in that war.

Per Anders Rudling is a historian at Lund University in Sweden who focuses on the subject of nationalism, historical culture and historical memory in areas that today make up parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. He 2015 he published The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism which became an award winning work and he is currently researching Ukrainian nationalism during the Cold War.

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