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w w w .in s id e h a lto n .c o m | OAKVILLE BEAVER | T h u rs d a y , O c to b e r 2 6 , 2 0 1 7 | 2 4 O akville draw n into historical debate via em bassy tweet continued from p.1 The tweets received hundreds of responses. The Oakville monuments include a memorial to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and one to the 1st Ukrainian Division. Russian Embassy representative charges The Russian Embassy charges the latter was suspect as the 1st Ukrainian Division was creat ed following the reformation of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. Both monuments have been in Oakville since the late 1980s. Neither structure features Nazi symbols and there is no reference to the SS on the memorial to the 1st Ukrainian Division. When asked for comment, Kirill Kalinin, press secretary for the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canada, declined to provide the motivation as to why the embassy was making the tweets. Kalinin would only accuse the groups com memorated by the monuments of atrocities against civilians during the Second World War. | photo illustration by Nikki Wesley/Metroland Ukrainian Canadian Congress counters The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (U CC) counters Kalinin' s claims saying they are baseless and have nothing to do with history and every thing to do with the current conflict underway between Russia and Ukraine over the Crimea and other disputed territories. "The Russian embassy is simply dredging long-disproven fabrications. This is standard practice for Soviet, and now Russian, disin formation," said Alexandra Chyczij, First Vice President of the UCC. Instead, Chyczij accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, adding, it "presides over a regime of terror in Russian-occupied Crimea" and prof fered the embassy is seeking to distract from that. ler's Black Guard at War, discussed the history of the 14th Waffen SS. Author is an expert In his book he noted while most people as sociate the SS with concentration camps and the Gestapo there was a militarized wing of the group (Waffen SS) that fought with the German Army. The bulk of those who served in the Waffen SS were German, however, there was such a need for manpower following the German inva sion of the Soviet Union in 1941 that the Nazis began recruiting Ukrainians into the Waffen SS following Ukraine' s occupation. This was not unique to Ukraine with the Germans also creating Waffen SS divisions with volunteers from Denmark, Finland, the Nether lands, Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Bosnia, Italy, Al bania, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and elsewhere. Chyczij pointed out neither the 14th SS Di vision nor the 1st Ukrainian Division fought against the western Allies. Military college professor weighs in Meanwhile, Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk of the De partment of Political Science at Kingston' s Royal Military College of Canada, accuses the Russian Embassy of provoking ethnic hatred in Canada. "These Russian Twitterers should be remind ed by our government that the Criminal Code prohibits the public communication of state ments likely to lead to a breach of the peace," he said. Christopher Ailsby, author of Waffen SS: Hit served as a researcher and commentator for the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies and the MacKenzie Institute, also talked about the 14th SS Division. He noted that by the time it was combat-ready in February 1944 the Germans were barely hanging on to the Ukraine. About a third of the division was sent to fight resistance fighters in what is now western Ukraine. In July, the entire division, 14,000 soldiers, engaged the advancing Soviet army at Brody, Ukraine where it was encircled and nearly de stroyed with only around 3,000 survivors mak ing it back to the German lines. "The survivors formed another anti-partisan unit in September 1944, to fight the Slovak re bellion, as they tried to rebuild their numbers and strength," said Thompson. "It got rebuilt to full strength by the end of the winter and was renamed as the 1st Ukrainian Di vision. Ukrainian nationalism resonated far more strongly with the troops than Nazism ever did." Historical perspective The division would fight the Red Army again in Austria before surrendering to the British at the end of the war. Thompson also talked about the Ukrainian Different author's perspective John Thompson, who authored Spirit Over Steel: A Chronology o f the Second World War, and Insurgent Army, which he said began in 1942 fighting alongside the Germans against Soviet partisans. The group switched sides in 1943 and began conducting guerilla warfare against German tar gets when it recognized the threat the Germans posed. As the Soviets began to retake Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army redirected its atten tion toward the Red Army, Soviet-aligned Poles, the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) and other communist groups. The group fought well into the 1950s at which point all but a few members who escaped to the West were killed. Thompson said there is no record of the group carrying out any atrocities against Jews since by the time of the group' s formation the Nazis had already killed the bulk of Ukraine' s Jewish popu lation. In 2016, the Polish Parliament issued a resolu tion listing both the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the 14th SS Division and other Ukrainian units as being responsible for the killing of more than 100,000 ethnic Poles in 1943 and 1944 in German-occupied east Poland. The resolution called the incidents "a genocide." The Russian Embassy also drew attention to these actions. Thompson said these acts were committed by some, but not all elements of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as part of a centuries-old feud between Poles and Ukrainians. He also noted there is dispute about the num ber of people killed stating a reasonable estimate is that 50,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists with Polish partisans killing some 5,000 Ukrainians in retaliation. Thompson said the 1st Ukrainian Division/14th SS Division was cleared of any wrongdoing when individuals were screened upon entry to Canada. "In 1947, most of the veterans of the unit were cleared for immigration to Canada and the Unit ed Kingdom. "There have been a lot of accusa tions against this unit, but none have ever been proven and most of the accusations have not been credible to begin with," said Thompson. "The Russians, of course, like their Soviet fathers, are always happy to taint all Ukrainian nationalists with a Nazi brush." see We on p.25 Com pare car insurance quotes and save. $1.8 million in premiums saved this year and counting. s/T R U ST P IL O T " W e h a v e d o n e c o u n tle s s q u o t e s e a rc h e s a n d t h e y a lw a y s c o m e u p q u ic k ly a n d a c c u ra te ly ." In s u ra n c e H o tlin e com