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Shelley Comer's avatar

Justin, will you do a deep delve into Yaroslav Hunka, get to the truth about his WWII record because there is a lot of chatter, much I suspect are rumour and lies, going on around him. He's the one who was in the public gallery and received standing ovation from MPs in HOC when Zelensky was there and folk on the Twit are saying he was an SS Nazi officer. Not sure how that is possible when he was born in 1925. My dad was also born in 1925, January 14th. He was in the RAF and bombed thousands of civilians over Dresden as a rear gunner, sometimes called a 'tail-gunner'. At his age he just managed to get 2 yrs of combat war in before it WWII ended, then he hung around in East Africa to help wind things down, close RAF base camp. Sure as hell never made 'officer'. If my dad were alive today he'd be fulll of remorse about killing civilians. He did suffer PTSD but we didn't know about it back then, growing up. He never talked about the war. He read a lot about it though. Nazis killed his dad very early on in the war and he was the eldest son. His 'duty', and he wanted to fight Nazis. Anyways, if you get chance, try to set out the truth on Hunka. His ties to Hitler's SS, what he experienced. I despise propaganda and I think a lot is going on around this. A sit-down interview before Yaroslav Hunka pegs it would be good, to get his side of it on record. I trust your reporting. Miss you on Twitter:'( @always_vote

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Justin Ling's avatar

Hi! I may do just that, depending on where this story goes this week. The history of the Galicia Division (in which he fought) is really complicated. Canada actually coneucted a big investigation into the divisionnin the 80s and concluded that there was no evidence that the division, as a whole, committed war crimes. At the same time, it's hard to argue with the idea that anyone who fought in an SS division should not have been given a standing ovation in the House.

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Shelley Comer's avatar

Justin, I just saw Speaker Anthony Rota's staatement and apology via a Twitter post regarding Hunka's recognition by him of Hunka's presence in the HOC gallery on Sept 22. Rota takes full responsibility, for the invitation and the public gesture of recognition. Thank you very much for replying to my comment. To a large extent this statement of apology and regret by the Speaker clears things up for me.

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