Canada’s latest Nazi scandal: ‘Victims of Communism Memorial’ filled with fascist names

In July 2020, the construction site for Ottawa’s 'Memorial to the Victims of Communism' was vandalized with the message 'Communism will win' and several hammer-and-sickles. The controversial memorial has now been confirmed to bear the names of more than 330 'victims' who were Nazis or fascist collaborators. | Photo via Tribute to Liberty on Facebook

TORONTO—The Canadian federal government has ensnared itself in yet another embarrassing Nazi scandal. The Department of Canadian Heritage was just informed that over half of the 550 names engraved on its “Memorial to the Victims of Communism” in Ottawa are Nazis or have links to fascist groups.

The Ottawa Citizen newspaper obtained a copy of a report commissioned by the government which found that at least 330 of the supposed “victims” were members of fascist organizations or were collaborators with Hitler’s Germany during World War II.

Many were perpetrators of war crimes in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and other countries occupied by the Nazis.

Based on falsified history

The Memorial to the Victims of Communism originated with the former Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In 2007, the then-Minister of Multiculturalism Jason Kenney visited Masaryktown, a private park in Toronto belonging to members of the Czech and Slovak community, where he saw a piece of anti-communist art depicting a man crucified on a hammer and sickle.

Likely dreaming about locking in the votes of the some of the eight million Canadians who trace their origins to countries that have been governed by communist parties, Kenney proposed building a similar public monument in the capital city.

The following year, a charity front group called Tribute to Liberty was established to raise funds for the scheme. Its board was populated by Conservative Party candidates and figures in finance.

Perpetually short in meeting its fundraising goals, however, the group repeatedly approached the government for more money over the years—and land. A prime piece of real estate just down the street from the Parliament building, between the Supreme Court and Archives Canada, was handed over by the Harper government.

An ideologically motivated project from beginning, the memorial was justified via false historical claims. The original proposal would have seen 100 million “memory squares” installed to “honor the 100 million lives lost under Communist regimes.”

The figure came from propagandist Stéphane Courtois’ 1997 Black Book of Communism, in which he and his co-authors attempted to minimize the crimes of fascism and presented inflated and falsified statistics about deaths in the Soviet Union and other socialist states during the 20th century. When the book came out, Courtois told an interviewer, “In my opinion, there is nothing exceptional about the Nazi genocide against the Jews.”

After Justin Trudeau and the Liberals won the 2015 election, plans for the memorial were scaled back somewhat. The idea for 100 million memory squares was pared-down to the “Wall of Remembrance” featuring the names of selected “victims.” It was also relocated to a lesser spot in the capital.

In addition to land, however, Trudeau still authorized public funds to cover the bulk of the memorial’s $7.5 million price tag. And politicians from all the major political parties—Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, and Greens—issued letters of support.

The fake history used to justify the memorial scheme wasn’t the end of its controversies, though. Jewish organizations warned that the names of criminals who helped carry out the Holocaust were among those being proposed, but such admonitions were disregarded.

In 2021, with fundraising still ongoing, reports surfaced that Tribute to Liberty had accepted several donations honoring Nazi collaborators and other fascists.

They included Roman Skukhevych, a Ukrainian nationalist whose troops murdered Jews and Poles during WWII. Another was Ante Pavelić, the Nazi puppet dictator of Croatia who coordinated the mass murder of Jews in the Balkans. Over 400,000 people were killed under his rule.

Efraim Zuroff, a noted Nazi-hunter and the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem—not an organization known for communist sympathies—said at the time, “If Canada commemorates Ante Pavelić or Roman Shukhevych, it can throw its human rights record right in the trash.”

He noted that “from the beginning of their renewed independence, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, almost all the governments of Eastern Europe—and nationalist elements in diaspora communities—have promoted the canard of equivalency between the crimes of the Third Reich and…communism as part of a broader effort to distort the history of the Holocaust and the Second World War.”

Undeterred and backed by the government, Tribute to Liberty moved ahead anyway.

Trudeau’s Nazi problem

With construction nearly complete, the memorial was scheduled for unveiling in November 2023. Plans for the grand opening celebration came to a screeching halt, however, when Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were caught giving a standing ovation to a member of Hitler’s SS on the floor of the Canadian parliament in September last year.

Zelensky was visiting to lobby for more funds and weapons for his war with Russia on top of the $9.5 billion the Canadian government has already supplied. House Speaker Anthony Rota thought it was a good idea to invite 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, “a hero who fought for Ukrainian independence from Russia during the Second World War,” to be an honored guest during the Ukrainian leader’s address.

Widely known for running the concentration camp system, the SS also had a section that recruited people from conquered countries to join the fascist cause. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Hunka enlisted with the Germans, cooperating with the Nazis against his homeland. He fought the Red Army as a member of the 14th “Galicia” Waffen SS Grenadier Division and has proudly published photos of himself in his SS uniform.

The Galicia Division took part in mass executions of Ukrainians, Poles, Jews of various nationalities, and others and also helped the SS put down the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Dodging blame for the Hunka salute, Trudeau strangely tried to blame Russia at the time for somehow tricking him into applauding a Nazi. “It’s important to push back against Russian propaganda, Russian disinformation,” the prime minister told the press when questioned about the incident.

Embarrassed by the scandal, in October 2023 the government ordered a full review of the names listed on the memorial’s “Wall of Remembrance.” But it’s now been revealed that as far back as three years ago, Global Affairs Canada—the foreign ministry—was cautioning the Canadian Heritage Department about rushing ahead with construction.

“It is important to note that many anti-communist and anti-Soviet advocates and fighters were also active Nazi collaborators, who committed documented massacres,” officials wrote. “We anticipate that the listing of names that are not thoroughly vetted and the result of a broad consensus could generate significant controversy both in Canada and abroad.”

That fear has been realized—with the majority of names etched in the monument now known to have fascist ties.

No surprise

Some in Canada aren’t shocked at all by this turn of events.

Drew Garvie, a member of the Communist Party of Canada’s Central Executive Committee and leader of the party in Ontario, told People’s World, “It’s unsurprising that many of the so-called ‘victims of communism’ promoted by fascist diaspora groups in Canada are themselves Nazis and fascists.” Garvie said that the former Harper government “collaborated with these groups to push an anti-communist agenda from the start.”

He put the memorial in the context of a longstanding strategy by the Canadian government to use anti-communist immigrants to dilute or divide progressive domestic political movements. As many as 2,000 Nazis and collaborators were invited to migrate to the country after World War II.

“These individuals were planted in workplaces with militant unions to undermine Communists and trade unionists,” Garvie said. “Governments and these groups have worked together to promote anti-communism and whitewash the crimes of fascist collaborators from WWII” for decades.

But the fight to block the Memorial to the Victims of Communism isn’t just about correcting past history. Current Canadian foreign policy is totally wrapped up in the controversy as well, according to Garvie.

“While it’s positive that Canadian Heritage is taking steps to remove these names, the government’s main motivation seems to be avoiding embarrassment that could be exploited by Russia”—similar to the Hunka scandal last fall.

“It appears they’re acting now in order to conceal NATO’s current ties with fascist Ukrainian nationalists in its proxy war with Russia,” he said.

Over the past several years, Nazi collaborators and right-wing historical figures, such as Stepan Bandera, have been retroactively made into national heroes in Ukraine, and armed fascist militias, including the Azov Battalion, have been integrated into the official Ukrainian military.

As for Trudeau’s Nazi problems, they won’t be going away anytime soon. Even if the ribbon hasn’t been cut yet, the Memorial to the Victims of Communism—along with all its Nazi honorees—has already been built. Millions of dollars in public funds have been spent building it, and millions more will likely have to be sunk into erasing all the fascist names.

The government is now scrambling to come up with a way to salvage its boondoggle. Caroline Czajkowski, spokesperson for the Canadian Heritage Department, told the press that “the review of commemorative elements is ongoing.”

Garvie of the Communist Party says a full reckoning is in order: “The full history needs to be exposed, including all the names of these fascists that have been hidden, and the memorial needs to be cancelled.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

C.J. Atkins

C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People's World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left.