Yaroslav Hunka: a member of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division, a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis.
Canada’s Nazi Secret: The Shocking Truth Our Government Won’t Reveal
Imagine discovering that your peaceful Canadian neighborhood had been home to hundreds of Nazi death squad members and collaborators—and the government knew all along but decided to protect their identities.
By Eddie Hardie 🍁 Integrity Canada
The Deschênes Commission of 1986 identified hundreds of suspected Nazi war criminals in Canada but the second half of its findings has never been made public. This secret list of more than 700 individuals suspected of participating in the Holocaust remains locked away 40 years after its creation, with government officials claiming its release would harm international relations. In a shocking decision this week, Canada’s Information Commissioner upheld the government’s right to keep these names hidden—even as countries like Argentina open their Nazi immigration records and U.S. researchers uncover partial lists independently.
The Smoking Gun They Won’t Show You
The nearly-complete draft list unearthed by UCLA historian Jared McBride’s research team reveals the staggering scale of this hidden history. This version includes names like Helmut Oberlander, a documented member of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians in Eastern Europe. The Canadian government fought for years to revoke his citizenship, but he died at 97 in 2021, never facing justice in criminal court.
Other documented Nazi collaborators who came to Canada include Volodymyr Kubiovych, a Ukrainian nationalist who helped organize the SS Galicia division—a military formation responsible for numerous atrocities against civilians, particularly Jews and Poles. Incredibly, Kubiovych later became editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine project at the University of Alberta. A haunting photograph from July 1943 shows him giving a Nazi salute alongside Otto Wächter, a senior SS officer who served as governor of occupied Galicia.
The Bureaucratic Cover-Up
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) claims releasing the list could “damage Canada’s relations with a foreign power” and “cause significant injury to the defence of a foreign state allied with Canada.” But which foreign power? The government won’t say, but context suggests concerns about relations with Ukraine, where Russian propaganda has weaponized historical Nazi collaboration narratives.
This argument is particularly offensive given that Ukraine has already opened its own KGB archives related to this period, and the United States has released most documents pertaining to Nazi war criminals. As Professor Per Rudling of Sweden’s Lund University notes: “Of all comparable Western liberal democracies, Canada stands out as being particularly restrictive on archival materials in regards to purported war criminals.”
The Information Commissioner’s office argues that a previously released partial list came “at a time which predates the relevant current global context”—essentially admitting that geopolitical convenience now outweighs historical truth and justice.
Echoes in Parliament
The decision to keep this list secret becomes even more outrageous in light of recent events. Just months before the information commissioner’s ruling, Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old veteran of the same Nazi-led SS Galicia division, received two standing ovations in the House of Commons during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit. The international embarrassment that followed revealed how shockingly ignorant Canadian officials are about the wartime histories of individuals they celebrate.
@brutamericaThe Canadian parliament accidentally paid tribute to a former Nazi with President Zelensky in attendance.
How many more former SS members live among us? How many have been quietly celebrated in their communities? How many died peacefully in Canadian nursing homes after participating in the murder of innocent civilians? The government apparently knows—but won’t tell us.
The International Shame
While Canada continues to hide its Nazi immigration history, other nations are confronting theirs. Argentina—once a haven for Nazis including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele—has opened its records. The United States has released extensive documentation through the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. Yet Canada clings to secrecy.
Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and Fascists fleeing Europe in the aftermath of WWII. Most of these routes led to the Americas. Countries included Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and United States.
Photos from left: Ante Pavelić, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele
Dozens of leading Holocaust scholars, including Sir Richard Evans, former Regius professor of history at Cambridge University, have called on Canada to declassify the Deschênes report. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed “dismay” at the decision, calling the government’s security arguments “an insult to the intelligence of the public.”
Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied
The government claims these individuals are likely dead now anyway—so what’s the harm in secrecy? The harm is to historical truth, to the memory of victims, and to Canada’s moral integrity. These weren’t just immigrants with questionable politics—they were potentially participants in industrialized genocide.
Some on that list were almost certainly members of mobile killing units like the Einsatzgruppen, who followed the German army into Eastern Europe and murdered approximately 1.5 million Jews by shooting. Others may have served in concentration camps or collaborated in rounding up civilians. Their crimes don’t expire with their deaths, and the truth doesn’t become less relevant with time.
A Pattern of Protection
This isn’t just about history—it’s about a pattern of protecting war criminals that extends to the present day. For decades, Canada has been criticized for being a haven for individuals accused of atrocities. In 2023 alone, Canada granted citizenship to at least two former members of a Nicaraguan paramilitary group accused of atrocities, and continues to resist deporting several former Sri Lankan military officers accused of war crimes.
The Nazi list secrecy fits this disturbing pattern—a preference for political convenience over moral clarity, for bureaucratic comfort over uncomfortable truth.
The Cold Truth
What Canada is really saying with this decision is that international diplomacy matters more than historical justice. That relationships with foreign governments are more important than transparency to our own citizens. That protecting potential sensitivities of allies outweighs the moral imperative to expose those who participated in the 20th century’s greatest crime.
The victims of the Holocaust—six million murdered Jews and millions of others—deserve more than this. Their descendants deserve to know if the murderers of their families found safe harbor in our country. All Canadians deserve to know the full truth about who we welcomed when the world needed moral clarity.
This secrecy shames us all. It suggests Canada values diplomatic smoothness over moral reckoning, bureaucratic caution over historical truth. Until this list is released and fully examined, we remain a nation that would rather hide its complicity than confront uncomfortable history—a nation that protects perpetrators’ identities while the victims’ memories demand justice.
Whaddaya Say?