this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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The reasoning for the division's creation sounded pretty clear and upfront. Their intentions weren't subtle.
The situation is not black and white, but the Nazis were not the only option available. Galicia was the site of two of the largest extermination ghettos, and the Galician unit was used to quell Slovakian resistance movements who were actually fighting for independent statehood instead of hypothetically via Nazi allegiance. It was pretty clear Germans were getting rid of the Jews and Poles. The Galicians wouldn't have even been allowed to be a division had the Nazis been winning the war.
Even if this guy signed up because he truly wanted his people to be independent from the Soviets and Poles and thought this was the only way to make it happen, it doesn't explain Ukraine starting a parade in 2010 for a Waffen-SS division created by the resident German governor that surrendered to allied forces in 1945.
I don't give Nazis quarter, and just because Ukraine was invaded by Russia, it doesn't mean that changes. If applauding the old guy was deeply embarassing (it was), a modern parade for a Nazi division while calling them not-Nazi should be too (it is). The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian nationalism, and Ukrainian nationalism all can and should be condemned.
I completely agree, we should not applaud these people, not parade them and of course nationalism often leads to more harm than good.
Of course, Himmler had his view on the group, and like you said, and is mentioned on the wikipage, many joined for other reasons, like independence. The group itself has never found guilty for war crimes, this again does not mean this hasn’t happened.
The parade in 2010 is really… bad and strange. Makes me wonder who allowed it. This was prior to the Mayday revolution, under a Russian aligned president.
Again, I am not saying joining the SS for other reasons than the extinction of jews is justified, but people take their opportunity when it arises in a direction they think is right.
Thanks for the insight on the other options in the form of the Galicians. Could the reason for them (the Ukrainian section of the SS) joining the Nazis be, that they could be better equipped as a part of a war machine, rather than as a resistance group?
I suspect the Galicians just remembered Russian and Polish rule and decided the Nazis who were currently ruling were the better choice. Even though the Nazis would have turned on them later, Galicians were not considered Aryan.
He had more than his view, he was instrumental in its creation and actively visited them.
It's an annual parade, here is 2021, first time in Kyev Although I'm not sure if it's happened 2022 and this year.
I agree, but I also won't assume good intentions in volunteering to be a Nazi soldier.
Indeed, Nazi propaganda must have strengthened their alliance as well.
I guess Nazi symbolic are not as regulated as they are in western-Europe and far from the strict rules in Germany.
Do you know if neo-nazism forms a more significant part of the Ukrainian population than in other states, or has it been much more highlighted because of the invasion?
It is sad to see these nazi, xenophobic and extreem right parties flourishing over Europe. All the polarising issues playing now, with a large amount of disrupters and disinformation do not tend to bring people in harmony.
On 23 September 2020, the Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled that symbols of SS Division Galicia do not belong to the Nazis and therefore were not banned in the country.
Despite being created by the Nazis as part of the Waffen-SS during a time where there were active extermination ghettos in the area it was created, despite other Ukrainians who were not Galician not being allowed to enlist in it because they weren't Aryan enough, despite being involved with 3 massacres of Polish civilians, despite the parade clearly being about the Nazi division because they chose the date of its creation to celebrate it. I don't even think the insignia was its own single symbol before being used for the Nazi unit.
Ukrainian history, identity and independence is... way more complex than I can possibly do justice in a comment, even if I fully understood all of the events in it. Especially Western Ukraine. The land has been invaded and reinvaded by different groups from very different ethnic backgrounds with different temporary allegiances for centuries though. The allegiance with Germany and the other Central Powers though really kicked off in after the Russian Revolution in 1917, and Ukrainian separatists signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty which ... in itself was complicated and chaotic but resulted in the Central Powers recognising Ukraine as a country and providing troops to remove the Soviet government (and citizens of Russian background) from various territories. Whether Nazi ideology it is a bigger problem in Ukraine than other countries or is just more obvious given the attention the area is currently receiving is something I cannot hope to possibly ever measure or know. All i know is that Ukraine is willing to grant special exemptions to anti-Nazi laws for one clearly very Nazi division in as late as 2020.
Thanks for the detailed insight.
As a side note, I was actually going through the 1st Galician-wikipage and found a link to some explanation on the emblem. Seems there is some historical reasons for the use of the lion and the crowns. The crowns are still found in the coat of arms of Galicia.
And the crowns has something to do with the Austrian Monarchy^1.
Sergey Muzychuk (2004), "Ukrainian military arm emblems during World War II 1939-45.", https://www.myslenedrevo.com.ua/uk/Sci/AuxHistSci/Znak/znak33/UkrSymbolsWW2.html
It's not about banning crowns or lions or the colours blue and yellow in that specific hue being combined. It's about a symbol, specifically created in that configuration with those chosen elements by Nazis for the purposes of representing a Nazi military unit, being granted an exemption from laws banning the glorification of Nazis. When you share a parade with people wearing the Totenkopf, it's possible you are voluntarily supporting actions other than Ukrainian independence and you're not just a fan of an extinct 13th century empire's symbol.
His SS division's history wasn't about Ukrainian independence. It was formed by Nazis in 1943 when everyone knew that Nazis were slaughtering people. It was formed after all the ghettos inside Lviv, Galicia's main city, and Ternipol, in this old man's home oblast, were built and had been running for years. It was formed after Jews, who were 44% of Ternipol's population, were dragged from their homes to be publicly shamed, beaten and evicted in the pogroms. It was formed after the Final Solution began. It was formed after mass deportations, slave labour, after the ill, elderly or orphaned were shot in the streets of the place he lived. It was formed after the mass graves of all those victims and more were exhumed and their bodies burned in open-air pits. This man had functional eyes and ears at the very least, because the Nazis did not like people with disabilities, and he knew what he was signing up for because he was living in the middle of it. Every major town surrounding his birthplace had ghettos and were already sending people by train to the death camps. He didn't choose a charitable hypothetical peaceful Ukrainian autonomy, he and 53,000 other people volunteered to fight for the new unit of an army who were very publicly killing and torturing the majority of the people around him.
And, this wasn't about a Ukrainian group allied to the Nazis to achieve long-term independence for Ukrainians. They were voluntary Nazis under direct Nazi control fighting for greater Nazi control in countries outside of Ukraine. This man could have changed allegiance at any point if he had been naive and somehow swindled into committing atrocities for Nazis instead of Ukrainian Independence. Atrocities like the Huta Pieniacka massacre where his division committed 500 murders of civilians by grenading the town. Where, assuming he was with his unit at the time and not in hospital, he murdered civilians too.
This is about the active celebration of Nazis to the point where the highest courts in Ukraine are granting exemptions to their own anti-Nazi laws because the Nazis didn't "own" the symbols, as though they "owned" the Swastika. This indicates a huge systemic Nazi problem.
And for Canada to find itself failing to even check what the guy was actually veteran of, and applaud him on the world stage for his service... no. The Canadian government, the MP who invited him, the old man himself, the Ukrainian nationalists marching in the streets ~~waving politely~~ heiling Hitler during the embroidery marches, the judge granting exemptions, they all have agency and have freely chosen Nazis.
And you, for reasons I can't fathom beyond "it's important to consider the reason they chose Nazis", are determined to give actual proven verified Nazis the benefit of the doubt and positing entire hypothetical storylines that might give an innocent explanation and plausible deniability to them choosing to be a Nazi and cheer on blatant Nazis.
Giving Nazis the benefit of the doubt is what got us a Holocaust in the first place.
I never claimed nor intended to give nazis any benefit of the doubt.