Nazi Hunter Steven Rambam: Trudeau Knew He Applauded a Monster
© AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky
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There is no way Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not know that 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who received a standing ovation in the Canadian legislature, was a Nazi criminal, Steven Rambam, a private investigator and Nazi hunter based in New York, told Sputnik.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has officially apologized for a "deeply embarrassing" incident in the national Parliament, where a Waffen SS veteran was warmly greeted by Canadian politicians.
"This was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada. All of us who were in this House on Friday deeply regret having stood and clapped even though we did so unaware of the context," the Canadian PM said in a brief statement to journalists.
Trudeau stressed that Canada is especially sorry for "the situation that [they] put President Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation in" given that this "egregious error" is being used by Russia's "propaganda."
Still, Trudeau's hypocrisy has been called out by Steven Rambam, a private investigator and Nazi hunter based in New York, publicly known for his pro bono activities, which have included the location and investigation of nearly 200 Nazi collaborators and war criminals in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
"This narrative that's springing up that everyone was surprised, that it was a big shock and they can't believe there's such a person in Canada," Rambam told Sputnik. "It's ridiculous. Look, this person made no secret of who he was. He even had a website until yesterday. He posted and disseminated photos of himself in his SS uniform. He wrote about his experiences in the SS 14th Grenadiers. There's a scholarship in his name in a university in central Canada, in Alberta. I mean this is ludicrous that people could possibly have been surprised by who he was and what he did."
© Sputnik
During the Second World War, Hunka served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as SS Galichina. The unit was created by Nazi Germany in 1943 and was composed of Ukrainian nationalist militants. The division was responsible for the ethnic cleansings of Jews and Poles, which was committed with exceptional brutality.
"So this is not a small criminal. He didn't pick someone's pocket or steal $100 from a store. This is an alleged mass murderer who killed old people, allegedly, who allegedly killed children with his comrades in the SS Galicia Division," Rambam noted, reiterating that it's virtually impossible that the Canadian authorities were totally unaware about who Hunka is.
National Day of Remembrance of the victims of the genocide of the citizens of the Polish Republic committed by Ukrainian nationalists
© Sputnik / Alexey Vitvitsky
/ Poland’s Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek announced Tuesday that he had "taken steps" toward "the possible extradition" of Yaroslav Hunka to Poland. The unit Hunka served in was particularly responsible for burning alive up to 1,000 Polish villagers, including elderly, women and children, in Huta Pieniacka in 1944.
"Does it help that they are finally threatening to bring him to justice? Yes," said Rambam. "Is there any chance at all that this will happen? No, absolutely not. Canada does not extradite Nazi war criminals. They have never extradited a Nazi war criminal. This is not the only Nazi war criminal who was requested from Canada. And they are not extradited. They are not denaturalized. They are not deported like the US does. They are not prosecuted inside Canada, which they should be. Nothing is done to these people. I can give you a list of many, many more people who, frankly, were as bad or worse than Hunka and who died peacefully in their beds in Canada."
25 September 2023, 17:57 GMT
Why Didn't Former Nazi Soldiers Hide in Canada?
In fact, it did not take a lot of skill to find former Nazis in Canada as they never hid their real names, Rambam pointed out. "They were absolutely unafraid, unashamed. No remorse, no apology, no nothing," he said.
"To tell you what I did, we very, very easily, disturbingly easily, were able to compile a list of approximately 1,000 alleged war criminals, Nazi war criminals, members of the Ukrainian units, members of the Latvian Arajs Kommando, murderers that committed crimes in Belorussia, the police units in Lithuania, the special Einsatzkommandos of the Nazis that went all across Europe with the so-called holocaust of bullets and gas vans. All of these people had representatives in Canada. Of the thousand, because we knew that we couldn't pursue a thousand people, it would be a project for the next 15 years of our lives, we selected the 200 worst on the list."
"I will tell you that one of them was a Ukrainian and the description of his crimes that we had from our sources, it was just one line ‘specialized in the murder of children.’ Specialized in the murder of children. So there are other Ukrainians like Mr. Hunka that came to Canada. Of these 200 people, as private persons, I mean, yes, we're investigators, we have special skills, but we were operating not as law enforcement, but as private persons, we were able to find approximately 170 of them."
26 September 2023, 17:52 GMT
Rambam managed to find one out of every three former Nazis just by looking in the phone book. The ex-militants did not bother to hide: they were so comfortable and so unafraid that they bought houses under their own names. They registered to vote in Canada, like good Canadian citizens. They took out business licenses. Some of them were notary publics, according to the Nazi hunter.
Only one of the people whose door Rambam knocked on refused to confirm his identity. Others willingly answered his questions and shared their wartime memories while he made undercover recordings during these interviews. The greatest challenge, per Rambam, was not to grab some of those guys who literally boasted of slaughtering the Jewish people. But he did his job professionally and did not give himself away.
"Your listeners may or may not know this, but I'm Jewish. And some of them, I was able to get them to tell me in detail about their crimes, horrible details," Rambam said. "No normal person can listen to these people talk about, you know, the evil that they perpetrated and not be affected."
Events in Kiev in memory of the victims of the mass shootings at Babi Yar in 1941
© Sputnik / Stringer
/ Why Did Canada Become Safe Haven for Nazis?
Canada became a safe haven for ex-Nazi collaborators, Ukrainians in particular, because there was an enormous culture of anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews in Canada for many years, according to Rambam.
"It was easier to get into Canada as a Nazi war criminal than it was as a Jew trying to escape the Holocaust or a Jew who survived the Holocaust and just wanted to go and live somewhere where you couldn't, you know, smell the gas chambers," the private investigator said.
Rambam recalled a famous episode cited by Irving Abela, a Canadian historian and author of None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948, who wrote about Ottawa's refusal to accept Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. A potential immigrant who had been a member of the SS was interviewed by Immigration Canada about whether or not he should be allowed in. Immigration Canada's only concern at that point was whether he was a communist. The man took off his shirt and showed the SS tattoo and he said that he had been killing communists. "And the gentleman from Immigration Canada said, welcome to Canada," Rambam noted. "And this is a man whose entry to Canada was on the basis of being an SS fighter."
"And I will tell you that the other Prime Minister Trudeau, the first prime minister, the father of the current PM, was asked directly, ‘Why aren't you going after these horrible people that were mistakenly allowed into Canada?’ And he said quite bluntly, he says, ‘Listen, we don't want to exacerbate ethnic tensions.’ That's verbatim what he said. We don't want to exacerbate ethnic tensions," the private investigator stressed."
26 September 2023, 12:40 GMT
Trudeau Failed to Mention That Former Waffen SS Soldier Hunka is Monster
Rambam drew attention to the fact that Nazism is tolerated more than it used to be. Even though the Canadian government appears to lament the fact that it applauded the former Nazi, it still waters down the problem.
"I think the problem is that the example is being set incorrectly at the top. You know, you have Trudeau, Prime Minister Trudeau, who yesterday talked out of all the sides of his mouth about what happened. He said ‘It was a mistake. It was an accident. You should forgive us.’ At one point, one of my colleagues told me, he said it was Russian disinformation, literally said that."
"He said everything except ‘Listen, this man is a monster. If what people are saying about this man is true, he's a monster. He should have never been allowed into Canada. We are disgraced that this person is in Canada and that people like him are in Canada. And we are going to take every step. We are going to introduce new legislation. We are going to the courts. We are going to fight, to vomit these people out of Canada.’ But that's not what he said. He made excuses. The deputy prime minister, a woman for whom I have no respect – same thing. ‘It was an accident. We made a mistake. We're sorry.’ And then they sacrificed the person who invited him, and that's it. It's over. It's finished in Canada," Rambam concluded.
27 September 2023, 11:11 GMT
