St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery

Last updated
St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery
Ivanys 1.JPG
Grave of Vasily Nikolaevich Ivanis
St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery
Details
Established1984
Coordinates 43°27′13″N79°44′47″W / 43.45361°N 79.74639°W / 43.45361; -79.74639

St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery, marketed as West Oak Memorial Gardens, is a cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, established in 1984. [1] [2] According to the cemetery's website, it is operated by St. Volodymyr Cathedral. [2] The cemetery offers both in ground burial and burial vaults in perpetuity, and is open to all those of Christian faith.

Contents

14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS emblem controversy

UPA Monument 3.jpg
SS Galician monument.jpg
Monument to the Glory of the UPA(left) and cenotaph with emblem of 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician). (right)

On 26 May 1988, Monument to the Glory of the UPA, a memorial to members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, was erected. Soon after, a cenotaph was erected, displaying the emblem of 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), and an inscription dedicating it "To Those Who Died For the Freedom of Ukraine". [3]

On October 14, 2017, the Embassy of Russia in Ottawa's Twitter account posted images of the monuments, alongside a bust of Roman Shukhevych in Edmonton, with a caption referring to them as "monuments to Nazi collaborators." [4] [5] Alexandra Chyczij, vice president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, called these claims "long-disproven fabrications". [6] John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta scholar, stated about these monuments, “The fact is the Ukrainian government and the diaspora have been honouring Holocaust perpetrators and war criminals for a long time.” [7] [8] Author Per Anders Rudling has also stated on the topic "Unfortunately, the Ukrainian-Canadian organizations have not shown real readiness to discuss these issues... On the whole there's a great deal of resistance". [8]

Around June 21, 2020, the cenotaph was vandalized, with spray paint reading "Nazi war monument". Halton Regional Police Service initially reported that the vandalism was a "hate motivated offense", [9] and refused to release images of the graffiti. Halton police later stated that the graffiti may have been targeting Ukrainians either as a whole or in the area, and that they did not "consider that the identifiable group targeted by the graffiti was Nazis." [10] [11] In July 2020, Halton Regional Police released a statement saying that the message written on a controversial monument was no longer being considered a hate offence. [12]

In February 2024, the cenotaph displaying the emblem of 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) was removed, but it may be returned at some point in time. [13]

Notable burials

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stepan Bandera</span> Ukrainian nationalist leader (1909–1959)

Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian far-right leader of the radical militant wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ukrainian Insurgent Army</span> Paramilitary wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and partisan formation founded by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists on October 14, 1942. During World War II, it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, and both the Polish Underground State and Communist Poland.

The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists was a Ukrainian nationalist organisation established in 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups. The OUN was the largest and one of the most important far-right Ukrainian organizations operating in the interwar period on the territory of the Second Polish Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roman Shukhevych</span> Ukrainian nationalist (1907–1950)

Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych was a Ukrainian nationalist and a military leader of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which during the Second World War fought against the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent against the Nazi Germany for Ukrainian independence. He collaborated with the Nazis from February 1941 to December 1942 as commanding officer of the Nachtigall Battalion in early 1941, and as a Hauptmann of the German Schutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion in late 1941 and 1942.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician)</span> World War II Ukrainian infantry division

The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS , commonly referred to as the Galicia Division, was a World War II infantry division of the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the German Nazi Party, made up predominantly of volunteers with a Ukrainian ethnic background from the area of Galicia, later also with some Slovaks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Volodymyr Kubijovyč</span> Ukrainian historian (1900–1985)

Volodymyr Kubijovyč was an anthropological geographer in prewar Poland, a wartime Ukrainian nationalist politician, a Nazi collaborator and a post-war émigré intellectual of mixed Ukrainian-Polish background.

Khatyn was a village of 26 houses and 157 inhabitants in Belarus, in Lahoysk Raion, Minsk Region, 50 km away from Minsk. On 22 March 1943, almost the entire population of the village was massacred by the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vladimir Katriuk</span> Ukrainian-Canadian Axis collaborator and alleged war criminal (1921-2015)

Volodymyr Katriuk was a Ukrainian-Canadian soldier and beekeeper, who was accused by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of having been an active participant in the Khatyn massacre during World War II. In the annual Nazi War Criminal Report for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, Katriuk was ranked number three under the list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals as determined by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Katriuk denied any involvement in war crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Volodymyr Viatrovych</span> Ukrainian politician (born 1977)

Volodymyr Mykhailovych Viatrovych is a Ukrainian historian, civic activist and politician.

Antisemitism in Greece manifests itself in religious, political and media discourse. The 2009–2018 Greek government-debt crisis has facilitated the rise of far right groups in Greece, most notably the formerly obscure Golden Dawn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yurii Shukhevych</span> Ukrainian politician and independence activist (1933–2022)

Yurii-Bohdan Romanovych Shukhevych was a Ukrainian far-right politician. A member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, he was a political prisoner and the son of Roman Shukhevych. He was a long-serving leader of the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence. Shukhevych spent over 30 years in the Soviet prisons and concentration camps. In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election Shukhevych was elected into the Ukrainian parliament for Radical Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Per Anders Rudling</span> Swedish-American historian

Per Anders Rudling is a Swedish-American historian and an associate professor in the Department of History at Lund University (Sweden). He specializes in the areas of nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial</span> Park in Boise, Idaho, USA

The Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial is a .81 acres (0.33 ha) cenotaph complex and educational park in Boise, Idaho near the Boise Public Library and the Greenbelt, the centerpiece of which is a statue of Anne Frank; it is jointly maintained by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights and the Boise Department of Parks and Recreation, and is the only human rights memorial in the U.S. Designed by Idaho Falls architect Kurt Karst, a sapling of the Anne Frank Tree and quotations from some sixty notables and unknowns are prominent installations. It also features one of the few installations where the full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is on permanent public display. The park has been recognized and accepted by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. It was thoroughly renovated in September 2018, with an outdoor classroom and a new sculpture, "The Spiral of Injustice."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hryhoriy Vasiura</span> Soviet Axis collaborator and war criminal (1915–1987)

Hryhoriy Mykytovych Vasiura was a Soviet senior lieutenant in the Red Army who was captured during the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941 and subsequently volunteered for service in the Schutzmannschaft and the Waffen-SS. Vasiura's wartime activities were not fully revealed until the mid-1980s, when he was convicted as a war criminal by a Soviet military court and executed in 1987 for his role in the Khatyn massacre.

Duncan Kinney is an Edmonton-based Canadian journalist and activist. He is the founder and executive director of Progress Alberta and the editor of The Progress Report.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bust of Roman Shukhevych</span> Statue in Edmonton

The bust of Roman Shukhevych in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is a controversial sculpture located near the Ukrainian Youth Association narodny dim of the Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych, a military leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and one of the perpetrators of the Galicia-Volhynia massacres of approximately 100,000 Poles.

Canada has several monuments and memorials that to varying degrees commemorate people and groups accused of collaboration with Nazi forces.

<i>The Progress Report</i> Canadian newsletter and podcast

The Progress Report is a Canadian left-wing newsletter and podcast published by Progress Alberta and operated by Duncan Kinney.

The United States has monuments to people who collaborated with the Nazis, that are located in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Alabama, Georgia, and Michigan.

References

  1. "About us". St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery. Archived from the original on 7 Dec 2013. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  2. 1 2 "About Us". West Oak Memorial Gardens. Archived from the original on 2020-07-18. Retrieved 2020-07-18.
  3. Rudling, Per Anders (2020). "Long-Distance Nationalism: Ukrainian Monuments and Historical Memory in Multicultural Canada". In Marschall, Sabine (ed.). Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement. pp. 105–108. ISBN   978-3030413293.
  4. @RussianEmbassyC (October 14, 2017). "There are monuments to Nazi collaborators in Canada and nobody is doing anything about it. #NeverForget #Holocaust #WorldWar2" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  5. Smith, Marie-Danielle (25 October 2017). "Russia tweets about 'Nazi' monuments in Canada amid ongoing concerns over political interference". National Post . Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  6. Lea, David (24 October 2017). "Russian Embassy charges monuments to alleged 'Nazi collaborators' in Oakville". Oakville Beaver. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  7. Smith, Marie-Danielle (23 December 2017). "Ukrainian-Canadian community urged to confront WWII past amid controversy over monuments". National Post.
  8. 1 2 Rudling, Per Anders (2022). Marschall, Sabine (ed.). Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement. p. 118. ISBN   978-3030413293.
  9. Connor, Kevin (23 June 2020). "Cops investigate two hate crimes in GTA". Toronto Sun . Retrieved 18 July 2020.
  10. @HaltonPolice (July 17, 2020). "The Halton Regional Police Service has issued a media release that provides clarification regarding the ongoing investigation into graffiti at St Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville. ^jh" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  11. Pugliese, David (17 July 2020). "Graffiti on memorial to Nazi SS division now being investigated as vandalism". Ottawa Citizen . Retrieved 18 July 2020.
  12. Desormeaux, Thomas (July 18, 2020). "Vandalized Nazi Monument in St. Volodymyr Cemetery".
  13. National Post: Canadian monument to Ukrainian Nazi veterans removed — but it may return