#Thread debunking @ukrcancongress' ridiculous letter to @OttawaCitizen re: @davidpugliese's article ("Graffiti on monument commemorating Nazi SS division being investigated as a hate crime by police") which became the #1 trending topic on Twitter in Canada https://www.ucc.ca/2020/07/18/july-18-2020-letter-to-ottawa-citizen/?fbclid=IwAR0AhTcQ-BKXTwT6jpQk49pSZdeG9quYZRDtujfq4RmeW5x8y-Ki7LkCqBs

The letter was written by Ihor Michalchyshyn, CEO of @ukrcancongress (UCC). As @mariedanielles wrote in this 2017 article, "Michalchyshyn rejects outright ... any insinuation that Ukrainians collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War." https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ukrainian-canadian-community-urged-to-confront-past-amid-controversy-over-monuments-to-nazi-collaborators

The UCC's letter to @OttawaCitizen starts by accusing @davidpugliese of propagating "the narrative...that Ukrainians in general...are 'fascists' & 'Nazis.'" Obviously he did no such thing. But what about those insisting vandalism of a Waffen-SS memorial is an anti- hate crime?

"These Soviet-era allegations about their involvement in war crimes have never been substantiated..." It's not clear who "their" is referring to: Ukrainian nationalists, or soldiers in the () 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS? Either way, this isn't true. About that...

At the very least, there were SS police regiments incorporated into the Ukrainian division of the Waffen-SS that participated in the massacre of several hundred people in the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka. There's a whole Wikipedia article about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huta_Pieniacka_massacre

The UCC letter references 's 1986 Deschenes Commission which concluded that the "Galicia [] Division" of the Waffen-SS "should not be indicted as a group." Once again we may refer to Wikipedia to debunk that the commission "cleared" the division of involvement in war crimes.

"Caught between the genocidal dictatorship of Hitler and Stalin, many Ukrainians fought against both regimes"--not these Ukrainians! According to @DefendingHistor's Dovid Katz, the "Double Genocide Theory" is "the new and official form of Holocaust denial" https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory/

According to the CEO of the @ukrcancongress, "Veterans of the Galicia Division [14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS] ... were screened THOROUGHLY by the British, American and Canadian authorities before being allowed to immigrate to Canada." What a bunch of BS!

Per Rudling published an article just last month in which he wrote, "In 1950... admitted b/w 1200-2000 veterans of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS...[and] only a cross-section of the veterans were subjected to security screening (which was sketchy & incomplete)..."

I'm now going to quote from a 1947 British report on the screening of the Galician/Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans: "Individual screening by us being impossible, it was decided to question a small cross section... It should be emphasized that..." (continued in next post)

"...the short history of the Division [was] supplied entirely by the Ukrainians themselves and that we had no information here of any kind which they could be checked..." (continued in next post)

"...The general impression which we have formed of all the men [who volunteered to join Ukrainian division of Waffen-SS] in the camp is favourable, as they strike us all as being decent, simple-minded sort of people... and do not seem conscious of having done any wrong." (cnt'd)

"Some of the real villains of the piece, if there are any, may be sheltering behind these innocuous sounding units, but that is a risk which we have to take... THE MEN MAY BE ALL OR IN PART LYING... NO ATTEMPT AT CROSS EXAMINATION WAS MADE..." So, how's that for "thorough"?

The rest of the @ukrcancongress letter implies that @davidpugliese is doing the Kremlin's bidding by aiding "Russia's ongoing effort to sow division in Canada" and "repeat[ing] the false narratives originating from the Russian Embassy..." which is of course laughably false.

In other, related news, Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, former director of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, has written an angry email to the mayor and town council of Oakville ("Shame on you!") for siding with the "hate criminals" who graffitied the Ukrainian Waffen-SS memorial.

Oksana Bashuk Hepburn is a former president of the Ottawa branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress https://twitter.com/mossrobeson__/status/1285056489284087809?s=20

This thread below provides some historical context to the one above. Three years before the creation of the Ukrainian division of the Waffen-SS, when pro-Nazi nationalists had already been quite active in Canada for years: https://twitter.com/abcommunist/status/1285087376197316608?s=21 https://twitter.com/abcommunist/status/1285087376197316608

Meanwhile in Ukraine, just after the @ukrcancongress CEO drafted a pathetic attempt to smear a Canadian journalist and defend a memorial to the Waffen SS division, which evidently was not crushed enough: https://twitter.com/edolinsky/status/1285125889710333952?s=20