Vandalism of private property was not a hate crime against Nazis

OTTAWA—In the wake of the high-profile Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a lot of soul searching into a North American history riddled with racism and the institutional glorification of colonialism. In the U.S., we have seen protestors topple statues of Confederate generals and Christopher Columbus. Closer to home, around June 21, a monument was vandalized at a cemetery in Oakville, Ont. When first reported, it was stated that the Halton-Regional Police Service was treating this as a “hate-motivated offence due to the nature of the graffiti.” At the time, police said they would not release images of the graffiti so as not to spread the suspect’s message. So far, so good. However, social media has a habit of leaping firewalls and it did not take long for those missing details to come to light. It turns out that the defaced monument is actually a tribute to the 14th SS Division (Galizien) and the offending message spray painted on it read “Nazi war monument.” That’s right folks, as hard as it is to fathom, there is actually a monument on Canadian soil that pays tribute to Hitler’s SS troops. For the suspect to have labelled this a Nazi war monument may constitute vandalism, but it is an accurate statement. Which therefore begs the question as to why the Halton-Regional police would be treating this as a hate crime? How can hating Nazis be a crime, let alone a hate crime? My colleague David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen posed that question to the Halton-Regional police and their spokesman Const. Steve Elms replied by email. “This incident occurred to a monument and the graffiti appeared to target an identifiable group.” That “identifiable group” would be the members of the 14th SS Division (Galizien), all of whom took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and who were commanded by Heinrich Himmler, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. For those of you still in disbelief that a monument to these Nazis would exist in Canada let me provide some historical context. The 14th SS Division (Galizien) was initially comprised of Ukrainian volunteers. It was established in 1943, when the fortunes of war had begun to turn against Hitler and the German war machine needed to increase its manpower to counter that of the Allies. The 14th SS Division fought against the Soviet Union on the eastern front but surrendered to the U.S. forces in Austria in 1945. After being interned at camps in Italy, eventually many of these SS troops immigrated to Canada. Hence, the subsequent erection of a memorial to their fallen comrades in the St. Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church cemetery in Oakville. Apologists for the Ukrainian SS claim they were in fact heroes who were striving to establish an independent state. Others make the weak excuse that many of these SS troopers were forcibly and illegally conscripted by the Germans. While I’m sure there were such conscripts, I’m equally sure that if they were forced against their will to fight for a cause they did not believe in, they would not erect a glorious monument to the unit in which they were forced to serve. One would presume that as their commander, SS leader Himmler would understand the nature of the Ukrainian SS members. In a speech to this division in May 1944 Himmler told the assembled 14th Division SS members, “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost—on our initiatives, I must say—the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name—namely the Jews, I know if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.” Himmler’s comments were reportedly greeted with cheers. For the record, it must be remembered that some 40,000 ethnic Ukrainian-Canadians fought against the Nazis in the Second World War wearing a Canadian uniform. Which makes the Halton-Regional Police comment about the message on the monument targeting an identifiable group even more puzzling as it is clearly aimed specifically at Nazis. (The police force later clarified, on July 17, that “initial information collected by investigators indicated the graffiti may have been hate-motivated, targeting the identifiable group of Ukrainians in general, or Ukrainian members of this cultural centre” and that at “no time” did the police “consider that the identifiable group targeted by the graffiti was Nazis.”) This was vandalism of private property—not a hate crime against Nazis. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times