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Edmonton Statue of Nazi War Criminal Still Remains After Fifty Years

Roman Shukhevych, lauded by many Ukrainians as a nationalist hero, led the effort to murder thousands of Jews during the Shoah

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Roman Shukhevych, Nazi SS Captain, is seated second from the left | Photo: Wikipedia

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A Nazi collaborator – responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews – was honoured with a copper bust, adjacent to a community centre in Edmonton. And for fifty years, no one’s said a peep.

Located at the entrance to Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, the statue of Roman Shukhevych was erected in 1970. Ostensibly honoured for his Ukrainian nationalism, the World War Two soldier, according to many reports, also happened to be a decorated Nazi SS Captain.

Steven Rambam, a renowned New York-based private investigator who has personally gathered evidence against hundreds of Nazi war criminals, including many in Canada, and helped prosecute several, says that the monument is “outrageous” and that “this guy is actually a huge deal.”

“Here you have a statue erected in honour of a major war criminal, who received an Iron Cross for his service to the Reich, which reportedly included his unit killing thousands of Jews. If you searched for a more unequivocally bad guy, you’d be hard pressed to find one.”

According to the research he cites, “this criminal commanded hundreds of SS in a battalion and became their captain – and was such a competent, efficient murderer of thousands of Jews, including Jewish children, that after they were done killing the Jews in the Ukraine, the Nazis sent them to Belarus to take advantage of their experience murdering Jews there.”

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Among many other crimes, according to Rambam, this battalion allegedly hunted down Jews who escaped into the woods, and killed them. “Can you imagine a statue of a mass murderer of members of any other group being openly erected in Canada?” he asked.

In the United States, various controversial statues have been the focus of scorn lately, as increasingly, various groups have been identifying the ugly pasts of the monuments’ subjects. Some have already been torn down. In a similar fashion, immediate indignation ought to have been forthcoming from Jewish leadership in Edmonton, Rambam said, “who have been asleep at the switch, for at least as long as mentions of this have been in the press.”

Located at the entrance to Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton, AB, the statue of Roman Shukhevych was erected in 1970

Discussions on Shukhevych’s war crimes came to the fore in the mainstream media two years ago. David Pugliese, writing in the Ottawa Citizen May 17, 2018, referenced the layers beneath Shukhevych’s repugnant past.

“Before going to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Shukhevych was commander of the Ukrainian battalion called Nachtigall,” wrote Pugliese. “The men of Nachtigall rounded up Jews in Lviv …  massacring men, women and children.” (It was then Lwów in Eastern Poland, now called Lviv, Ukraine)

Simon Wiesenthal Center estimated that the Nachtigall Battalion, along with other German military, murdered around 4,000 Jews in Lviv, with other historians estimating around 6,000.

In his 2016 research paper “The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications”, Per Anders Rudling, a Swedish-American historian and an associate professor of the Department of History at Lund University in Sweden, delved into the soldier’s Nazi connections.

Soldiers of Nachtigall – or nightingale in English – partook in the Lviv pogrom, “as well as massacres of Jews in the vicinity of Vinnytsia,” wrote Rudling.

Elaborating in a recent Progress Report podcast, Rudling said to host Duncan Kinney: “Shukhevych became a symbol of armed resistance for control of Western Ukraine,” explaining how post-war immigrants perceived the man.  

Paula Kirman, a Jewish Edmontonian also in the podcast, has been vocal about the issue, and asked why an individual as Shukhevych “is placed figuratively and literally on a pedestal.” The journalist and activist has also been involved in a film project on the topic.

To add insult, there may be a trail of federal funding for the statue, Rudling explained in the podcast. As multiculturalism became entrenched in government policy beginning in the 1970s, “huge chunks of money” were allocated to ethnic community centers, including its monuments, and likely the case at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex.

In terms of what we knew, and when, Rudling explained that during the 1970s and 1980s, comparatively little was widely known about most of the pogroms and massacres, especially at a time when people’s attention was diverted towards the Cold War.

“But I’m sure that while (today) you can do research, Ukrainians can now also do their own research,” he stated, in response to whether Ukrainians can plead ignorance. “There’s so much information out there. Archives have been opened, CIA documents have been opened, there’s a multitude of sources. It is established fact, that Shukhevych oversaw the murder of Jews.”

For their part, Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex sent a press release June 30 to City TV journalist Courtney Theriault, who had been pursuing her own story:

“We will continue to honour those who fought and sacrificed their lives to help achieve freedom and Independence for Ukraine, after centuries of foreign domination, primarily by Russia.”

Jeni Adler, the Intercultural Facilitator and Community Resource Specialist for Jewish Family Services, Edmonton, told TheJ.ca that there ought to be dialogue between local Ukrainians and Jews, and that it “should be mediated by someone with great sensitivity, insight and miraculous communication skills… There should be time in this session for a history lesson by both parties.”

Steven Rambam, a renowned New York-based private investigator | Photo: Courtesy of Steven Rambam

Ultimately, Rambam says that “perhaps the statue remaining up has benefit to the community, as it would be a constant reminder,” he said. “Let young Jews know it’s there, and learn that if they do not see to Jewish honour and safety, nobody will.”

As a wider response, he says that the Jewish community should gather en masse at the site, making a public scene to call attention to the crimes of Shukhevych, “and most of all, demand answers from the Jewish leadership as to why nothing’s been done up until now.”

Rambam’s willing to offer his services, if called upon.

“I’m sure that I speak for every proud Jewish person when I say that if the Edmonton Jewish community needs assistance to do something about this disgrace, they will have it,” he says. “One million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed in Ukraine. Shukhevych’s unit helped kill them, men, women, children, and elderly.

“This statue shows contempt for those Jews, and the other victims of Ukrainian war criminals.”

(This story was completed with files from Dave Gordon)

Chaim Goldberg is a writer in Edmonton

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Thank you for choosing TheJ.Ca as your source for Canadian Jewish News.

We do news differently!

Our positioning as a Zionist News Media platform sets us apart from the rest. While other Canadian Jewish media are advocating increasingly biased progressive political and social agendas, TheJ.Ca is providing more and more readers with a welcome alternative and an ideological home.

We revealed the incursion of anti-Israel progressive elements such as IfNotNow into our communities. We have exposed the distorted hateful agenda of the “progressive” left political radicals who brought Linda Sarsour to our cities, and we were first to report on many disturbing incidents of Nazi-based hate towards Jews across Canada.

But we can’t do it alone. We need your HELP!

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