So it's a huge gaffe most certainly by the speaker of the house, but only due to optics, not because of what the former soldier fought for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_W..._(1st_Galician)
Quote:
Germans made three political concessions: It was stipulated that the division shall not be used to fight Western Allies, and would be used exclusively to "fight Bolsheviks". The other concession was that its oath of allegiance to Hitler was conditional on the fight against Bolshevism and in the fact that Christian (mostly Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church) chaplains were integrated into the units and allowed to function (in the Waffen-SS, only the Bosnian division and Sturmbrigade Wallonien had a clerical presence). The latter condition was instituted at the insistence of the division's organizers in order to minimize the risk of Nazi demoralization amongst the soldiers.[10][page needed] Indeed, Nazi indoctrination was absent within the division.[11]
Parade of SS Galicia recruits in Lwów (Lviv), German occupied Poland July 1943.
The creation of foreign SS units had been carried out previously in the name of fighting against communism; with French, Flemish, Walloon, Dutch, Latvian, Estonian, Croatian, and Belarusian units, among others, had been created.[12] The creation of a Ukrainian SS division was perceived by many in Ukraine as a step towards the attainment of Ukrainian independence and attracted many volunteers.
|
So they weren't actual nazis despite the SS denomination, fought only Soviets, and Ukrainians was still recovering from the Holodomor and trying it's hardest to gain it's independence from Soviets. Add to this that Germany directly helped Ukraine in their fight for independence against the Bolsheviks in 1918 and Ukraine volunteering for the Nazis make sense. Germany was initially cheered as liberators
We must of course also consider Babi Yar, which was genocide of Jews in Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
Yaroslav Hunka was also 18 years old when he would have joined the newly formed volunteer group and his tale can be read below, all he knew was persecution under Stalin and the trains were going East not West, is it really hard to blame him?
https://komb-a-ingwar.blogspot.com/2...g-post_21.html
It's a stupid move to honour someone who by association was on the same side as Nazis, but it's not so black and white (see Finland).