Photo: Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 24, 2018. Photo credit: REUTERS/Chris Wattie

by Zvika Klein, October 3, 2023, Jerusalem Post

Israel’s envoy urges Canada to revisit WWII Nazi immigration and Jewish policy.

Resignation of Canada’s speaker of the House of Commons lower chamber is a “first step to acknowledging responsibility for this wrong,” Israel’s new special envoy for combating ant-Semitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, told the Jerusalem Post this week. She added that Canada needs to acknowledge its historic sin of not allowing enough Jews into the country during the Holocaust and immediately afterward while allowing Nazis to immigrate.

The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons lower chamber said last week that he would quit, a few days after he publicly praised a former Nazi soldier in Parliament in an incident that Russia said helped justify its war on Ukraine.

A week ago Anthony Rota told legislators he had made a mistake by inviting ex-soldier Yaroslav Hunka, 98, to attend a session in the House honoring Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky last Friday. Rota publicly recognized Hunka, calling him a hero.

Cotler-Wunsh emphasized that the next steps should include “Canada acknowledging and coming to terms with its history of the nearly 2,000 documented Nazis who immigrated to the country following WWII and built lives, at the same time as the immigration policies towards Jewish victims was ‘none is too many’ as documented by historian Irving Abella in a book by that title,” she said. “None is too many” was the response given by a high-level Canadian Government official when asked how many Jews should be accepted during the Holocaust.

“At a time of rising anti-Semitism, the beyond embarrassing incident in parliament underscores the imperative of comprehensive education on anti-Semitism then and now, on the Holocaust and on the history of WWII.

Photo: Ukrainian president VVladimir Zelensky applauded by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau following his speech at the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada September 22, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/Blair Gable/Pool)

“The very possibility of its occurrence undermines the responsibility of countries like Canada to the shared prospective commitment of ‘Never Again’–demanding to remember and know the past in order to identify present threats and prevent recurrence of atrocities too terrible to imagine but not too terrible to have happened,” Cotler-Wunsh concluded.

Guest of Canadian Parliament Was a Nazi

The speaker’s position rapidly became untenable after it emerged that Hunka, who received two standing ovations from lawmakers, had served in one of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS units during World War II. Russia called the incident outrageous.

Full story here.