University returns donation from family with Nazi links

Canada’s University of Alberta is returning a CA$30,000 (US$22,300) donation it received from the family of Yaroslav Hunka, saying it regrets any harm it may have caused by accepting the endowment in his name, writes Peter Zimonjic for CBC News.

“The university recognises and regrets the unintended harm caused,” Verna Yiu, interim provost and vice-president of the university, said in a statement. “On behalf of the university, I want to express our commitment to address anti-Semitism in any of its manifestations, including the ways in which the Holocaust continues to resonate in the present.”

Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian, was invited to Ottawa last week for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to parliament, where Hunka was given a standing ovation after being pointed out by Speaker Anthony Rota. It later emerged that the man Zelenskyy and others were applauding served in the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, or the SS 14th Waffen Division, a voluntary unit that was part of Adolf Hitler’s forces during the Second World War.
Full report on the CBC News site