Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Grandfather was a Nazi Sympathizer

Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper

“…Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland knew for more than two decades that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland that vilified Jews during the Second World War.

Ms. Freeland’s family history has become a target for Russian forces seeking to discredit one of Canada’s highly placed defenders of Ukraine.

Ms. Freeland, who has paid tribute to her maternal grandparents in articles and books, helped edit a scholarly article in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies in 1996 that revealed her grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi propagandist for Krakivski Visti (Krakow News)…”

Related:

Chrystia Freeland’s granddad was indeed a Nazi collaborator – so much for Russian disinformation

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons, Thursday, February 2, 2017 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld ORG XMIT: ajw111

“…The Ukraine Archival Records held by the Province of Alberta. It has a whole file on Chomiak, including his own details about his days editing the newspaper Krakivski Visti. Chomiak noted he edited the paper first in Crakow (Cracow), Poland and then in Vienna. The reason he edited the paper in Vienna was because he had to flee with his Nazis colleagues as the Russians advanced into Poland. (The Russians tended to execute collaborators well as SS members).

See archive entry below:

So what was the Krakivski Visti? It, like a number of publications, had been seized by the Nazis from their Jewish owners and then operated as propaganda outlets.

Here is what the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum has to say about Krakivski Visti and a similar newspaper, Lvivski Visti, both publications associated with the Nazi regime.

“The editorial boards carried out a policy of soliciting Ukrainian support for the German cause,” the Holocaust Museum noted. “It was typical, within these publications, to not to give any accounts of the German genocidal policy, and largely, the editions resorted to silencing the mass killing of Jews in Galicia. Ukrainian newspapers presented the Jewish Question in light of the official Nazi propaganda, corollary to the Jewish world conspiracy.”

“In 1943 and 1944, both Lvivski Visti and Krakivski Visti hailed the German-approved formation of the 14th Waffen SS Division Halychyna, composed of Ukrainian volunteers,” the museum pointed out.

So much for Russian disinformation.

On Wednesday the Globe and Mail reported that, “Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland knew for more than two decades that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper.”

Photo below shows Chomiak at a party – he is to the right of the man smoking. On the far right (right hand lower corner of the photo) in uniform is Emil Gassner, the Nazi administrator in charge of the press for the region including Cracow.

Doug Santo