3 days ago
Maintenance cost for Victims of Communism memorial jumps to $1 million
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The NCC spends around $43,000 annually for maintenance for the National Peacekeeping Monument and almost $112,000 annually for its maintenance of the National War Memorial, according to the documents. The NCC maintains the Canadian Firefighters Memorial at a cost of around $40,000 annually and the National Holocaust Monument at around $43,000 a year.
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The Victims of Communism memorial is supposed to honour those who suffered under communism. But concerns have been raised over the years by Jewish organizations and historians that names of eastern Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust have been put forward in an attempt to whitewash their past.
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In 2021, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center revealed that Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis and was linked to the massacres of Jews and Poles, was one of those being commemorated. Only after the group repeatedly raised the matter with the department was Shukhevych's name removed.
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But in a Dec. 14, 2024, post on the social-media platform X, Ludwik Klimkowski of Tribute to Liberty responded to concerns the monument was honouring Nazi collaborators. 'Let's stop the nonsense of the Nazi commemoration nonsense perpetrated by Canadian Marxists and the agents of the Kremlin's regime,' Klimkowski wrote.
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Holocaust scholars and Jewish groups have continued to denounce claims that their efforts to expose Nazi war criminals and collaborators are part of some Russian plot or disinformation scheme. The fact that some eastern Europeans played key roles in the Holocaust and supporting the Nazi regime is well documented in history, they add.
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In addition, on Oct. 7, 2024, the Ottawa Citizen revealed that a report prepared for Canadian Heritage recommended more than half of the 550 names planned to go on the memorial should be removed. That was because of potential links to the Nazis, questions about affiliations with fascist groups or a lack of information about what the individuals did during the Second World War. As originally planned, there were to be 553 entries on the memorial's Wall of Remembrance.
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The department had already determined that between 50 and 60 of the names or organizations were likely directly linked to the Nazis, according to the documents.
