Toronto (February 10, 2023) – Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) is deeply disturbed by the National Post’s decision to publish a piece that contains Holocaust distortion and has reached out to the Canadian newspaper requesting to publish a rebuttal.

Yesterday, the National Post published an excerpt from a book co-edited by Lubomyr Luciuk and Volodymyr Viatrovych that glorifies the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its leader Stepan Bandera, all of which collaborated with the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

This comes after the Ottawa Citizen, which has the same parent company as the National Post, Postmedia Network, published an opinion piece by Luciuk in which he distorts the Holocaust and spreads disinformation about it and Ottawa’s National Holocaust Monument, claiming the monument “must include Ukrainians.” Soon after, FSWC published a rebuttal to the piece, titled “Why stretching the definition of the Holocaust is wrong.”

“Democracies of the world have stood with Ukraine in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked and aggressive war, but solidarity cannot tolerate Holocaust distortion and the glorification of Nazi collaborators,” said FSWC Director of Allyship and Community Engagement Daniel Panneton. “It's unfortunate that some individuals would opportunistically exploit international sympathy in service of whitewashing well-documented histories of collaboration. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance correctly emphasizes that Holocaust distortion is corrosive to democracy, and it's disappointing to see news outlets with national reach repeatedly legitimize such toxic disinformation.”