University of Alberta wins court approval to dissolve Hunka Ukrainian research fund

The University of Alberta has received legal approval to dissolve a research trust named after Yaroslav Hunka, a 101-year-old Ukrainian SS veteran, despite opposition from his family.

Court of King's Bench Justice Debra Yungwirth released her decision Friday on the Yaroslav & Margaret Hunka Ukrainian Research Endowment Fund, a $30,000 trust Hunka's son Martin created in 2019 to fund research into the underground activities of the Ukrainian Catholic Church during the Second World War. The trust sat largely unnoticed until 2023, when Yaroslav Hunka received a standing ovation in the House of Commons during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It soon emerged that Hunka had served in the Galicia Division, a Waffen SS unit made up of Ukrainian volunteers.

Yungwirth wrote that her task was to decide whether the university could legally terminate the trust — not to determine "whether Yaroslav is a Nazi or a war criminal." She found the university was within its rights to return the money. "The university did not terminate the Hunka Trust because it determined that Yaroslav was a war criminal or anti-Semitic," she wrote. "Rather, it did so because it perceived that any continued association with an individual who had served in a regiment connected to the Nazis would adversely affect the University of Alberta. The House of Commons incident, and the public response that followed, made it clear that maintaining the Hunka Trust was not in the university's best interests."

Martin Hunka had informed the university in 2019 that his father served in the Galicia Division, an SS unit whose legacy remains controversial in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and parts of the Ukrainian diaspora. In his affidavit, Yaroslav said he joined at age 18 not because he believed in Nazi ideology but because he and his comrades thought it was the best way to secure an independent Ukraine. He insisted he never witnessed nor participated in war crimes.

The controversy erupted after Parliament's recognition. Groups including the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies condemned the recognition, while Russian President Vladimir Putin used the incident to reinforce false claims about "neo-Nazis" in Ukrainian leadership, one of Russia's justifications for its 2022 invasion. Days after the firestorm, the university contacted Martin Hunka and said the money would be returned. Martin initially accepted but later moved the funds to a lawyer's account. The university sought formal court permission to dissolve the trust in early 2024, with the Hunka family opposing the move. The case went to court this spring on technical arguments about whether Alberta's recently updated Trustee Act allowed for charitable trusts to be dissolved. The location where the $30,000 will be returned and any restrictions on its use have not been disclosed.