DISINFO: Canada's foreign minister is a descendant of a Ukrainian Nazi
SUMMARY
After World War II, most Ukrainian Nazis emigrated... In Canada, Chrystia Freeland, the granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator, became the country's foreign minister.
RESPONSE
Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation targeting former Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and painting her as a Nazi sympathiser because of her grandfather’s presumed activities.
Freeland has been a constant target for Russian disinformation. She is banned from travelling to Russia, as part of the tit-for-tat game of escalating sanctions that the Russians played in the wake of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea.
Tales about Freeland’s grandfather Michael Chomiak have been circulating on pro-Kremlin social media accounts and websites since she joined the office of Foreign Affairs on 10 January 2017. There is no evidence that Chomiak wrote any of the anti-Jewish diatribes published in the Krakivski Visti newspaper. After the war he told his family he had worked with the anti-Nazi resistance, helping its members get false papers.
Ms Freeland's uncle, John-Paul Himka has studied family history and told the Globe and Mail:
He was the editor of a legal newspaper in Nazi-occupied Poland. He never signed anything in the paper. He never made policy or that kind of thing. It wouldn't be his call.
Read similar cases in our database claiming that Freeland lied about her grandfather's Nazi past; or that Freeland (who is of Ukrainian heritage) is the granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator.