The standing ovation accorded in 2023 to a Second World War Ukrainian Nazi unit veteran in Canada’s House of Commons shocked Canadians – and the world. Author Peter McFarlane was not surprised. He had already spent three years learning about two people, Mikael Chomiak and Ann Charney, whose parallel lives during and after that war highlight the complex and disturbing story of Ukraine and Canada’s post-war Ukrainian Canadian community.

Ann Charney was two years old when she and her Jewish mother evaded their certain death by hiding out in a hayloft in the Ukrainian countryside. Ann spent two long years in that attic. She and her mother survived the war, and ultimately made their way to Montreal. There, Ann has had a brilliant career as a novelist and journalist.

Mikael Chomiak spent the war working for the German SS as the editor of an influential Ukrainian newspaper celebrating Hitler and promoting antisemitism. He and his family were easily accepted as postwar immigrants to Canada, settling in Alberta. There he continued his work as a writer and editor, avoiding public expressions of his antisemitic views or his wartime record.

In this book Peter McFarlane tells the stories of these two during the war, and afterwards. He brings their stories up to date through research in Ukraine today. When he visits Chomiak’s relatives in Ukraine, he finds the themes of ethnic hatred and antisemitism strongly in play today in public support for the war with Russia. Canadian descendants of pro-Nazi Ukrainians often do not acknowledge this connection of past to present. Mikael Chomiak’s granddaughter Chrystia Freeland has a lead role in government as a senior federal cabinet minister. Like many others, she remains in denial about her grandfather’s role promoting the Nazis’ policies and the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Visiting Ann Charney’s home town of Brody, Peter McFarlane finds that the local history museum celebrating Ukrainian Nazi soldiers while saying nothing about their Holocaust role, executing the town’s 10,000 Jewish residents, including all of Ann’s family and relatives.

This book provides context and background for understanding the complex dynamics behind the war between Ukraine and Russia, and Canada’s role in that conflict.

PETER MCFARLANE is a Canadian author, journalist, editor and arts administrator.His first book was Northern Shadows: Canadians and Central America. He has since published numerous articles and edited countless books including award winning titles such as: Unsettling Canada, Reconciliation Manifesto, In the Black and Fight and Submit. He served as Chair of the Writers Union of Canada in 1998-99 and has worked as a manager for arts organizations. He lives in the Laurentians north of Montreal.

Peter McFarlane's profile page

“Family Ties is a remarkable book on a period of history — the Second World War, before and after — that continues to haunt us. It is also a powerful antidote to Canadian amnesia and especially to the attempts to rewrite the history of that war to justify the warmongering provocations of Washington, Ottawa, London, Paris and other NATO countries.”

CounterPunch Magazine

“…dense and engrossing… Family Ties: How A Ukrainian Nazi And A Living Witness Link Canada To Ukraine Today… packs a lot of information… but it flows smoothly and usually engages a reader.”

Sheldon Kirshner, The Times of Israel

“…a highly readable and important book that exposes the Nazi collaborators that came to this country and the network of support that allowed them to thrive.”

Esprit de Corps

"Ignoring the murky waters in which the roots of Ukrainian nationalism were steeped is one factor that helps explain how Yaroslav Hunka, a former SS soldier, was able to receive a standing ovation in the Canadian parliament in September 2023, and then, for a moment, become a laughing stock on the international stage.
The fact remains that a spade must be called a spade. There is no reason to deny patent facts, as clearly stated by McFarlane. Because that is the danger: in an era where figures like Donald Trump thrive by rewriting history to suit themselves, lying becomes a political weapon."

Le Devoir

Canadians were shocked when it was revealed that a "Ukrainian nationalist" who was given a standing ovation by our entire Parliament in 2023 turned out to be an old Nazi who had been a member of the SS Division Galicia of the military wing of Hitler's Nazi Party, the Waffen-SS. Once you read Peter McFarlane's Family Ties, you won't be shocked at all. You'll learn about how a segment of Ukrainian nationalists in Polish-controlled western Ukraine became active Nazis in the 1930s affiliated directly with Hitler's party, how they murdered Jews and others deemed unfit to live by Hitler during the war, and how tens of thousands managed to get into Canada after the war and achieve power within the Canadian Ukrainian community, once largely Communist-led, and in the larger society. You'll also meet Ann Charney, a beloved Jewish-Canadian writer, who spent the early years of her life hidden in a barn in Poland, so that she did not become a victim of Hitler and his Ukrainian SS murderers. Finally, you'll learn the true story of Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandfather and realize that Freeland is misleading Canadians when she claims that tales of his murderous anti-Semitism are simply "Russian propaganda." If you want to know something about the far right in Canada after World War II and its links to Hitler's Nazis, McFarlane's Family Ties will easily be your best source.

Alvin Finkel, author of Humans: The 300,000 Year Struggle for Equality

“In the current climate of war, the sides of good and bad are not as clearly defined as they were in the previous wars. Both sides usually have ‘skeletons in their closets’; things they don’t want getting out. This book is the perfect embodiment of ‘skeletons in the closet’. I recommend it to historians of Ukraine, the Second World War, the Cold War and anyone interested in the current war between Russia and Ukraine, in order to have better insight into Ukrainian and Canadian politics and how they are connected.”

Peace Alliance Winnipeg