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The Ukrainian man sitting in the gallery of Canada\u2019s House of Commons was a \u201chero,\u201d the speaker of the House said on Friday, drawing applause from lawmakers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who had just addressed the chamber during his first visit to Ottawa<\/a> since Russia invaded his country.<\/p>\n But several Jewish groups responded with outrage, saying that the man, Yaroslav Hunka, 98, had served in a Nazi unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which fought alongside Germany during World War II and declared allegiance<\/a> to Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Anthony Rota, the speaker of Canada\u2019s House of Commons, issued a written apology, saying that he had \u201csubsequently become aware of more information\u201d and took \u201cfull responsibility for my actions.\u201d<\/p>\n In remarks after Mr. Zelensky addressed Canada\u2019s Parliament<\/a> on Friday, Mr. Rota introduced Mr. Hunka as a resident of his district who had fought for Ukrainian independence from Russia and later immigrated to Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero,\u201d Mr. Rota said, \u201cand we thank him for all his service,\u201d prompting applause from lawmakers and a fist pump from Mr. Zelensky.<\/p>\n No other Canadian lawmakers, nor members of Mr. Zelensky\u2019s visiting Ukrainian delegation, knew about Mr. Rota\u2019s remarks before he made them, he said on Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cI particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world,\u201d Mr. Rota said. The apology was \u201cthe right thing to do,\u201d Mr. Trudeau\u2019s office said in a statement, adding that no advance notice had been given to the Canadian prime minister or to Mr. Zelensky about Mr. Hunka\u2019s invitation.<\/p>\n Jewish groups in Canada called the episode on Friday painful and horrifying and demanded an explanation for why Mr. Hunka had been allowed into the gallery.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is beyond outrageous that Parliament has honored a former member of a Nazi unit in this way,\u201d said Michael Mostyn<\/a>, the chief executive of B\u2019nai Brith Canada, a Jewish human rights group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The 14th Waffen SS unit was made up of volunteers from the Galicia region, which stretched across parts of what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. After the Soviet occupation of western Ukraine in 1939, the creation of the unit in 1943 attracted Ukrainians eager to fight for their independence, said Dominique Arel, the chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing trained by SS officers, you can imagine the kind of political indoctrination they got,\u201d he said. Even if their aims were for independence, Mr. Arel said the unit \u201cfought for and were trained by Nazis. There\u2019s no question about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the episode in Parliament, he said: \u201cObviously, the optics are disastrous.\u201d<\/p>\n B\u2019nai Brith Canada said that the division had been created by Ukrainian ultranationalist ideologues who \u201cdreamed of an ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian state and endorsed the idea of ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Canada-based group dedicated to education around the Holocaust and combating antisemitism, called the moment \u201cincredibly disturbing<\/a>\u201d and said in a statement that the 14th Waffen SS \u201cwas responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n The Forward, a Jewish publication, earlier reported on Mr. Hunka\u2019s service in the SS unit.<\/p>\n The unit suffered heavy casualties during a 1944 Soviet offensive against German-occupied Ukraine and Poland, Mr. Arel said. Although some members of the unit were linked to a massacre of Polish citizens in 1944, evidence that they attacked civilians was ultimately \u201cnot very developed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For decades, critics in Canada have accused the Canadian government of being too lenient in its pursuit of people accused of being Nazi war criminals or collaborators.<\/p>\n A national commission<\/a> established in 1985 found that there were former members of the 14th Waffen SS division living in Canada, but said that serving in the unit did not constitute a war crime.<\/p>\n