This post was updated May 29 at 3:47 p.m.

Editor’s note: The following piece contains mentions of persecution, which could be disturbing to some readers. This post was updated to reflect that Vladimir Putin’s claims that Nazis are present in Ukraine are misleading.

Most students don’t uncover a classified list of alleged war criminals in their undergraduate research cohort.

But in History 199, Jared McBride, assistant professor of history, tasked his students with looking through primary sources related to alleged war criminals who fled after World War II, he said. In February, McBride’s students found a list of names on publicly accessible documents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that matched names of alleged war criminals originally recorded by the Deschênes Commission, which was led by a Canadian judge in 1986. It examined Canada’s culpability in allowing potential war criminals into the country after World War II, he added.

The goal of the project was to give his students firsthand research experience in the often fruitless process of going through document after document in search of corroborating names, McBride said.

“Let’s see what’s going on here,” he said. “And all of a sudden, we have found a list that the government has claimed is classified.”

After World War II, people who committed crimes with or under the Nazis migrated and sought political asylum, mainly in Australia, Canada, England and the United States, McBride said. While he added that he believes the U.S. has been one of the most transparent countries in declassifying records related to alleged Holocaust perpetrators from the time, McBride also said countries like Canada and England have sought to keep records classified and inaccessible to the public.

“The question here now is: Are we going to be open about assessing this past?” McBride said.

In September 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke at the Canadian House of Commons amid his country’s war against Russia. After his speech, the chamber recognized then-98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian war veteran who fought for the First Ukrainian Division during World War II, with a standing ovation.

Shortly after the ovation, news outlets reported that the unit Hunka was a part of was also known as the SS 14th Waffen Division – a voluntary unit under Nazi command.

The incident, which became known as the “Hunka scandal” and led to the resignation of then-House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, renewed interest and debate in the Deschênes Commission’s 700-page report. The second part of the report – which listed the names of suspected war criminals allowed refuge in Canada – was never disclosed to the public, McBride said.

“Every few years, someone’s asking for it or suing the government for it, and the government (is) just remaining intransigent – and this Hunka scandal retriggers these debates,” he said.

With few expectations and the hope that investigating the case could make for a worthwhile research project, McBride and his students began looking through records from the Canadian government and keeping track of the names they found on a spreadsheet.

Student A, a former member of the Daily Bruin who participated in the research cohort and was granted anonymity because of fear of retaliation from political groups, said the group’s research helped them understand more about current Russian propaganda that attempts to justify the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the 2022 invasion of Ukraine a “denazification” mission. Additionally, references to Nazism in Russian news articles about Ukraine rapidly increased after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to the New York Times. Putin’s claims of the presence of Nazis in Ukraine are based on lies, according to the New York Times.

The student added that everyone in the room was shocked when they were able to match the names on a record the group had obtained.

“It was a mixture of excitement and disbelief,” they said.

Following the discovery, McBride took time to fact-check the names based on his previous historical research, he said. When he was sure, he shared the story with a journalist from one of Canada’s most widely read newspapers, The Globe and Mail, which he said ran a front-page story on the cohort’s findings.

“In the midst of Trudeau (former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) stepping down, the trade war, the Trump administration problems, a new election, tariffs – what had been described to me by some colleagues as the biggest news month in Canadian history – we got a front-page headline,” he said.

Without his students’ time and effort in the research, the discovery would not have happened, McBride said. The list of names only came from accessing Canadian government public records – not from leaks or any other sources of information, he added.

McBride also said he will not release any of the names they have been able to corroborate to the Deschênes Commission’s list because they were able to conclude that not every person on the list is directly culpable for war crimes and that each person’s history is unique. McBride added that historians have a greater ethical responsibility when publishing, since historical research does not have to go through the UCLA Institutional Review Board.

“Our goal is not to find people’s names out and shame them or put them on the internet,” he said. “As a scholar, we don’t write anonymized histories.”

Student B, who also participated in the research cohort and was granted anonymity because of fear of retaliation from political groups, said uncovering this postwar history has revealed the number of alleged war criminals who were able to seek refuge in both the U.S. and Canada after World War II without facing persecution or denaturalization. Bringing light to this history helps countries “face the past,” they said.

Student A also said it is the responsibility of governments to admit past mistakes and bring transparency to devastating historical events.

“Releasing these names is part of bringing justice to the six million people who were killed during the Holocaust,” they said.