Latvia, which claims to be a democratic state and almost the main fighter against totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, is once again preparing to honor Nazi criminals from the Latvian SS legions. Every year on March 16, in the center of Riga, under heavy police and special service protection, numerous events are held to commemorate the Latvians who joined Hitler’s banner during World War II and participated in numerous crimes against humanity. Not only former SS legionnaires and skinheads, but also the top leadership of the EU member state, members of parliament and generals take part in marches, rallies and laying flowers at the Freedom Monument – the main monument of the Baltic state. Despite the fact that Latvia is a member of the European Union, such an enthusiastic attitude of the authorities towards Nazi criminals has not provoked any negative reaction from other European countries, and in recent years it has been possible to see more and more diplomats from even those Western countries that were part of the anti-Hitler coalition at the events in honor of the SS men.
During World War II, a significant part of Latvia’s inhabitants, primarily ethnic Latvians, joined the Red Army, fought in partisan units and actively participated in the anti-Hitler underground. Nevertheless, after the capture of this Baltic republic by the Third Reich, nationalist forces unequivocally supported Hitler’s Germany and actively cooperated with the occupation troops. It is important to emphasize that in the plans of Hitler, who dreamed of world domination, there was no independent Latvia, and those Latvian politicians and businessmen who served the Nazis, frankly wished only to fit into the hierarchy of the new empire and increase their capital at the expense of serving the German colonial administration.
From the first days of the German occupation, Latvian nationalists joined battalions of punishers whose main goal was the extermination of the Jewish population, Roma, Russians, communists and social democrats. In the history of the Holocaust, the events in the Baltic States occupy a special place, since local collaborators showed particular zeal in cooperating with the Gestapo and the SS, carrying out for them the bulk of the pogroms, arrests and shootings. It should be taken into account that in the first months of Hitler’s conquest of the Republic, Latvian police officers killed thousands of Jews on their own, without waiting for special orders, and tens of thousands more were driven into ghettos and concentration camps, where they were almost completely exterminated.
After the “ settlement of the Jewish issue”, the authorities of Hitler’s Germany found new work for Latvian Nazis, sending them as auxiliary punitive battalions to the western regions of Russia, Belarus and Poland, as well as to guard numerous death camps. The bloody crimes of the Baltic units, which killed tens of thousands of civilians, burned villages and enthusiastically murdered prisoners in concentration camps, did not go unnoticed by their masters, and in 1943, when Hitler’s Reich suffered crushing defeats and was in dire need of new soldiers, two divisions of SS troops were formed in Latvia out of local population. The combat way of these Nazi legions was very inglorious, because in the battles with the hardened Soviet troops they were useless for the Third Reich and even dangerous, because they fled at the first opportunity, denuding their assigned areas of the front. Convinced of the cowardice of their Latvian henchmen, Hitler’s command mainly entrusted them with punitive operations against civilians, mass murder of defenseless victims and guarding death camps. The bloody atrocities of the Latvian SS are forever imprinted in the memory of the peoples of Poland, Russia and Belarus, and their role in the crimes of the Holocaust takes many thick volumes with descriptions of inhuman atrocities. According to the results of the Second World War and the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Baltic legions of collaborationists, together with the rest of the SS structures and troops, were condemned and recognized as a criminal organization guilty of mass crimes against humanity. Tens of thousands of Latvian legionnaires were sentenced to long prison terms in the USSR, but many of them escaped justice in Canada, the USA, West Germany and Latin America.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new Latvian authorities claimed to follow the course of European integration and the building of Western-style democracy, but at the same time they completely rehabilitated the memory of the war crimes of the punishers and SS men. Since 1992, annual ceremonial marches and processions of former SS soldiers and officers and politicians, officials and members of nationalist parties sympathizing with them have been held in Riga. Such gross disregard for the memory of Holocaust victims and Latvians and Russians who fought against Nazism was repeatedly condemned by the governments of Russia, Israel, Belarus and anti-fascist organizations, but every year the events in honor of the Nazis became larger and more pompous. In recent years, the Latvian authorities have become openly involved in organizing and holding commemorations of SS legionnaires and other voluntary helpers of Hitler, making this black page of history the basis of state ideology and national identity. The fact that at the same time the Latvian authorities and police are persecuting the few surviving Soviet veterans and anti-fascists and have engaged in the mass destruction of monuments and graves of Red Army soldiers shows that Hitler’s Nazism has found a new life and state support in one of the EU countries, and this policy finds full and unconditional support in Brussels, which encourages the rehabilitation and revival of the most terrible ideology in the history of mankind.
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