Participants in the forum are surely aware of the constant barrage of anti-Latvian propaganda flowing out of Moscow, and of its essential contents. One aspect puzzles me, and perhaps this list’s historians can clarify it.

A standard feature of the screed is the claim that Latvians jumped at the chance to participate in the Holocaust, and in this connection the Pērkonkrustieši and the Aizsargi are always mentioned (although not necessarily with correct spelling). What puzzles me is the role ascribed to the Aizsargi.

If I have the history right—and please correct me if I don’t—this paramilitary organization, founded in 1919, was regarded by the Soviets (no doubt correctly) as extremely hostile, and consequently was dissolved early in the first Soviet occupation (in 1940—I don’t have the exact date). Furthermore, in June of 1941 the senior officers of the Aizsargi received tickets for a train ride across scenic Russia to the resorts for which the USSR was so renowned.

When the Soviets were replaced by Nazi Germany, the Aizsargi had formally ceased to exist. The Selbstschutz units were organized in large part on the model of the Aizsargi, and a fairly large proportion of its members seem to have been former Aizsargi; but the Selbstschutz was essentially different. It was a temporary expedient that served two purposes: to assist the Nazis in the task of rapidly killing Jews in the Latvian countryside, and to help establish the appearance that the Jews were murdered by Latvians acting on their own initiative (that is, to conceal the fact that the Nazis were behind the whole thing, and that Jews were killed only when Germans organized it). The Germans were certainly not at this time going to tolerate a patriotic Latvian organization of any sort organized at the national level, let alone a paramilitary one. The Selbstschutz were issued only an armband. They would have had to wear civilian clothes or to use whatever military, paramilitary, or police uniforms they had; if the latter, to outsiders they might well have looked like members of a revived Aizsargi or whatever the uniform suggested. Where the Germans had the personnel to do the job themselves, the Selbstschutz was not very active; where the Germans were short-handed, the Selbstschutz arrested and held Jews, awaiting the arrival of extermination squads; and where the extermination squads were overworked or busy elsewhere, the Selbstschutz were ordered to do the killing themselves; so the tasks to which they were put varied locally. After six or eight weeks, the Selbstschutz was ordered to stand down, because the rural Jews were almost all dead already. Selbstschutz units were organized all over Ostland, so there is nothing particularly Latvian about them.

Some time in the autumn of 1943, the Germans, now sorely pressed in the war, informally permitted the Aizsargi to reorganize; in June of 1944, this concession was confirmed by written orders and around 13,000 men were mobilized as Aizsargi.

My question is, who the devil were the Aizsargi who supposedly participated in the Holocaust? The original corps had been disbanded and its leadership eliminated by the Soviets; it did not exist, and could hardly have revived without higher-level leadership, certainly not in the short time required for them to be going around murdering people in 1941; nor would the Germans have permitted such a revival in those heady days when everything seemed to be going their way. Is it that the Selbstschutz are being called “Aizsargi”? If not, who are the alleged “Aizsargi” supposed to be? Should we regard the claim is mere nonsense?

By 1944, the Latvian Jews were gone, and the Holocaust in Latvia consisted mostly of killing prisoners brought in from Germany and elsewhere. Other that serving as guards in concentration camps, how could Latvians have participated? In any case, by that late date the Germans needed all the men they could get at the front; the Legion was engaged in straight military service, not in chasing Jews, and I would expect that the same would be true of the revived Aizsargi, although I have been unable to find any information about them.

So when the Russian publicists and their dupes assert that the Aizsargi participated importantly in the (pre-Rumbula) Holocaust, I don’t know whom they have in mind. Can someone clarify this?

Stephen

Here’s an account i found on http://www.siets.lv:

http://www.vip.lv/LPRA/robezsardzes_vestures.htm

pete

try http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/ezergail/neighborsdidntkilljew.pdf

Stephen et al.,

“By 1944, the Latvian Jews were gone, and the Holocaust in Latvia consisted mostly of killing prisoners brought in from Germany and elsewhere”.

Where did you get the information “... mostly of killing prisoners brought in from Germany and elsewhere”. ?

I have been searching for that information with little success.

Visu labu,
Bruno the Lett

Well Bruno, it may be Jaekeln himself
who provided that information.
Maybe not…............

This is probably redundant, but
check it out anyway.

http://vip.latnet.lv/lpra/EZERG_intr.html

pete

ps. I have a question about Arajs trial.
I mean, is there a transcript available?
Anyone ?

The original post omitted one group of former “Aizsargi.”  After the Germans attacked the Russians, former “aizsargi” banded together to protect lives and property, and to prevent the brutalizing by fleeing Russian soldiers of local Latvians.  Some of them also arrested local Communists to keep them from fleeing.

My uncle was one of thos “aizsargi”.  His troop patrolled the Limbaži region to prevent retreating Russians from blowing up bridges.  He saw no combat, did not persecute any Jews, but in 1944, when the Russians returned, he was deported to Siberia for “anti-Soviet activities.”

Labrīt!

You pretty much answer your own questions, Stephen…

To Ezergailis, it’s a question of how the Selbstschutz was organized (his usual focus being on the Germans giving the orders and doing the organizing).

What the Selbstschutz did varied by locality. An extract from Ezergailis’ “Pašaizsardzību komandantūru loma holokaustā”:

Pašaizsardzību organizēšanās procesā bija viens maldinošš faktors, kas vēl
joprojām rada neziņu vēsturnieku prātos. Pašaizsardzības bija organizētas, it kā
uz Latvijas laika Aizsargu pamata.

Ar to es negribu teikt, ka neviens aizsargs neiestājās “pašaizsardzībās”
brīvprātīgi, bet tanī pašā reizē ir dokumenti, kas norāda, ka Aizsargiem bija
pavēlēts sapulcēties un organizēties, t.i., pirmās vācu okupācijas stundās vācu
militārie un soda orgāni Latvijā ieviesa sava veida iesaukšanu.

Starp visiem kara noziegumiem un noziegumiem pret cilvēci, pie tiem arī
jāpieskaita vācu plāns importēt savu vācisko atriebības ideoloģiju Baltijā un tās
pilnveidošanā organizēt pašaizsardzības, izdot pavēles aizsargiem un policijas
darbiniekiem pulcēties un organizēties, tā viņus iesaistot savā plānā slepkavot
Baltijas žīdus.

Ebreju šaušanas Latvijas lauku pilsētās bija organizētas vairākos veidos. Bija
apriņķi, kā piemēram Jelgavas, Tukuma, Valmieras un Madonas, kuros blakus
pašaizsardzību grupām bija noorganizētas SD vienības, pašaizsardzību
piedalīšanās žīdu apšaušanā bija minimālas, varbūt šaušanas dienā tikai apsargāt
pilsētas tiltus, ielas un pieejas ceļus. Citos apriņķos pašaizsardzības vienības
arestēja ebrejus un apsargāja apcietinājuma vietas. Tad atbrauca kāda vācu vai
latviešu SD vienība un izveda šaušanu. Vēl citos apriņķos, kā, piemēram, Ilūkstē,
visus priekšdarbus un šaušanu veica apriņķu pašaizsardzības. Pretēji bieži
dzirdētiem izteikumiem, pat Ilūkstes apriņķī šaušanu neizveda “vietējie” pilsētu
pašaizsardzībnieki. Ilūkstē apriņķa komandants Oskars Baltmanis noorganizēja
divdesmit vīru šāvēju grupu, kas apbraukāja apriņķa pilsētas.

http://www.briviba.lv/Okupacija/okup-200-207mg.pdf

But see this paper on the diary of Šeina Grama and the massacre at Preiļi:

Meitene aprakstīja, kā viņu dzīvoklī atnāca pašaizsardzības vīri, lai apskatītu tā piemērotību dzīvošanai viņu priekšniekiem. Tie, kas izpildīja pavēles, vairs neuzskatīja ebrejus par līdzvērtīgiem cilvēkiem. Nacistu palīgi ar cinismu uztvēra notiekošo kā pašu par sevi saprotamu un likumīgu rīcību. Šeina brīnījās par to, ka viņu kaimiņi tagad izturas tā, itin kā viņu jau nebūtu. Daudzi šāvēji gāja pa ebreju mājām, konfiscējot mantas, ar cinisku atrunu, ka to īpašniekiem drīz nekas vairs nebūšot vajadzīgs. Šo faktu apstiprināja arī paši šāvēji un holokaustā izdzīvojušie Preiļu ebreji pēckara prāvās.

{...}

8. augustā Preiļu policijas iecirkni apmeklēja kāds vācu virsnieks, droši vien lai pārliecinātos, ka pašaizsardzības vīri ir gatavi arī turpmāk pildīt savu noziedzīgo darbu. Šeina šajā dienā rakstīja: “Šodien policijas priekšnieks ir sliktā omā. Ārā līst”. Tie ir viņas pēdējie ieraksti. Tālāk par viņas likteni vēstī vēsturiskie dokumenti un atmiņas.

9. augusta rītā Preiļu policijas priekšnieks nostādināja visus pašaizsardzības vīrus tirgus laukumā, kuram blakus dzīvoja arī Gramu ģimene. Upuri varēja noskatīties uz saviem slepkavām caur māju logiem… Pieteicās brīvprātīgie “šāvēji”. No Līvāniem tika atsūtīti papildu spēki — Līvānu pašaizsardzības dalībnieki. Atkal ebreji tiek arestēti un ieslodzīti sinagogā. Šoreiz jaunas bedres pļavā iepretim ebreju kapiem raka zemnieki, pašaizsardzībnieku šauteņu apdraudēti. Sabiedrība bija sadalījusies pretējās pusēs: vieni sadarbojās ar nacistu režīmu, citi bija spiesti tam pakļauties. Taču tajā pašā laikā Preiļu iedzīvotājs Stanislavs Vuškāns par spīti dzīvības briesmām slēpa 8 ebrejus, starp kuriem bija arī 2 bērni. Katrs bija izdarījis savu morālo izvēli.

http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/16okt_grama.htm

Where units from outside an area were used, it might have been more difficult for people to determine who did what. But where locals were involved, people would know who’d been a former aizsargs—in the countryside and in a small town like Preiļi (pop. 1662, 847 of them Jewish), everybody knows everybody.

I find some of Ezergailis’ more recent writings somewhat strained sometimes—he has an intense distrust of eyewitness accounts and uses phrases like “es negribu teikt, ka neviens aizsargs neiestājās ‘pašaizsardzībās’ brīvprātīgi”; in Latvju enciklopēdija (1950-1951), it’s noted that many aizsargi “pārgāja partizānos un dib. pašaizsardzības pulciņus”—banned as an organization by the Germans, they were included in the “C” group of police. The degree of coercion or volunatrism is what Ezergailis most often questions. In the paper on Preiļi, though, I don’t detect a particular distaste for the job among the men of the Selbstschutz...

{...}

Regarding Jews brought in from Germany and elsewhere—according to Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler, as many as 28 000 foreign Jews were deported to Rīga. According to the Arbeitsamt, 11 000 of these reached the Rīga ghetto.

Some died in transit or ended up in Salaspils or Jumpravmuiža—some 11 000 to 12 000 were murdered at Biķernieki (1941-1944) along with thousands of others.

See Marģers Vestermanis—

http://vip.latnet.lv/lpra/vesterm_bikern.htm

Scheffler, in German—

http://www.volksbund.de/schon_gelesen/spektrum/riga/deportation.asp

Vysu lobu,
/P

Pete and Courlander, thanks for your replies. They appear to confirm my understanding that there was no longer an organization “Aizsargi”—I’ll say a few more words about this in half a minute.

Bruno, have a look at http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035//Riga.html
The Holocaust continued in Latvia until the Germans pulled out. I don’t know when the last German Jews were transported to Kaiserwald, but some were left in 1944 and they continued to die. There is still a lot of work to be done before we have a full and reliable account.

Seski, thanks for your input. Certainly there were men who had been members of the Aizsargi before they were disbanded by the Soviets. My understanding is that when the Soviets hastily fled from the German advance, local leadership emerged to organize, at the local level, a force to protect against looting by the retreating Reds and to maintain order. The leadership at this level naturally devolved on those who had been in the military or police or Aizsargi, and it was natural for former Aizsargi to join together for this purpose.

But there was no opportunity to reorganize the Aizsargi, or any other structured group, on any higher level; that was the last thing the Germans wanted, and wherever there was an armed group eager to join in the fight against the Soviet oppressor, the Germans responded to their offers by disarming and dispersing them. Only organizations brought into being by the Germans and controlled by them were tolerable.

True, the Germans put out recruiting appeals to the same former military, police, and Aizsargi men based on patriotic slogans, but this was simply a deception to attract people to the Selbstschutz or the Schutzmannschaft. The Latvians wanted to fight the USSR; the Germans, at that time confident in their ability to win the war, wanted the Latvians to help them to kill Jews.

Some former Aizsargi did participate in the Holocaust and most did not; but the Nazi-&-KGB-inspired account consistently refers to Pērkonkrustieši and Aizsargi as though they were powerful standing organizations that *as disciplined groups* pitched in to help the Nazis produce dead Jews.

The Pērkonkrustieši did so briefly, mostly by producing anti-Semitic pamphlets, but soon enough the incompatibility between Latvian and German nationalism caused the Nazis to outlaw them (they never met a government that they liked, and the feeling was mutual). In any case, they were a small, weak, marginal party that could not possibly have played the role assigned them by pseudohistory.

Unlike the Pērkonkrustieši, the Aizsargi did not even exist as an organization; whatever purely local structure may have emerged with the Soviet departure vanished with the coming of the Germans days or even hours later.

The Soviets had tagged the Aizsargi as implacably hostile long before 1940; G. Meiksiņš, the purveyor of Soviet propaganda to the English-speaking West, referred to them as “an equivalent of the Nazi SS” in his wretched book of 1943—an absurdity, but how many of his readers knew that? While the idea that Latvians and others rushed out to massacre Jews between the departure of the Reds and the arrival of the Nazis in 1941 was an invention of Hitler, it seems to me that the role ascribed to the Pērkonkrustieši and Aizsargi must be an invention of the Cheka.

Thanks to those who have replied so far; I welcome any further input.

Stephen

Peteri, your message and my reply to Pete, Courlander & Seskis crossed paths. As usual, you are right there with good information and good judgement.

I think that the answer is emerging—some of the Holocaust collaborators were known to have been former Aizsargi, and that’s all that was needed to turn the then-inexistent corps into a collaborationist organization. I presume that the transformation originated in the propaganda mills of you know who.

Yes, AE has little use for the eyewitnesses. In Press’s case, I’m inclined to agree: he writes iike a deranged person, and says things that he must know are not true—such as his claim in the updated editions to the effect that from 1991 the law restricted citizenship to ethnic Latvians, when he himself would have been eligible and must have known it. But the on-line source I recommended to Seskis looks pretty solid to me, with no irrational hatred of anyone (BP seems to have an irrational hatred of Latvians based on the conviction that Latvians have an irrational hatred of Jews). When it speaks of “Latvian SS” long before the Legion was organized, one has to understand that probably the Schutzmannschaft is meant, but there is no problem making allowance for inexact terminology that shows no sign of being designed to deceive the reader.

Thanks again; I think my question is adequately answered.

Stephen

Correct presumption—because “bourgeois Latvia” was anathema and all nationalism was suspect. Being an innocuous and possibly apolitical Boy Scout was basically just as bad as being a degenerate storm trooper with all the inherent humanitarianism of Hannibal Lecter. 

However, I have my doubts about how innocent, not to mention angelic, Latvians were…

Vysu lobu,
/P

There is no point in trying to maintain that all Latvians were innocent. Clearly there was active, voluntary participation in atrocities by several thousand and participation at some level by many more. This was the case all over Nazi-occupied Europe, so why should Latvia be an exception? The Ostland differed from the rest of the Nazi empire, I think, only in that Hitler shipped Jews et al. from western Europe to Ostland for extermination, rather than having them killed in their home countries. Otherwise, occupied France or the Netherlands would be comparable—a number of local police eager to win favor by enthusiastically hunting people to turn over to the Nazis, yes, they had that. If the Nazis had wanted blue-bus commandos there, they would have had that too.

Some of the guilty had been Aizsargi, but to depict the “Aizsargi and Pērkonkrustieši” as representing a whole nation engaging in the Holocaust—which is what this urban legend is about—is to deceive the ignorant: the Aizsargi did not at that time exist as a disciplined organization, and the Pērkonkrustieši were a small group of extremists who turned out a few rabid pamphlets for the Nazis before the essential incompatibility between Latvian nationalism, including Latvian nationalism in the nutty anti-Semitic version espoused by Celmiņš & companions, and Nazi master-race ideology brought the brief honeymoon to an end. That gap could not be bridged by all the anti-Semitism in the world.

But to the average Anglo, it sounds like a revelation that, say, in the USA the Republican Party and the National Guard were major forces in lynching blacks. And it seems that there is no shortage of people who accept it and defend it against any effort to set them straight.

I think it’s the syndrome that afflicts many lower-division college students: the first ideology that they encounter that offers some explanation of the world and everything looks so convincing that they become evangelists for it, sometimes for years (or in the worst cases for the rest of their lives) before seeing that it doesn’t really have a monopoly on accounting for everything. So we encounter these people whose first information about the subject is misinformation, but who refuse to listen to mere facts that get in the way of their unwavering faith in an account that has no historical validity. It’s part of being “sophomoric.”

Stephen

I never bought the “first legend,” Stephen, but I haven’t bought a legend since, either… and I do think there are some points of, er, concern, that get short shrift. Latvia is not like most of Europe in that a higher percentage of Jews was killed here than almost anywhere—almost all of Latvia’s Jews were snuffed. Locals were involved. The degree to which they were involved is in dispute, but most of the people who participate in this forum come from the “trimda” in one way or another, and have never been able to face that fact—most dislike looking at the Holocaust at all. Even our President has spoken of this off the cuff, saying how suspect what people said in the d.p. camps was—the Latvians are such good people, couldn’t ever have killed anybody… and yet somebody often suspected that so-and-so did indeed do some snuffing.

Getting to the precisions is very important, and Ezergailis has done more than anybody to do so. We can all chant “had Latvia not been occupied, the Holocaust would never have happened here.” It’s a true statement, of course. However, Latvia was occupied. It’s not the, um, most philosemitic place on earth even now, though it’s practically Judenfrei. It wasn’t especially philosemitic even prior to the occupation, though, was it? Pērkoņkrusts, whilst small, as you say, was not exactly marginal—Šilde, its head, was a darling of the “trimda.” It didn’t consist of boors—it was a major movement among students and intellectuals.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Stephen et al.,

“Bruno, have a look at http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035//Riga.html
The Holocaust continued in Latvia until the Germans pulled out. I don’t know when the last German Jews were transported to Kaiserwald, but some were left in 1944 and they continued to die. There is still a lot of work to be done before we have a full and reliable account. “

I did take a look at the reference.  And in these cases to raise doubt ,because of the gravity of the claims, only one error has to be pointed out.  In this case it is that somebody from the train saw “100 latvian SS men with bayonets”.  Well, in 1941 there were no latvian SS men with or without bajonets.  The claim of jews from “other countries” is questionable too.  The jews that arrived in late 1941 were “germanic jews from Grosdeutchland” and from nowhere else. They arrived on passenger trains with their household goods following them on baggage trains later. They arrived about two weeks after the latvian jews were marched into the woods and shot.  There is no doubt in my mind that the exterminating of the latvian jews from Riga was coordinated with the arrival of the “germanic jews” a few weeks later.  Sort of a preamble to the arrival of the “Echt Deutche” and what is in store for the the latvian people.

Visu labu,

Peteri, I don’t think I have any objection to anything you wrote here. Latvia and Lithuania lost around 90% of their Jewish population, higher than any other countries. Poland is close, with about 85%. And in Poland there was the Kielce Pogrom. About 200 Jewish survivors had returned to Kielce, and on 4 July 1946 there was a pogrom in which thirty-eight or thirty-nine of them (I don’t recall the exact number) and two ethnic Poles were killed, and eighty some were injured. This was well over a year after the war ended, and there had been ample coverage of the Holocaust in the news during that time.

A little more surprising is that Czechoslovakia and Greece, not noted for collaborators, lost around 82.5.% and 80% respectively of their Jews. The countries with the best records were Denmark and Bulgaria, both of which were able to save most of of their Jewish populations.

But I doubt that even if the Latvians and Lithuanians had stood up to defend the Jews as well as the Danes did the results would have been anything like those the Danes accomplished. Hitler hoped to use Denmark as a showcase; after all, the Danes were thoroughly Germanic. The Nuremberg Laws were never enforced in Denmark, and when the Nazis decided that they had to get rid of the Jews there was a plan in place the depended on the easy access of Danish fishermen to Sweden. The Danes then proceeded to bug the Nazis mercilessly about the well-being of the Jews who had been sent to Terezin, and in the end the Nazis sent most of them back just to get the Danes off their backs. All of this depended on conditions that simply did not exist in the Ostland. I agree with Vestermanis: the Holocaust in the Baltic could have been slowed down, but not prevented to any great extent.

I think the high percentage of Jews killed also was in part a result of the attitude expressed by Stahlecker as Hitler’s decree—the Jews of Ostland were Bolsheviks and could not be allowed to survive as laborers, which was permissible with the bourgeois Jews of Western Europe. And as Bruno points out they had to make room for Jews shipped in from abroad, which is another aspect—Poland and Ostland were where most of the death camps were located, so the final solution was logisitically easier to apply there. Local collaborators were no doubt an important factor in the overall process, but I doubt that the number of survivors would have been enormously larger without them.

We are at last getting the history done properly. You are quite right that the trimdies avoided the topic, and the Soviets never did any serious history either, just put their own spin on it and created a simulacrum of history. Now the job is being done, and I expect the next generation will have a solid account. In the end we should get a better estimate of the number of active participants, and the identities of a substantial number. it’s overdue, but at last it is happening.

Bruno, I noticed that too. Either what Katz saw were men from a Schutzmannschaft battalion erroneously called SS, or they were not Latvians. The German Jews, it seems to me, might not have had a complete understanding of the Nazi organizational structures in the Ostland. Whether Jews from elsewhere in the West were sent along with those from Germany I simply don’t know; obviously most were from Germany. I expect that after the Anschluss Austria Jews would have been treated much the same as German, but German Jews may still have thought of them as “foreign.”

Stephen

Belatedly I am pleased to find out that on www there is a serious discussion of Holocaust issues and also that my name occasionally had been invoked to bolster an argument.
I can agree with almost everything that has been said and have little to add. I think Cedrins is living under the mistaken belief that anti-Semitism, even of the most virulent kind, had much to do with the Holocaust. The internationalization of the Holocaust bagan in the 1930s and it was the Nazis who started it. From 1933 they began to proclaim that the whole world hates the Jews as do the Germans, with the difference that the Germans were less hypocritical. From that aspect, the St. Louis cruise-ship episode helped them to promote the idea.. But back to the basic point: if anti-Semitism had been the basic cause for the Holocaust then by the 20th Century there would not have been any Jews to kill. In other words the causes of the Holocaust must be seen from a different angle than the one that the Nazis wanted you to see it.

It is a fact that since the fall of Rome, Jews had coexisted with the anti-Semitism. When Hitler came round some the Jew suffered from over confidence, thinking that the Nazis was just another wave to suffer through. While in Germany since the 1920s there were a million sign that pre-shadowed the Holocaust, there was nothing like it coming out of Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism notwithstanding.

The hot polemical issue about the Holocaust in Latvia is not about the Latvian role in it. More Latvians have been punished for killing Jews than have the Germans.  If Latvian historians do no exaggerate the Latvian participation, they do not minimize it. The dispute is about German role. More people in this world believes that the Holocaust in Latvia was Germanless rather than the opposite See my article “Six versions about the Holocaust in Latvia”.  Published in one of the latest Historians’ Commissions volumes. Also consult my webpage to read the review of Angrick/ Klein’s book
http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/ezergail/

To assess the Aizsargi role in the killing of the Jews it is correct to pursue the thread through the Self-Defense organizations as some of you did in the discussion. Whatever, it would be historically incorrect to put an = sign between the Aizsargi and the Self-Defense. That would be part of the Holocaust folklore.

The Arajs trial was taped but the tape was destroyed. However there was a Latvian journalist, Stammers, who lived in Hamburg, without missing a day of the trial, made a detailed, perhaps even stenographic, record of it. He wanted to publish it as a book, but Gramatu draugs would not touch it. The manuscript is floating around and if anybody wants to transfer it to a computer, it can be had.  It is about 300-400 pages long and it is not clear enough for scanning. It is in Latvian and would need to be typed and every word in it is not legible.

ezergailis

Kaifs Jūs te sastapt, Andriev Ezergaili! I can’t and won’t dispute what you are saying—makes sense to me. In the intro to your chef d’oeuvre, though, you count the “four dozen journalists who wrote, edited, and published Nazi propaganda about the Jews” among the several hundred to a thousand Letts who’d be criminally guilty according to Western criteria. In your paper on collaboration offered and rejected, you discuss the zeal with which Pērkoņkrusts would have collaborated—something that didn’t really happen because the Germans didn’t want or need Latvian collaborators. Stranga, in his study of the Jews under the Baltic dictatorships, quotes Celmiņš basically advocating the extermination of the Jews, I believe whilst in Finland (unfortunately, my copy of Stranga’s book is with a friend at the moment, so I can’t point to the passage).

Here you are saying that anti-Semitism, even of the most virulent kind, did not have much to do with the Holocaust. In view of the Germans’ direction of the slaughter, this is true. This is also true in terms of the type of anti-Semitism the Nazis developed. Still, a question—is it really such a giant leap from one type of virulent anti-Semitism to another? Not a few Latvian polemicists seem to have had little trouble making the leap—and that doesn’t surprise me, not after reading local newspapers from the early 1930s. I suppose I am seeing it like this—the direct causes and the mechanics of the Holocaust are one thing, the background and soil another, but they are intertwined at some level; dehumanization may not lead you to murder until Fritz arrives to organize it and direct your hand… but years of seeing the other as an alien subhuman must have something to do with how your hand moves and how you see what is happening. Or not?

Then there’s how we look back upon it, which isn’t the historians’ fault—as you note, most Latvian historians do not minimize Latvian participation. Nonetheless, some Latvian historiography not only doesn’t exaggerate the Letts’ rôle—it focuses awkwardly upon absolving Latvians of all culpability and constantly invokes “the other side”; e.g., in exploding the Soviet myths about Salaspils, dragging in the horrors of the Soviet camps returns us obliquely to ye olde “well, the Jews were Bolsheviks, and so…” or “my holocaust was bigger than yours was,” etc. Here my problem is with folkloric polemics, with myth-making and not history—not your responsibility, obviously. Hobsbawm: “Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.” 

The same site that offers your intro online still provides us with Baigais gads—amusingly enough with the text referring to the diabolical Jews blanked out. The Occupation Museum (by the way—can’t they get an intern to key in Stammers’ text?) still devotes a comparatively small amount of space to the Nazis—this is understandable because there must be a million times the amount of information about the Holocaust than there is about Soviet crimes (though there was scant study of the Holocaust in Latvia until you came along)... but it does distort the story of our country; personally, I feel a twinge of embarrassment when the Swedes have to provide us with Holocaust education (though the Swedes’ notorious double standards mollify it a bit).

To sum up, I’m not challenging your history, which I’ve appreciated profoundly since I was a child in the trimda and most everybody around me was aghast at a Latvian daring to poke about in the most taboo area of our past—I’m not a historian and can’t. I do have a lot of questions, though—after reading the article on Šeina Grama, for instance (link above; I haven’t read the actual diary, unfortunately), how can you write a piece entitled “Neighbors didn’t kill neighbors”? I realize that Soviet accounts need to be treated with care, that eyewitnesses’ accounts need to be analyzed, etc.—but I’m still not convinced that the title of your article holds up. Even though the killing was directed by the Germans—there were local accessories, were there not?

Ar cieņu,
/P