Any of you that have visited LATVIANS.COM have likely run across “These Names Accuse"--which marked the beginning of our reproducing reference works. One part we’re still working on is finally reproducing the pages of names.

Accordingly, we often get requests to look up information in the book. Having run across the book “Aizvestie” in Riga in December, I did some looking, and following links at the Latvian State Archive web site on the exhibit and book, one arrives at:

Personu meklēšana LVA datu bāze

In case you misplace the link, you can also look for it under the “These Names Accuse” page on its new home (prior copy still on LATVIANS.COM) at LOBH.ORG ("Library of Baltic Heritage"). I tried to depersonalize the introduction there, but, in the end, wound up noting it could not be anything other than a personal introduction…

One note about that DB from past experience. It does require Latvian fonts and diacrticals.

Andrejs

I have tried putting in searches without diacritics and they seem to work.

That’s interesting. Maybe I just have the wrong settings on my fonts but when I type in Kalnins I get no hits. If I type in Kalniņš I do. I tried it with a few other names which use diacriticals and got the same results.
Don’t mean this to be a criticism of the webpage. Just pointing out if someone doesn’t get hits to make sure that they don’t give up and try it again with diacriticals.

Andrejs

May I have a question?
I wonder which topic is mentioned/commemorated more times in Latvian medias (TV, radio, documentaries): Jewish holocaust or the Communist terror?

Just because in my country media is like if communist terror would have never ever existed.

To Andrejs—The database seems spotty… Kalnins doesn’t find Kalniņš, but Kulle finds Ķulle. Go figure! So, yes, if you don’t get results without the diacritics, you definitely need to try with.

To Kiskun—Sadly, every time the Latvians commemorate the Waffen (and they weren’t really SS, they were some lesser branch, Frei-something-corps?), American Jewish leadership (Efraim Zuroff comes to mind, just read another piece on his comments) blasts the Latvians for equating Soviet actions with Hitler’s Holocaust. Personally, every time that happens, reconciliation is set back a decade.  See Zuroff’s comments here

I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum. The cattle train wagon there that you walk through on your “journey” in the footsteps of the victims looks an awful lot like the one described by relatives on their way to Stalin’s Siberia. Unfortunately, Latvians are still called Nazis, you still have the myth of the Germanless Holocaust in the Baltics (Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians gleefully slaughtering Jews just on the news the Nazis were on their way)--with the undercurrent that Latvians who suffered under the Soviets got what they deserved,… it’s a sorry situation.

Actually, searching for kulle does indeed find Kulle, which is the second word in parentheses after Ķulle. To search for Kalniņš, if the machine does not support diacriticals, one possible workaround would be to do a google search for kalnins which will bring up a number of results showing kalnins and kalniņš. Then, highlight kalniņš, copy, and paste into the database searchbox.

Uhh, I hope nobody thinks it seriously that those Latvians who suffered under the Soviet era deserved it. Espacially because - at least over here - such persons were no-name persons who didn’t harm anyone in their lives.

Kiskun - 25 March 2008 07:05 AM

Uhh, I hope nobody thinks it seriously that those Latvians who suffered under the Soviet era deserved it. Espacially because - at least over here - such persons were no-name persons who didn’t harm anyone in their lives.

Alas, the Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Poles… are all still today painted as having inflicted the “Germanless” Holocaust, eagerly bludgeoning their Jewish neighbors to death just on the news the Nazis were on their way. A Nazi fabrication. And scholars simply quote the propaganda dispatches and German “eyewitnesses” “horrified” by the conduct of the locals. Only in the Baltics does one find tales of Nazi officers rescuing Jews from the locals. The more I research, the more depressed I get.