By Newell Durnbrooke
The photo shows two blonde-haired little children laying a wreath on a stone monument etched with the names of four Waffen SS veterans. A man in a uniform stands to the side holding a lite torch.
But the photograph was not taken in Berlin or Munich in 1941 at the height of the Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
It is a recent picture from an event at Seedrioru, a camp for Estonian-Canadian children and teens in Elora, near Toronto. The memorial, known as the Swords Monument, honours Estonia’s Waffen SS division. It features the crest of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. It also had etched on the steel portions of the monument the names of four Estonian Waffen SS soldiers: Harald Nugiseks, Alfons Rebane, Harald Riipalu and Paul Maitla.
The existence of the memorial, which had been built in the late 1970s, was revealed July 26, 2024 by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization that promotes education about the Holocaust.
All four men honoured on the Swords Monument were awarded the Knight’s Cross, the highest award given to military personnel during the Nazi period.
Harald Riipalu was also the commander of the 36th Police Battalion in Estonia that participated in the Aug. 7, 1942 massacre of almost all of the remaining Jews in the town of Nowogrodek in Belarus, according to the Friends of Simon Weisenthal Center (FSWC) .
Some Holocaust scholars have also uncovered evidence showing the Estonian SS division’s soldiers were involved in the executions of as many as 2,000 prisoners at the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia.
In addition, FSWC noted in its news release it had discovered at least 15 individuals listed on the camp’s website as honorary members of the Canadian Estonian community and who played “an integral part of the formation and sustainment of Seedrioru” have the same names as people with direct ties to the Waffen-SS.
“We are shocked and deeply disturbed to learn that for five decades, a summer camp right here in Ontario has been celebrating Nazi war criminals who were involved in the genocide against Estonia’s Jews as part of the Holocaust,” Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, FSWC Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy, said in the news release. “It’s sickening that for several generations, this camp has been indoctrinating children into worshipping Nazi Waffen-SS leaders, men who not only committed war crimes but also were among the enemies of Canada that our veterans fought so courageously, often sacrificing their lives, to defeat during the Second World War.”
“Our country fought bravely to defeat Hitler but sadly it also later provided sanctuary for those who served Hitler,” she added.
After it discovered the existence of the Swords Monument, Kirzner-Roberts’ group reached out to a member of the Estonian-Canadian community to start discussions with Seedrioru camp officials about reconciliation efforts.
But instead of reconciliation, the camp appeared to take a different route- disappearing the evidence. Shortly after that initial meeting, photos showing the monument were scrubbed from the Seedrioru website. Names of the four Waffen SS soldiers were also quickly removed from the website. In addition, workers grinded away the names of those same veterans that had been etched into the Swords Monument.
However, FSWC had already downloaded photos of the monument as well as screen shots of the names of the Nazi collaborators honoured by the Estonian-Canadians. That made it impossible for the Estonian-Canadian community to deny the existence of the memorial.
News of the camp monument and the concerns raised by FSWC prompted media coverage by a variety of news outlets.
Lia Hess, volunteer head of the board of directors for the Estonian Summer Camp Society Inc., told the Ottawa Citizen newspaper that, “The purpose of this monument is solely to remember our homeland and those that died in battles to defend Estonia’s freedom from 1941-1945.”
Hess rejected claims that children were honouring the Nazis or Waffen SS or were being indoctrinated. But Kirzner-Roberts pointed to the photos clearly showing kids laying wreaths at the monument etched with the names of the Waffen SS troops as well as the crest of the SS division.
In fact, one of the Waffen SS veterans whose name was on the Swords Monument had bragged about his support for Hitler and the Third Reich. In a 1993 interview published on a neo-Nazi website, Harald Nugiseks said he volunteered for the Waffen SS because he supported what Nazi Germany was doing.
Claims that Estonians or the SS soldiers were involved in any way with rounding up and executing Jews is nonsense, he noted. “What happened to most Jews was brought on by their actions,” Nugiseks said, adding that those who were murdered were enemies of Estonia.
After the initial flurry of articles in the news media the Estonian Central Council in Canada responded with a new claim – they suggested the Estonian-Canadian community was the victim of Russian “disinformation and lies.” The council also suggested the concerns raised by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center was Russian disinformation.
Neither Hess nor the Estonian Central Council in Canada responded to a request from the Ottawa Citizen to provide evidence the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center was working with the Russians or that the four men honoured on the monument were not members of the Waffen SS.
Kirzner-Roberts told the Ottawa Citizen the Estonian council’s claims about disinformation were ridiculous. “Instead of using this moment to reflect on its history of wrongdoing, this camp has chosen to deny incontrovertible facts, make lame excuses, and smear Jewish community advocates with absurd accusations,” she said in an email. “Not for a moment has the camp taken responsibility for its role in glorifying Nazi war criminals in the eyes of Ontario’s children over the course of many decades. Not once has the camp shown a desire to address the harm it has caused. Everything about the camp’s response to our research has made this story even more sad and disturbing.”
So what should be done now? Here is a simple solution to this controversy:
1) The Estonian Central Council in Canada and the Seedrioru camp should issue an apology to Canada’s Jewish community.
2) The Estonian Central Council in Canada and the Seedrioru camp should issue an apology to Canada’s war veterans and make a donation in their name to a proper charity. That would be an acknowledgement that it was wrong to honour Waffen SS veterans.
3) The Estonian Central Council in Canada should issue an apology for its ridiculous suggestion the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center was spreading Russian disinformation. This apology should clearly acknowledge the Holocaust was real and that Nazi collaborators existed in Estonia.
4) The Estonian Central Council in Canada and the Seedrioru camp should remove the existing Swords Monument and build a new monument to the brave Estonian-Canadian soldiers who fought with the Canadian military during the Second World War. It is time to honour these individuals instead of glorifying the Estonian SS.
(Opinion/Analysis)
