By Scott Taylor
There is a new exhibition set to open this week at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. It is entitled “The Latvian Tragedy 1941” and the promotional material defines it as a depiction of a very dark chapter in that nation’s history.
Stalin’s Soviet Union had occupied Latvia the year before and in June 1941, Hitler’s Nazi forces invaded. The Latvian people suffered terrible consequences at the hands of both of these brutal regimes.
This exhibition is billed as a joint venture between the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia and the Museum of Jews in Latvia. The Latvian historians that assembled the exhibits are quoted as stating they wish to emphasize their prime objective: “The Republic of Latvia, restored in 1991, condemns all perpetrators of crimes against humanity in the tragic year 1941 and the years that followed.”
If the Latvian authorities wish to condemn “all perpetrators’ of murderous crimes during World War Two, then that list will need to include many of their own homegrown Nazi sympathizers.
When Hitler’s forces rolled into Latvia in the summer of 1941 many locals greeted them as liberators. While many Latvian’s were indeed happy to be free of Stalin’s tyrannical occupation, others were rabid anti-Semites who whole-heartedly embraced Hitler’s policy of Jewish genocide.
One of the most prominent of these Latvian holocaust perpetrators was a policeman named Viktor Arajs. In June 1941, as the Soviet Army retreated and Hitler’s war machine approached the city of Riga, Arajs unleashed his ‘kommando’ on a pre-organized methodical round-up and extermination of Latvian Jews.
On 30 November in that same tragic year of 1941, the Arajs’ commando led an operation, which became known as the Rumbula Massacre. On another occasion the Arajs’ Latvian Kommando drove hundreds of Jews into the Riga Synagogue before setting the building on fire and incinerating the occupants.
Arajs did not shirk away from his murderous deeds as he boastfully self-described himself as ‘Arajs, the Latvian Jew killer.’ According to historian Andrew Ezergailis in his book ‘The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1945,’ Arajs would describe at dinner parties that his method for killing Jewish babies was to throw them in the air and shoot them. In this manner explained Arajs, the shooter was not put at risk of a ricochet.
Arajs’ adjutant in the Kommando was a prominent pre-war aviator named Herbert Cukurs. As a pilot, Cukurs had set aviation world records for solo distance flights, the most notable being non-stop trek from Riga to Tokyo.
However, it was in that tragic summer of 1941 that Cukurs earned his immortal infamy as a bloodthirsty Jew killer.
Cukurs’ legacy included the burning of the Synagogue, the drowning of 1200 Jews in a lake and the massacre at the Rumbula forest in which 10,600 Jews were killed. His war time moniker was the Hangman of Riga.
In 1943, as the fortunes of war were turning against Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich, it was decided by the Germans to create an SS Latvian Legion. While some members of the SS Legion were conscripted, the core of its membership was composed of Arajs Kommandos – including Viktor himself. While this unit did conduct combat operations against Soviet forces, their war record also includes the execution of mentally ill patients and fighting against fellow Latvian’s who were resisting Hitler’s occupation as partisans.
Arajs survived the war but was eventually captured and convicted of the murder of 13,000 Jews. He was sentenced by a German court to life in prison and died in captivity in 1988.
Cukurs also survived the war but was hunted down by Israel’s Mossad and executed for his Holocaust crimes in Uruguay in 1965.
As for the other members of the SS Latvian Legion, their memory is now honoured every March 16 with a parade through the streets of Riga. That’s right folks, Latvia is the only country in the world that brazenly commemorates perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Last year the Canadian government officially condemned these SS parades, but the Latvian government allow them to proceed under the proviso that the parade is an exercise of ‘free speech.’
Last September Latvia’s defence minister Artis Pabriks drew international scorn when he proclaimed the SS Legion to be ‘heroes.’
We presently have a Canadian Armed Forces battle group in Latvia to show solidarity with a NATO ally, and protect our ‘shared values.’
The last time I checked Canada did not glorify people who swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler, and those who helped perpetrate the Holocaust.
