Vilis HāznersDOJ INS Post-Trial Brief—Annotated

Guilt by association. This entire storyline purports that the Latvians had some other option against their Nazi occupier than their prior Soviet occupier — who only a week before the Nazi's arrival had ripped families from their homes in the early hours of the morning and deported them to Siberia in cattle cars. Cooperation against the previous brutal occupier and centuries-long oppressing power in hopes of attaining freedom from both, as only a generation earlier, does not imply any other cooperation or support.

The government's own witnesses confirmed that the Holocaust largely took place out of public view. The ghetto was on the "wrong side of the tracks" in what counted as a Rīga suburb despite what would be considered a very close distance today—and the entrance gates to the "Latvian" and "German" sections of the ghetto were not publicly accessible or visible. (See diagram and map.) Neither Veiss nor Hāzners nor the Latvian witnesses for the defense had contact with or reason to deal with Hitler's Holocaust collaborators.

The INS contends the witnesses for Hāzners are all criminals, therefore, "predictably," they deny everything.

As the judicial review and denial of Alan A. Ryan, Jr.'s motion to appeal indicates, there are conflicts in the INS's witnesses' testimonies as well. The INS denounces honesty in testimony, that is, not being certain in some cases of exact details after more than three decades, as liars caught in their lies. Meanwhile, the INS touts the monolithic Soviet émigré origin and certainty of the witnesses against Hāzners as indicators of verity. Only Latvians aware of KGB fabricationsd would have noticed that the INS placed an entire collection of anti-émigré Hāzners-heavy Soviet propaganda publications into evidence via one witness, and introduced the fiction of a post-German invasion autonomous Latvian "Self-Government" led by Oskars Dankers via the testimony of another.

The INS contends that any Latvian denial of guilt is proof of guilt and a conspiracy to cover it up. That Hāzners and his witnesses knew no details of the SS's execution of the Holocaust in their homeland speaks to their innocence, not complicity.

The government's case against Hāzners presented witnesses who believed they saw "a Hāzners" commit the crimes they describe, but not one iota of Hāzners military records from German Nazi investigators or archives. And the INS said absolutely nothing about Veiss' unit other than guilt by association. Even more damning, the INS quoted Soviet propaganda as history, misconstrued Nuremberg trial transcripts, and even lied about the content of a German report, contending the record confirmed the propagandist "Germanless Holocaust," that is, Latvians run amok murdering Jews before Hitler's SS exterminators arrived.

Meanwhile, an American expert familiar with Hāzners's German military records and the investigation confirmed that:

1. Veiss' unit had nothing to do with the Rīga police ("Prefecture") or with Arājs Kommando et al.1;
2. the Annas street headquarters where Veiss was based had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust; and, most importantly,
3. Hāzners's record was blameless.

But the INS already knew this.

Moreover, we can say so with absolute certainty. The INS contacted German authorities on October 13, 1978, for the service records of Latvian witnesses for the defense—we expect to try to dig up dirt to discredit them, per this cable, which listed each along with their personal information and indicated that records should exist, similar to those of Hazners. The INS would only know what Hazners' records looked like if they possessed them, and so would be intimately familiar with their content.

SUBJECT: JUDICIAL ASSISTANCE, WAR CRIMES INVESTIGATIONS

THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (INS) HAS REQUESTED THAT THE U.S. MISSION BERLIN HAVE THESE NAMES CHECKED AGAINST THE FILES IN THE BERLIN DOCUMENT CENTER. ALL WERE BORN IN LATVIA BEFORE 1925. MOST WERE OFFICERS IN LATVIAN SS LEGION AND SHOULD HAVE FILES SIMILAR TO THAT OF VILIS HAZNERS. PLEASE FORWARD COPIES OF DOCUMENTS DIRECTLY TO AMEMBASSY STOCKHOLM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, BUT DEFINITELY BEFORE OCTOBER 23.
EMILS DELINS, ...
VOLDEMARS MALINS, ...
J.M. MEIERS, ...
VALENTINE SIRANTS, ...
VERNERS VOITKUS, ...
ALEKSANDRS PLENSNERS, ...
PETERIS JANELSINS, ...
KARLIS LOBE, ...
VANCE

We should also note that "Latvian SS Legion" was never used to describe the Latvian Waffen-SS units. In German, they were the Waffen-SS, in Latvian, the Latvian Legion, Latviešu Leģions.

The INS proved nothing. Indeed, if there was a conspiracy, it was the INS's, one of enforced ignorance and omission.

The INS invoked the testimonies of a homogeneous bloc of recent Soviet émigrés to Israel, all found and prepared for trial by the same Israeli investigator, all of whom were told that investigators were looking for witnesses against Arājs Kommando, none of whom had ever known Hāzners before he was identified to them, to all of whom Hāzners pictures were introduced as those of a Holocaust perpetrator and in confirmation of the Soviet propaganda broadcast yearly, for at least a decade and a half2, on the anniversary of the "liberation" of Latvia denouncing Hāzners—which all of the witnesses would have experienced.

Moreover, the only means by which the INS could purport their witnesses' identification of Hāzners was valid was to completely ignore Hāzners's files and, instead, fantasize convoluted and unsubstantiated scenarios to explain how Hāzners could have been present where and when alleged.

Per released cables, the INS found seventeen witnesses against Hāzners to fly in from Israel, plus asked the Soviets to find one more. Yet only a fraction of those were called to the stand, and even fewer cited in its post-trial brief. We can only surmise that, at some level, the INS was fully aware of the inherent weakness of its fabricated case.

This, the last of the INS's contentions, is the most cynical and self-serving of all, as in this very brief the INS reminded the "court" that it "is not bound by the rigid formality of the rules of evidence."