Time to call a halt...
Stop the 16 March marches and the twisting of history!
By Graeme Atkinson, anti-fascist journalist and internationalist
March 3, 2019
Annually since 1998, in the centre of Riga, on 16 March, processions have been held to honour veterans of 1the Latvian Legion of the murderous Nazi Waffen SS for 2fighting the Allies in WWII.
And, through the media of Latvian government materials and state propaganda film footage, the role of the Latvian Legion is still apologised for or excused while the far-right National Alliance{ — which sits in the Latvian government{ — is again loudly demanding that the date be enshrined as an official national memorial day.
Not new: these events have received tacit (and sometimes explicit and public) support from state authorities, including, in 2012, Latvia’s president himself and have been attended by members of the Latvian Parliament, members of the Riga City Council and officials of the Latvian defence ministry.
Documentary evidence of official complicity in 3Latvia’s Day of National Shame is copious but astonishingly the ghastly charade of 4memorialising the SS in Riga, a European capital at the heart of NATO and the EU, goes on, attended by increasing numbers and attracting right-wing extremists and Hitler fans from across Europe, including the UK.
Despite the mounting international input, the rest of Europe just looks on at this unwholesome performance that lauds 5the members of a proven criminal organisation. It is surely time that Latvia, the UK government, the European Union, NATO and the international community showed some self-respect and pressed for a halt to it.
Examination
Atkinson is former editor-in-chief of the British Communist Party newspaper Morning Star. He was dismissed when he withheld information he was approached by a Bulgarian agent in 1985 seeking information on a KGB defector1 on the grounds he thought his pro-Soviet paper would quash the story.
Atkinson lays all of Hitler's elite Waffen-SS's crimes against humanity on the heads of the Latvian Legion. The Waffen-SS, which began as Hitler's guard and grew to a size and power even the Wehrmacht feared, demanded 20:20 vision, perfect teeth, and documentation of pure Aryan heritage of its Nazi-party volunteer elite members.
Latvians were mostly illegally conscripted. The Wehrmacht sent them in to face the Red Army whenever a major Russian offensive was coming, while the Germans retreated. And in cases where the Germans didn't run away, Wehrmacht artillery would even remain silent rather than fire and have the enemy discover their position — leaving Latvians to be slaughtered by Russians, not infrequently in American-provided tanks.
The Red army could have easily bypassed Latvia in its drive to Berlin — as Soviet era historiography, to avoid the embarrassment of never capturing Courland, contends it did — but Stalin chose to attempt to eradicate it instead.
The crimes and actions of the German elite Waffen-SS have no connection to the Latvian Legion, which swore an oath to, and fought, only against the Red Army. It bears mentioning again, and again, that no one in service of the Latvian Legion has ever been accused of a war crime.
The Legion fought against the re-occupying Soviet Union. At the time the USSR first occupied Latvia, Hitler and Stalin were allies in launching WWII — Soviet radio signals guided invading Luftwaffe, and the Kremlin telegraphed Berlin prematurely to congratulate Hitler on the fall of Warsaw. After Hitler and Stalin finished partitioning Poland, the USSR occupied more territory than Nazi Germany.
The Latvians did not fight against the British or the Americans, or any other western power. Indeed, its merchant marine served in the Allied cause in the Atlantic. It is pure baseless vitriol to label Latvian resistance against the USSR as a battle against the Allies.
Latvian Legion Day — not named that in Latvia, where the official holiday commemorated all those who fought for Latvia's freedom — has been, is, and always will be a day of Latvian pride.
Atkinson repeats the blatant lie that Latvians glorify the criminal German SS.
Atkinson repeats the blatant lie that the Latvian Legion were members of the criminal German SS. Indeed, they served as Allied guards of the most notorious Nazi prisoners during the Nuremberg trials.
Lowenberg's featuring of Atkinson's fundamentally flawed calumny is unfortunate proof that Holocaust activists can promulgate any lies they wish about Latvians, whether in WWII or today, with impunity. Such lies do a disservice to Lowenberg's cause.
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