2020Monica Lowenberg

The minister's lack of condemnation and denial that the annual commemoration glorifies Nazism is factual.

As we first noted in 2012 with reference to the ECRI, the report reduces fact to opinion, that is, denouncing Latvians as neo-Nazi glorifiers who celebrate "the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history"1 is an opposite but equally valid opinion to that of the aforementioned minister. This sort of reductio ad opnionem is a practice common to Russian propaganda and unbecoming of the Council of Europe.

It is bad enough when Latvians knitted thousands of mittens as gifts for NATO, that they could not use the swastika, the oldest and most sacred of Latvian symbols, because NATO would appear to be accepting "Nazi" gifts. In a similar vein, the ECRI's grousing raises image and opinion over substance and fact.

To be completely transparent, whatever remained of Latvia's army officers after two military invasions generally supported the Legion because it was the only means possible and available to stave off a Soviet re-occupation. The Legion was the hoped-for core of a new Latvian army after the war once independence was restored. (Legionnaires did not welcome, indeed despised, the collaborators introduced into their ranks late in the war. These individuals would have absolutely been tried as criminals in an independent post-war Latvia.)

If the concern regarding those who fought in the Latvian Legion is the same as the concern over those who collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust, then those acts are deemed equal. Even if the ECRI were to differentiate non-criminal and criminal collaboration, "collaboration" means to work together toward a common goal or with the enemy against one's own. Legionnaires fought to prevent Soviet occupation — a four-centuries long struggle against Russian domination. Germans fought to establish a new world order. Neither definition of "collaboration" applies. (Although some even astoundingly contend the Latvian Legion helped the Nazis conquer the Baltic states!)

Ultimately, the ECRI indicts the Legion in a version of reductio ad Hitlerum which we have seen taken to its ultimate manifestation:

1. Hitler fought against the Soviet Union.
2. Latvians fought "with" the Germans against the Soviet Union.
3. Therefore, Latvians are Nazis.
4. The Soviet Union was a member of the Allies fighting against Nazism.
5. Therefore, Latvians are Nazis who fought against the Allies in defense of Nazism.

#4 ignores that Hitler and Stalin launched WWII in partnership. Ironically, were one to take Hitler at his word, Stalin's prior invasion and annexation of the Baltic states and other western borderlands precipitated his decision that the USSR was a threat he needed to eliminate.

Latvian officials and politicians fail to comprehend there is no "middle ground" between false opinion and contrary fact — and that every millimeter they concede in a vain attempt to navigate that imaginary center is another kilometer gained in the court of public opinion against all Latvians.

We must agree with the ECRI. We can excuse Latvians who on July 1, 1941 welcomed the Germans into their capital Rīga as liberators after suffering a year of brutal Soviet occupation and surviving the first mass deportation only a week prior.

However, to celebrate the Nazi invasion today intentionally extols all it inflicted. We disown these "Latvians" and suggest they familiarize themselves with the Latvian Underground Central Council's February 1944 statement denouncing the German occupation, in part:

In burning indignation, the Latvian people denounce the reprisals which the German occupying power is taking in Latvia. 5,000 Latvian citizens are languishing in concentration camps and prisons to which they have been sent without court or trial. German police officials apply torture as a method of examination. About 10,000 Latvians have been shot during the two dire years of German occupation and there is no end yet to the executions. Wholesale murders of Latvian citizens of Jewish race have also taken place. In September 1943, the German occupation authorities evicted more than 10,000 farmers in the Dundaga region in Northern Kurzeme. The persons concerned were robbed of all they had: land, houses, and movable property. In the same month, the Germans deported to Germany several thousands of people from Latgale, as politically unreliable. The Germans did not pay any attention to family ties—children were separated from their parents and wives from their husbands.

The Latvian people unanimously reject German intentions to incorporate Latvia in Germany and fight against the German oppressors. Our people firmly and steadfastly stand for the independent and democratic Latvian Republic which existed for 22 years, and legally has not ceased to exist either under the Russian or German occupation.

History gives the lie to those who today would maintain the Germans did Latvia a favor by invading. It is unfortunate that the ECRI chose to lump Legion commemoration and Nazi invasion celebration together as "two incidents" as if symptoms of a common condition. They are unrelated.