2022Ottawa Citizen

The fundamental error here is contending the German SS commanded the Latvian Legion. This is false. While Himmler was the titular head, the two divisions of the Latvian Legion were integrated with the Wehrmacht as combat units on the Eastern Front and had no role in Nazi SS atrocities.

There is no goose-stepping march, there is no confetti-showered parade. As Ojārs Kalniņš wrote in 2006:

Confusion over the Waffen-SS designation has also contributed to a misrepresentation of the Legion veterans in the mass media. Solemn flower-laying ceremonies at monuments and cemeteries, attended by aged veterans and their families, have been wrongly described in the media as “marches.” Nothing could be further from the truth. They march nowhere, carry no banners, shout no slogans and have no political agenda. They simply wish to honor their fallen friends and comrades.

The Courland front, October 1944 dotted, at the end of the war, dashed-dotted. The front moved from 2 to 20 miles in six battles. (Blood in the Forest, Vincent Hunt)

Denouncers of the Legion willfully fail to distinguish between Hitler's SS, the architects and executioners of the Holocaust, and the illegally conscripted Latvian Waffen-SS divisions the Germans used as combat cannon fodder on the Eastern Front. Germans would retreat and send Latvian units in when they received intelligence of an imminent Soviet attack. German artillery positions failed to provide cover fire to avoid being discovered by the enemy. The Germans exploited the knowledge that the closer the Red Army came to re-invading Latvia, the fiercer the Latvian resistance. Latvians, with Germans, held out in the Courland Pocket until the end of the war. In Stalin's campaign to eradicate the Latvians — remembering they had held none of their own territory when they declared independence — the Red Army suffered 394,000 dead, wounded and MIA, and lost more than 2,600 tanks (including American-provided Lend-Lease Shermans), 900 artillery pieces, and more than 1,400 machine guns in six major offensives.

What the Latvian Legion fought for, for another week after WWII ended.

Nazi Germany occupied Latvia. Neither Latvians nor the Latvian Legion supported Hitler. The Latvian people did not and do not glorify anyone who participated in the Holocaust.

The Latvian Legion wore their allegiance, a Latvian flag, under their uniforms. German officers complained that Latvians could only be depended on to defend Latvian territory. The Legion's only role in WWII was as combat units. Even renowned Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff has stated outright that the Latvian Legion "was not involved in the crimes of the Holocaust." The meme of Nazi and Holocaust glorification is lie.

Latvians quietly and solemnly commemorated the Latvian Legion for decades with no controversy, with no accusations of Nazi glorification, until Kremlin operatives such as Josef Koren began to protest and denounce the commemoration once it took place in Latvia after it restored its independence. Jewish groups picked up and amplified the Nazi glorification narrative — and now complain that Putin quotes the false narrative they themselves have spread.

Notably, not a single neo-Nazi showed up for any Latvian Legion commemoration until Russian propagandists, Jewish activists, and western politicians began denouncing and publicizing it as Europe's only public event "glorifying" Nazism.

Marvin Rotrand cannot be unaware of Efraim Zuroff's statement exonerating the Legion. Advocating one should not commemorate anyone who wore a German uniform regardless of circumstances is one thing, contending the uniform brands the wearer a war criminal is another. Rotrand's contention the Legion committed atrocities is willful ignorance at best.

This mishmash about monuments to Holocaust perpetrators is a blatant smear irrelevant to Latvia and the Legion, as the Legion was illegally conscripted, and, again, a Waffen-SS combat unit not associated with Sicherheitsdienst SS Holocaust-perpetrating units. There is no denial there were Latvians who collaborated; however, they were not the Latvian Legion.

Except for the first photo caption, the "Waffen-" designation is absent and the Legion is simply refereed to as Hitler's "SS":

• "SS members" in the black-and-white photo,
• here, praising the "SS", that is, Holocaust criminals — and insulting Latvian contentions the Legion was not involved in the Holocaust, and lastly,
• below, Pabriks praising "SS members".

Latvians are also opposed to the glorification of Nazism. Nazi Germans occupied Latvia and killed most of Latvia's Jews — in what had been a country denounced by anti-Semites as a "Jewish country" for the positive image of Jews, their role as active and valued members of society, and good relationship between Jews and Latvians. Commemorating the Latvian Legion has absolutely nothing to do with glorification of Nazism. The Canadian government is parroting Kremlin propaganda.

Pugliese descends from misrepresentation to outright, blatant lies and baseless ad hominems. Legionnaires were not "hard-core" Jew killers. They loathed the Latvians who collaborated, considering them "rats" and an anathema to everything Latvia stood for. The Nazis would not have had to illegally conscript every Latvian male born after 1905 if the Legion were formed of Hitlerites. As for the volunteer battalions from which the Legion was initially formed in 1943, these were combat units on the Eastern Front of those who had volunteered for a German rifle — the only one available under Nazi occupation — to pursue the Red Army to ensure they never return. The German invasion had come only a week after Stalin's first mass deportations. Everyone knew someone who had been ripped from their homes and taken away. Not to mention the mass slaughter the Red Army inflicted as they retreated, killing all the Latvians they had jailed. See Vilis Hāzners' account. The Legion was not formed from collaborators, nor did it consist of collaborators conscripted to, and who supported, the Nazi cause. As already mentioned, collaborators were commanded by the completely separate Nazi German Sicherheitsdienst SS.

We come to the elephant in the room. The crimes of Victor Arājs and Sicherheitdienst (SD) Arajs Kommando are visited upon the Latvian Legion as if they were all one and the same when the facts could not be more in contradiction. It is true that Arājs and members of his unit were joined to the Legion at the end of the war as conditions deteriorated at the Eastern Front. It is as blatantly false to conclude, therefore, that Latvians commemorating the Legion glorify murderers of Jews as it would be to conclude Americans glorify the Mỹ Lai massacre when they honor Vietnam veterans.

After the war, Arājs, under an assumed name, did wind up in Zedelgem POW Camp with Legionnaires. As soon as the former Legionnaires uncovered his identity they handed him over to the British authorities. See an examination of the last days of Arajs Kommando.

The "counter-protesters" seeking a permit are not other Latvians opposed to the glorification of Nazism. They are Kremlin-funded operatives, members of Russia's World Without Nazism, a Putin-commanded front which has hijacked the moral cause of anti-fascism to demonize all the peoples of eastern Europe as Nazis because they oppose the historical lie that Stalin "liberated" them.

See our review of World Without Nazism funding anti-Latvian propaganda.

Pugliese does everything he can to denigrate the opposition position that Legionnaires were not Hitlerites and murders of Jews: "allege", "right-wing", "received funding from the Latvian defence ministry", "claimed." Being that all the accusations against the Legion date after the Kremlin launched its propaganda campaign with no such accusations ever arising prior, the conclusion that critics parrot propaganda is both inevitable and accurate.

It is ironic that Jewish groups accuse Latvians of "whitewashing" the Holocaust given that it is Latvians themselves who produced the eponymous seminal work on the Holocaust in Latvia (1996) by Andrew Ezergailis — published a full generation ago, and which inter alia devotes an entire chapter to the crimes of Arājs Kommando. Raul Hilberg praised the work: "Most important, however, must be our recognition of the fact that Ezergailis represents the next wave of Holocaust research: the indepth exploration of a particular aspect or territory. In that sense, he is a pioneer and his work serves as a model."

Latvia also established its Historical Commission in 1998 to examine the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Latvia with a special focus on the Holocaust.

The issue Pugliese unintentionally highlights is the shared objective of Kremlin propagandists, anti-neo-Nazi and Jewish activists, and main stream media looking for sensational headlines

• to demonize the Legion for crimes it did not commit and allegiances it did not hold,
• to demonize Latvia and the Latvian people for honoring and defending the Legion, and
• to demonize any attempt to portray history accurately as "whitewashing" the participation of local collaborators in the Holocaust.

Dovid Katz's motivations, however pure, do not grant license to vilify Latvians for crimes they did not commit. Regrettably, his Defending History website has become a clearing house for false denouncements of the Latvian Legion as Holocaust collaborators and its commemoration as Nazi glorification.

Prior reviews of materials featured at Katz's Defending History include:

• Christopher Hale's opinion piece (2011), at bottom of page
• Kremlin-aligned radical German left VVN-BdA bemoan their detention as "peaceful protesters" (2016)
• The late Aleksandr Kuzmin's series of articles (2016, 2017, 2018)
• Monica Lowenberg's denunciation and voluminous packet of anti-Latvian Legion materials (2020)