The annual Latvian Legion commemoration observation held in Latvia was canceled in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In place of our annual review of coverage, we have selected two items in the press to review, one on alleged Latvian monuments to Nazi collaborators, and this, on a Russian report alleging declassified files prove nearly two dozen Latvian "SS members" worked for the CIA.
Russia Reveals Names of 23 Latvians, Including SS Members, Who Worked for CIA After WWII
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - After World War II, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used to recruit Latvians who fought on the side of Nazi Germany, including as part of the Latvian Legion Waffen-SS, and use them in subversive activities against the Soviet Union.
On Thursday, Russia's Historical Memory [Историческая память] Foundation presented a report revealing the names of 23 Latvian CIA agents.
The report, dubbed "Retired Executioners," is based on an analysis of declassified CIA documents. It features the names and the cover names of the agents, and information about their work for the Nazis and about their engagement in US intelligence operations.
The analysis of the CIA documents, declassified under the US law on disclosure of Nazi war crimes, has enabled the History Foundation to establish the names of 23 Latvian immigrants who collaborated with the US intelligence from the late 1940s to 1960s.
"Of course, a great amount of information is yet to be declassified, we are dealing only with a small part ... At the same time, the available data is highly illustrative", the report read.
The foundation also asked Russian law enforcement bodies to invoke the legal assistance treaty with the US and request information on all former members of the Latvian SS Legion and nationalist Latvian veteran organization Daugavas Vanagi who collaborated with the CIA.
According to the foundation, this data would help "investigate their possible involvement in the mass killings in the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka and other crimes against humanity during World War II."
In late October, Russia set a precedent in its legal history, recognizing the mass executions of civilians by Nazis in the occupied village of Zhestyanaya Gorka in the northwestern Novgorod Region as genocide against the Soviet people. According to prosecutors, over 2,500 civilians, including children and women, were killed in the massacre.
The report, in particular, indicates that Janis Cirulis, a Latvian SS Legion member and active participant in the Novgorod Region massacre, was a CIA agent after the war.
The foundation also wants Russia to ask the UK, Germany, Canada and the US to share copies of archives of Daugavas Vanagi branches in these respective countries — something that could shed light on Cirulis' crimes and the massacres in the Novgorod Region.
Finally, the foundation asks to request Riga to grant Russian researchers access to the Latvian Legion SS archive.
Meanwhile, the Russian Investigative Committee announced it would review the report, spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko told Sputnik.
"In the past, the Russian Investigative Committee was already examining information about members of SS death squads, who lived or still live in foreign countries, for their involvement in massacring civilians and rehabilitation of Nazism ... The materials provided by the historians will be investigated, including through the legal assistance mechanism," Petrenko said.
Behind the headline
Were any Latvians involved in the alleged massacre, they would have long since been prosecuted by Soviet authorities — Latvian review of thousands of trial records indicate that some 2,000 court cases and associated convictions could be considered legitimate, not to be confused with later propagandist show trials of Latvians in the 1960's.
In contrast, revisionist historian Alexander Dyukov-led Historical Memory Foundation is essentially an anti-Baltic propaganda organ. Past Dyukov efforts include a book, The Myth About Genocide, purportedly based on NKVD records, proving that Estonian mass-deportees rode to Siberia well-fed in coach railcars — not starving in cattle-cars, and a documentary film alleging Poland was to blame for starting World War II by refusing Germany transit across the Danzig corridor between Germany and East Prussia.1
Russian language media offered more detail, for example, at Названы имена латышских агентов ЦРУ, воевавших против СССР за Германию (excerpted, translated):
Names of Latvian CIA agents who fought against the USSR for Germany
MOSCOW, 18 March — RIA Novosti. After the Second World War, the CIA recruited immigrants from Latvia who fought on the side of Nazi Germany, including in the ranks of the Latvian SS Legion, and used them in subversive actions against the USSR.
The names of 23 such people were announced in the report of the Historical Memory Foundation, which was presented at the premises of news agency Russia Segodnya [Russia Today].
The document "Retired Executioners. Nazi Criminals from Latvia in the Service of the CIA", based on an analysis of previously declassified CIA documents, also contains the operational pseudonyms and kryptonyms of agents, information about the service of the Nazis and information about which American intelligence operations they participated in.
Of the 23 agents named in the report, 15 served in the Latvian SS Legion. These are Roberts Ancāns, Andrejs Apsīts, Nikolais Balodis, Leonids (Arturs) Brombergs, Aleksandrs Burmeisters, Janis Cīrulis, Vilis Hazners [Вилис Хазнерс], Pēteris Janelsins, Vilis Janums, Edvīns Ozoliņš, Jānis Presnikovs, Alfreds Riekstiņš, Arturs Stankevics, Vidvuds Šveics, and Herberts Žagars.
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There is no new information, no revelation here, only recycled Soviet-era propaganda. Moreover, Dyukov demonstrates a lack of organizational grasp regarding the Latvian Legion: his list of "Latvian CIA Agents" confusingly lists some individuals as including "service in the Latvian SS Legion" and some "service in the Latvian Legion, not the SS."
Fifty-nine years after first being named in the original Latvian edition of the Soviet propaganda tome Daugavas Vanagi, Who are They?, Vilis Hāzners's name (highlighted) appears yet again in the ranks of alleged Latvian Nazis. His biographical data is listed as:
Service in police formations and the Latvian SS Legion, participation in the Holocaust, membership in "Daugavas Vanagi."
Hāzners, head of the Daugavas Vanagi organization, was the first prominent Latvian targeted for deportation as an alleged Holocaust collaborator. For those interested in his deportation case, including the penetration of Soviet propaganda into the U.S. Department of Justice and falsehoods entered into the record by U.S. DOJ attorneys Martin Mendelsohn and Robert Boylan in their propaganda-originated attempt to deport Hāzners, read our extensive Hāzners "Case File". Our research includes an annotated collection of Hāzners's declassified CIA files — the very records alleged to contain revelations.
The Historical Memory Foundation report is available at the historyfoundation.ru web site. We have added a translation and analysis of "Retired Executioners" Hāzners content to his "Case File" postscript.
| 1 | Read more about Danzig and the corridor at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. |