Originally posted at www.newstatesman.com, published 16 March, 20121

Why does Latvia still honour the Waffen-SS?No EU member state should be honouring members of the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history.

By Denis MacShane

This morning, 16 March, a 47-year-old British woman, Monica Lowenberg, placed a wreath at the foot of the Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia. She was dressed in the ghetto garb the Nazis forced Riga's Jews to wear. Many of her family died at the hands of Germans and their Latvian collaborators.

1She stood in silent witness as marchers arrived to celebrate the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history. Latvians pushed Ms Lowenberg to one side to place their own large insignia of the Latvian Waffen-SS in front of the Freedom Monument.

Below is an open letter that Ms Lowenberg wrote to the government and parliament of Latvia to explain why in 2012 she believes, rightly, that no EU member state should be honouring members of the Waffen-SS in an open public ceremony in a European capital city.

Denis MacShane

Open letter to the government and parliament of Latvia on the eve of the Waffen-SS commemoration

My name is Monica Lowenberg and I am the only child and daughter of Ernest Lowenberg, a German Jewish refugee who managed to leave Nazi Germany five days before the outbreak of war in 1939. He was 16. His mother, my grandmother Marianne Loewenberg (née Peiser), born in Leipzig, a violinist and opera singer, managed with the help of the Hinrichsens, owners of the music publishing firm C F Peters, to leave Germany in April 1939 on a domestic's visa.

Tragically, the rest of the immediate Peiser and Loewenberg family did not manage to escape in time and were brutally murdered in the various camps or shot. My grandfather David Loewenberg or Levenbergs, born in 1877 in Libau in Latvia, was one of eight children, as I discovered only last year in the Latvian Historical State Archives in Riga. His two elder twin brothers also left Latvia, like himself, Moishe for Paris (his children worked in the French Resistance and were murdered by the Gestapo) and Abraham for Tehran. My grandfather was, from what I could gather, the only Levenberg who went to university and studied in Dresden, later making a life for himself in Berlin. He was an engineer and an inventor whose factory was taken away from him by the Nazis in 1935, forcing him to place his two sons in an orphanage.

His other brother and three sisters stayed with their parents, Minna and Lazzers (Lazzers had been a soldier), in Libau and most likely helped them out in their furniture shop. From what I have read, I must conclude that my Levenberg family who stayed in Libau were all murdered by Latvian Arajs commandos and auxiliary police in the Libau massacres of 1941.

After many years of searching for family members and even devoting ten years of my life to studying the Holocaust formally at MA and then DPhil level, working at Sussex university and the Wiener Library as an academic and education officer, I decided to go to Riga for the first time last year and try to establish what had happened to my uncle Paul, my father's brother born in Halle, Germany, 20 January 1922.

Paul, who was a year older than my father, had not managed to get out of Nazi Germany and therefore found himself trying to leave for Palestine with the help of a Jewish youth movement. He worked first of all on a farm in Denmark before going to Riga to work in 1940. The last letter my grandmother received from him was dated 8 September 1940. In the Riga archives, I discovered that Paul had been sent to the Riga ghetto on 4 October 1941. There are no records of what happened to him. I must assume that he was killed, aged 19. In 1941 and 1942, 90 per cent of Latvia's pre-war 62,000 Jews were killed, Latvian commandos and auxiliary police taking a leading role in their extermination.

As I am sure you can appreciate, discovering these facts has been exceptionally distressing. 2However, it was equally distressing to discover that the men actively involved in the mass murders of Latvia's Jews joined the 15th and 19th Divisions of the Latvian SS in 1943. The 15th Division was the most decorated out of all Himmler's SS divisions. In an EU country, these men are today held as "heroes" by many Latvians.

The current Latvian prime minister feels we should "bow" our heads to these 3Waffen-SS killers. I also find it of deep concern that British Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament work with the Latvian MEP Roberts Zile and have made an unholy alliance with the party to which he is connected.

Last year two Latvian politicians, Dzintars Rasnacs and Raivis Dzintars, 4participated in the march to honour the Waffen-SS, the greatest Jew-killing machine in world history. Raivis Dzintars belongs to the national association "All For Latvia!" and was a member of the ultranationalist For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK party, to which Mr Zile is still linked.

I must also add that another party comrade of Mr Zile told the Latvian parliament that 5LNNK has always been against the trial of Konrads Kalejs and other Latvians accused of Nazi crimes. Kalejs was a close assistant of Viktors Arajs, chief of the bloody Arajs Commando, responsible for guarding and finishing off those Jews who were still alive in the ditches into they fell after mass shootings. Some survived and tried to escape but the Latvians were on hand to kill them.

To raise concern about these Latvian politicians and the Waffen-SS, I launched a petition, started on the anniversary of my uncle's birthday – 620 January 2012 – 70 years to the day of the Wannsee conference when the Final Solution of exterminating the Jews was planned. The petition was called "Stop the 16 March Marches in Riga and Latvians Revising History", as I sincerely believe glorification of pro-Nazi armed forces during the Second World War has no place in a country that is a member of the European Union, Nato, the OSCE and the Council of Europe.

In little over a month, the petition has gained over 5,500 votes from around the world, indicating that I am not alone in believing that such glorification is terribly wrong. One should add that the ECRI, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, had already in 2008 explicitly stated: 7"All attempts to commemorate persons who fought in the Waffen-SS and collaborate with the Nazis should be condemned. Any gathering or march legitimising in any way Nazism should be banned." The ECRI reiterated the same in its most recent report about Latvia, dated 21 February 2012.

The Latvian apologists and their friends in British politics who refuse to dissociate themselves from Mr Zile should consider the following:

81. Many of the worst Latvian killers served in the Latvian Security Police prior to joining the SS Legion. Honouring such persons would be a travesty of justice and a whitewash of their heinous crimes.

92. The Legion fought under the Nazi high command for victory of the Third Reich. They do not deserve to be honoured for fighting for a victory of the most genocidal regime in human history. Ironically, such a victory would have been a disaster for Latvia because the Nazis had no intention or plan to grant Latvia independence.

103. About one-third of those who served in the Legion were volunteers (two-thirds were drafted) and many of them had served in Latvian Security Police units that actively participated in the mass murder of Jews in Latvia and in Belarus, such as the infamous Arajs Commando squad.

114. When Latvian SS killed Soviet soldiers, they allowed Nazis on the western front to kill British and American soldiers in turn and thus made it possible for Auschwitz and other concentration camps to continue their heinous crimes against humanity.

125. Democratic Latvia should not glorify those willing to give up their lives for victory of the Third Reich. The Latvian Righteous Gentiles would make much better role models.

136. The ultranationalists who support the march are the ones who are seeking to rewrite the accepted narrative of the Holocaust in Latvia. Their efforts will help hide the crimes of local Nazi collaborators and promote the canard of equivalency between communist and Nazi crimes.

147. Ceremonies in churches and cemeteries are also forms of honouring the deceased (whether they deserve it or not). Witness the masses held in Zagreb and Split, Croatia, last December in honour of the Croatian mass murderer and leader of the Ustashe Ante Pavelic.

As these men march from the main Latvian Lutheran Church towards the symbol of Latvian independence – Freedom Monument in Riga's central square on 16 March – will any of these men and politicians spare a thought for their Latvian murdered compatriots who happened to be Jewish? 15Will they remember how 25,000 of them, in the autumn of 1941, over two weekends, were marched down Riga's streets from the ghetto to Rumbula, shot and thrown into pits using the "sardine method"? Will they say a prayer for them?

With kind regards,

Monica Lowenberg

Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and a former Europe minister

Examination

We examine Lowenberg's letter, including her allegation of the Latvian Legion being part of the "biggest Jew-killing machine in world history".

Passage and analysis  

Lowenberg is not alone in contending:

  1. Auxiliaries in "police battalions", were involved in the Holocaust as guards or direct participants.
  2. The Latvian Legion was formed from battalions.
  3. Thus, the Latvian Legion was formed of Holocaust collaborators.

The issue is that the vast majority of police battalions had no involvement in the Holocaust. "Police" battalions had been fighting on the Eastern Front since shortly after the Nazi occupation commenced. With the population immediately disarmed under penalty of death, Latvians seeking revenge for those the Soviets killed during a year of occupation — or deported just a week earlier, before the Nazi invasion — had only one option for a rifle to pursue the Red Army: a German one. (Latvians began unearthing mass graves left by the Soviets as soon as the Red Army retreated.) A recruiting reserve was set up in Rīga to train Latvian units and to dispatch them to the front, operating under Wehrmacht command. It was these units which formed the core of the Latvian Legion, not Holocaust collaborators. Meanwhile, once the Holocaust had taken its toll in Latvia, collaborator units such as the notorious Arājs Kommando were dispatched westward into Byelorussia and beyond, not to the Eastern Front to establish the Latvian Waffen-SS (not "Latvian SS"), as Lowenberg was told, or read, in error.

Continuing the above logic,

  1. Thus, the Latvian Legion/Waffen-SS are killers of Jews.

However, even Efraim Zuroff, one of the most vocal critics of the annual commemoration, conceded in an interview on Latvian state television in relation to this same year's commemoration that the Latvian Legion had no involvement in the Holocaust.

Perhaps Lowenberg should look insider herself, that she could even make such an abhorrent accusation, that anyone could honor Hitler's unprecedented industrialized genocide of Jews. Had she done so, she might have realized the target of her personal grief is misplaced.

The Waffen-SS Latvians honor are not Hitler's criminal Nazi symbols-of-Aryan-perfection Waffen-SS. (20/20 vision and cavity-free teeth were enlistment requirements.) It is as simple as that.

Nor did Latvians take the Waffen-SS Nazi oath or take any orders from or report into the elite Nazi Waffen-SS in any manner. While Himmler remained the titular head, the Latvian Legion operated fully under the Wehrmacht.

We cannot speak to Lowenberg's charge. The official record in Latvia is clear, that Kalējs was an officer in Arajs Kommando, and Latvia and Australia signed an agreement on extradition. In 2001, at Kalējs's extradition hearing, his lawyer had argued his client was blind and suffered from dementia.

The only comments from the LNNK we have found on the record are that Latvia is still awaiting a "second Nuremberg" to hold accountable those who committed atrocities under the Soviets.

The Holocaust in Eastern Europe had been planned before the Nazis ever invaded the Soviet Union. SS commander for Reichskommissariat Ostland Walter Stahlecker's reports back to Berlin corroborate his orders were to cleanse occupied territories of Jews, Roma, and the mentally disabled. Going into eastern central Europe and the Baltics, the Nazis portrayed the Holocaust as local, spontaneous, and Germanless, from posing local drunks with bodies to "smuggling" fake news reports to the West via operatives in Sweden. The Germans were well aware of their actions constituted war crimes. Wannsee was a way-point on the Holocaust: with Europe cleansed of Jewry in occupied territories to the east, the Nazis now focused on exterminating the Jews of occupied western Europe.

Coming when it did, Wannsee was not relevant to Latvia or the Baltics.

The ECRI report deals with appearance, not history. Astoundingly, it indicates that it is a matter of "public opinion" whether or not the Legion only fought against the Soviets, our emphasis:

ECRI understands that part of Latvian public opinion considers that: the legion did not fight for Nazism but to restore Latvian sovereignty (further to Soviet occupation); they did not commit atrocities against Jews; and that, although many individuals joined the legion willingly, many others were conscripted. However, ECRI cannot but express concern about any attempt to justify fighting in the Waffen SS and collaborating with the Nazis, as it risks fueling racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance.

The ECRI implies it holds equally valid the opposing "opinion" that the Legion did fight for Nazism, did commit atrocities, and that many were not conscripted. The fallacy is that Latvia was occupied. Latvians seeking to ultimately regain independence had no alternative to carrying a German rifle. Talk of justifying fighting in the Waffen-SS implies there was a choice when there was no other alternative. The ECRI cynically reduces the issue to one of competing opinions, meaning, facts are irrelevant.

The remainder of our examination addresses each of Lowenberg's numbered points to consider.

Passage and analysis  
The term is "Waffen-SS" or "Latvian Legion" — not "Latvian SS", not "SS Legion", not "Latvian SS Legion". The Nazis deployed all Latvian units on the Eastern Front as it collapsed. No one has ever honored "Latvian killers" or sought to "whitewash" their crimes. Should Latvians not honor the 100,000-140,000 who, often serving as cannon fodder in place of retreating Germans, fought only to prevent the Soviet return? Who held out in Courland against impossible odds to the end of the war, only to have been betrayed by Roosevelt and Stalin? What message does that send? That history should be rewritten to state Stalin "liberated", not subjugated, 100,000,000 Europeans?
Lowenberg posits the syllogistic choice which all activists argue for, that the Latvians' only choice at the end of the war was binary: Nazi or Soviet subjugation — that a return of Soviet brutalization was the only "moral" choice; moreover, that another 50 years of Soviet occupation and mass deportations "paved the way" to restoring independence. The Latvians' own history demonstrated there was a third alternative: independence, just as they had achieved a mere 25 years earlier. Even the "oath" the Latvian Legion took was solely to fight against the Red Army. Latvia was occupied. There was no "Latvian army" to fight for independence. 100,000 and more Latvians wound up in the armed forces of both Nazi Germany and the USSR, each, but fought "for" neither. It is simply false to suggest Latvians fought for Nazi victory.

As noted at the top of this section, the volunteers who served on the Eastern Front and had no involvement in the Holocaust. Arājs Kommando numbered 300-500, with 100-200 core members, during the Holocaust in Latvia. They numbered some 1,200 in later actions in Byelorussia.

Complicating perceptions, Soviet show trials later convicted Latvian units, for example, finding the 18th Police Battalion guilty of slaughtering all the Jews of Slonim—based on manufactured evidence placed in Soviet archives, thoroughly discredited by the Nazi's own records that the Germans had slaughtered Slonim's Jews before the Latvians ever showed up. Indeed, one of the Latvians convicted and executed had been hospitalized and never in Slonim.

Again, the 100,000 to 140,000 on the Eastern front, whether earlier as battalions or later as the Latvian Legion, whether volunteered or conscripted, were not involved in qthe Holocaust, as even Efraim Zuroff has conceded.

Latvians comprised at most 1 ½ to 2% of the troops arrayed against the Red Army on the Eastern Front. The accusation that Latvians only served to slow the Soviet advance and therefore caused the additional deaths of Americans, British, and concentration camp victims is the most pernicious accusation of all.

Lowenberg engages in cynical victim blaming. Stalin should not have invaded and subjugated the Baltics having started WWII in partnership with Hitler in the first place, nor conducted mass deportations of innocents. In that case, the Nazis would have been the first invaders and the Soviets would have been hailed as liberators. Instead, the Soviet occupation was so brutal that the Nazis were hailed as liberators. Latvians took German weapons to fight the Red Army because of their experience under Stalin, including unearthing mass graves of Latvians after the Red Army retreated.

Soviet historiography indicates the Red Army bypassed the Courland after cutting off the Germans and Latvians in July, 1944, suffering minimal losses on their way to "liberating" Poland and the other countries of central eastern Europe, and "defeating" Nazi Germany. Instead, in six major battles from October 12, 1944 to April 3, 1945, Stalin sent in division after division to their slaughter in a failed attempt to exterminate any chance for Latvian independence: 394,000 dead, wounded, and missing, and over 2,600 tanks lost. All Stalin had to do was to let Latvia live free, but he knew the Latvians had defeated the Bolsheviks to win independence 25 years earlier following WWI, after its provisional government declared independence from aboard a boat in Liepāja (Libau) harbor, holding no territory whatsoever.

If there was any delay in liberating Auschwitz, Lowenberg needs to blame Stalin. (Nor does Lowenberg credit the 100,000 Latvians pressed into service in the Red Army for hastening Hitler's defeat.)

Lastly, we are puzzled why scholars today take everything Stalin said and did as reflecting the truth — while dismissing Hitler's statement that Stalin's invasion of the Baltics, Romania, and other Eastern European territories overstepped and violated their "spheres of influence" agreement and was decisive in Hitler deciding to invade the USSR. As Count Shuvalov, Russian governor-general of the Baltic provinces, stated:

The historical mission of the Baltic provinces is to serve as a battlefield for the problems of the highest politics in Europe.
There is no "role model" of Latvians sacrificing their lives for Nazi victory. See #2.

There is no attempt to "rewrite" the Holocaust in Latvia. The accusation of "canards of equivalency" (an expression Efraim Zuroff often uses) assumes the peoples of central eastern Europe and the Baltics seek to somehow dilute the Holocaust. This is utterly false. It is Russia which is rewriting WWII to ignore the Stalin-Hitler partnership which launched WWII. Indeed, Moscow sent its congratulations to Hitler on the fall of Warsaw prematurely; and once Poland had disappeared, the USSR occupied more Polish territory than Nazi Germany.

Surely Lowenberg would not argue that an innocent life cut short by Hitler is worth more, is a loss more tragic, than an innocent life cut short by Stalin.

Lowenberg's final condemnation is the touchstone, that Latvians should not even commemorate Legionnaires who died for the dream of Latvian independence at their own church. Lowenberg sincerely believes the Legion was a haven for mass murderers and champions for Nazi victory, that none should ever be commemorated anywhere in any manner. Her beliefs regarding the Legion and its commemoration are as unfounded in fact as they are deeply held.
Lowenberg believes no Latvian would stop to think of how Friederich Jeckeln's hand picked squad of a dozen Germans executed 25,000 Jews according to the method he invented. Lowenberg is wrong. The Holocaust in Latvia is a scar Latvia will forever wear.

Behind the headline

Denis MacShane

We can argue that Lowenberg is mistaken in her contentions, but not in her motives. Our issue lies more with Denis MacShane's introduction to Lowenberg's letter:

1“She stood in silent witness as marchers arrived to celebrate the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history.

Describing the Latvian Legion as part of the "biggest Jew-killing machine in world history" is simply false. In an interview on Latvian State Television LTV1 that March 16th, even Efraim Zuroff stated that the "Latvian SS Legion was not involved in the crimes of the Holocaust." It is MacShane's choice to repeat Lowenberg's charge as if true.

MacShane's mission, however, is not one of journalism but of polemics. His characterizations become less surprising viewed through his Labour party lens and his membership in Labour Friends of Israel. MacShane's blog provides further examples associating his Tory opponents with Nazis:

18 March 2010

Tories must answer for extremist links

The ahistorical David Cameron has no idea how much his association with Waffen-SS admirers has tarnished UK politics. Ian Traynor's balanced report from Riga about the Waffen-SS commemoration in Latvia is a reminder that Britain's Conservative party has not been adequately called to account for its links with extremists in eastern Europe....

This week we can see the ugly face of the Conservatives' foolish alliance [with east European nationalist populist politicians]. Even if no Tory MP was present to march in memory of the Waffen-SS alongside their Latvian allies, the grotesque nature of the ceremony mocks not just Jews but all who sacrificed themselves to defeat Nazism. As Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, noted the event was deeply offensive. "These people were thinking they were fighting for Latvia but the real beneficiary of their service and their bravery was Nazi Germany."

Stalinism was cruel and Russia's occupation of Latvia in 1939 and the brutality of the Red Army as it raped its way across the Baltic states in 1944 and 1945 have scarred Latvian national memory. Five per cent of the Latvian population was deported to rot and die in Siberia under Stalin. Many Latvians fled to west Europe or North America rather than live under Soviet imperialism. But 90% of Latvia's Jews were killed by the Nazis with the active collaboration of Latvian recruits to the Waffen-SS local divisions....2.

In this 2010 posting, MacShane shamelessly promulgates the Latvian Legion are Nazis meme, as the Latvian Waffen-SS was not involved in a single war crime, let alone in the murder of 90% of Latvia's Jews.

MacShane's accusations regarding "whitewashing the murder of Jews" and sinister plots to reduce—indeed "absolve"—the horror of the Holocaust by elevating the horror of Stalinism betray his political motivation: denounce the Latvians as Jew-murderers; denounce the Tories as the bedfellows of said Jew-murderers; elevate Labour as the sole champions of all that is just, moral, and right. The more strident MacShane's rhetoric, the less basis in fact.

As with all aspersions cast upon the Latvian Legion commemoration, at the foundation of Lowenberg's misguided despair is her false belief that Nazism and the perpetrators of the Holocaust are being glorified. The question then, is what person, what political party, what regime is served by the ahistorical labeling of the Latvian Legion as murderers of Jews? For MacShane, it is himself and his Labour Party.


1Denis MacShane's article published at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/latvia-riga-waffen-european, retrieved 10 June 2015.
2Tories' alliance in Europe: Waffen-SS march in Latvia, retrieved 9 June 2015, commentary also indicated as having been published in The Guardian
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