The Good Years
On November 9, 1918, a revolution broke out in Germany, and the kaiser was forced to abdicate his throne. On November 11, the armistice was signed on the Western front, the official end of World War I.
That same day, His Majesty's foreign minister, who a year before had become famous in the history of the Jewish people and the Zionist movement with the Balfour Declaration, wrote to the provisional Latvian National Council in London that his government de facto recognized the
independence of the Lettish (Latvian) state, a state that at that moment had not yet even been born!
That, too, was a "Balfour declaration;" that, too, was an extremely important historical document -- this time not for Jews, but for Latvians.
And who was the provisional Latvian National Council's emissary, who was the person who succeeded in gaining his country's recognition, despite the fact that the state had not yet declared its independence? It was Zigfrids A. Meierovics, the son of a Jewish physician from Durbe, a little town in Kurland, and a Latvian mother, who had died when he was two days old.
Zigfrids Meierovics, 30 years old, was a tireless defender of the national interests of the Latvian people. As a leader of the Farmers' Union headed by Karlis Ulmanis, he attempted to gain more autonomy for Latvia in negotiations with the Provisional Government of Russia after the February revolution. Later he went to London to further the Latvian cause, and his efforts were crowned with outstanding success.
On November 18, 1918, when German troops getting ready to "go home" were still in Riga and bolshevized Red Riflemen's regiments were approaching from the northeast, the National Council held a meeting in the hall of the city's Second Theater. The vice-chairman, Gustavs Zemgals, announced that state power in Latvia had devolved to the National Council. On this chilly autumn day, after almost 700 years of foreign rule over Latvia's fate, the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed. Karlis Ulmanis, the leader of the Farmers' Union, became the head of the Provisional Government. Zigfrids Meierovics became independent Latvia's first foreign minister, and led this important department until his tragic death in an automobile accident in 1925.
It was Meierovics who brought about the 1920 peace treaties with Germany and the Soviet Union, who later succeeded in gaining de jure recognition of Latvia by the Allied powers, paved the way for a defensive alliance with Estonia, and gained Latvia's admission to the League of Nations. For two years, 1921-1923, Meierovics was also head of the Latvian government.
The German journalist Bernhard Lamey, who in the 1920s was the Vossische Zeitung correspondent in Riga, tells in his memoirs of a conversation with Meierovics in 1925, shortly before the gifted statesman's death. Latvia, emphasized Meierovics, will never want or be able to be a barrier between East and West: "The basis of our foreign policy is to grow closer to both Germany and Russia, to cooperate economically and in the question of European security."
Thousands of Latvians paid their respects at Meierovics' funeral; it was truly a day of national mourning. One of Riga's most beautiful boulevards was renamed in his honor. Even now, when the boulevard has long since been twice renamed, when for over 40 years the Kremlin masters have tried to erase all memory of the time of independence, the Latvian people ignore the police and the KGB and place flowers and lighted candles not only on the grave of Latvia's first president Janis Cakste, but also on the grave of Zigfrids A. Meierovics -- the son of a Jewish physician.
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The two decades of independent Latvia's existence are remembered by both Latvians and Jews as the "good years." Neither before nor since has life been as good for Latvians and Latvian Jews. There were, of course, many difficulties and problems -- corruption and unemployment, political intrigues, later even the caprices of a populist dictator -- but in this world everything is relative, and in retrospect an objective observer has to admit that in these two decades Latvians were masters in their own land and governed well, and that Jews and other minorities were guaranteed all the rights envisioned by the League of Nations for ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. Jewish religion, culture, and national aspirations were not hampered or fettered in these years.
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Latvia's independence was proclaimed on November 18, 1918, but armed conflict ended only on August 11, 1920, when a peace treaty with Soviet Russia was signed in Riga. The defenders of the new state, very few in number at the beginning, had to fight against the Bolsheviks, and in the summer and fall of 1919 also against the units of the German Free Corps' commander von der Goltz and of the Russian adventurer Bermondt-Avaloff. In Latvian history this war had the same significance that the 1948-1949 war of independence had for Israel. It was the only war in this century in which Latvians fought to defend their country and freedom under their own red-white-red national flag.
As the well-known Israeli historian Dov Levin states in his book With Their Backs to the Wall (in Hebrew, Jerusalem 1978, p. 20), "the majority of Jewish inhabitants supported the new Latvian state. About 1200 Jews took part in the Latvian war of independence." Jews fought not only in the Latvian national army, but also in Latvian anti-Bolshevik partisan units (called the "Greens") in Latgale. Information about these events can be found in the following articles: Dov Levin's "Jewish participation in the Estonian and Latvian wars of independence" (in Hebrew, He'Avar, 1955, pp. 140-153), L Wajspap's "Jewish participation in Latvia's war of independence" (in Yiddish, Der Bafrayer, Riga 1931, pp. 55-65), and B. Kessel's "With the 'Greens' in Latgale's fields and woods" (in Yiddish, Der Bafrayer, Riga 1933, pp. 35-37).
These Jewish veterans founded the Jewish Latvian Liberators' Association. They had a hall at 45 Gertrude Street in Riga. The chairman of the association was the lawyer Michael Eljaschoff, the general secretary was M. Blumenau. After the German Wehrmacht entered Riga on July 1,1941, Michael Eljaschoff was named chairman and M. Blumenau a member of the Riga ghetto's "Jewish committee" (Judenrat). Along with tens of thousands of other Jews, in the end they, too, perished.
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Detailed statistical data on Jews in Latvia during this period is given in the book The Jews in Latvia, published in 1971 in Tel Aviv by the Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel. My purpose is to give an idea of the general atmosphere of these years, and so I will limit myself to several short sketches, starting with biographical sketches of some Latvian Jews, whose fates mirror these tempestuous times.
The biographic dictionary Es vinu pazistu (I know him) was published in Riga in 1939, the last publication of its kind before Latvia lost its independence. On page 349 one reads: "MOREIN, Izak, journalist, Jewish press reporter to the foreign ministry, born December 28, 1903, in Krustpils. Finished science high school, studied law at the University of Latvia. Lectured on Latvia in Kaunas, Athens, Jerusalem, published articles on Latvia in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Greek and Arabic." A lot is said in these few lines.
In the archives of the Association of Latvian Jews in Israel, I found Morein's book Lettland (Latvia), in Yiddish, published by the press department of the Latvian foreign ministry in 1929. The author richly describes the new Latvian nation, that had just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The book seems to have been aimed at Jews in other Eastern European countries, and perhaps also in the United States. Unfortunately I have not been able to determine Morein's fate. It is likely that he was deported by the Bolsheviks to Siberia, or killed by the Germans in Latvia.
We turn to the Mintz brothers, whose fate can be recounted. Paul Mintz, born in 1868, was appointed state comptroller in the Latvian Provisional Government in 1919. He was a professor of criminology at the University of Latvia from its founding, and wrote many works on this subject. He headed the committee that prepared the Latvian criminal code, and represented Latvia at international legal conferences. He was awarded Latvia's Order of Three Stars. As noted in The Jews in Latvia, when Latvia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, he and his wife and son were exiled to Siberia. A few months later he was arrested and incarcerated in the Taishet concentration camp. All efforts made by public figures in the United States to obtain his release were in vain. He died in Siberia in 1941.
His brother Vladimir (Wolf) Mintz, born in 1872, had a well-earned reputation as one of the best surgeons in Moscow and Riga. In 1917 he became a professor at the University of Moscow. The Jews in Latvia describes how after Lenin had been attacked and shot by the Social Revolutionary Kaplan in 1918, Mintz was called to attend him, operated, and saved his life. With Lenin's aid he was allowed to return to Riga. There he was in charge of the surgical department of the Jewish hospital BikurHolim, which he later headed. He lectured at the University of Riga, holding the chair in surgery from 1940. After Riga was taken by the Wehrmacht, he passed through the entire Nazi inferno, beginning with the Riga ghetto, where he organized a kind of hospital. This was followed by the Kaiserwald (Mezaparks) concentration camp. Finally, after all kinds of vicissitudes, he was sent to Buchenwald, where he found his death in a mass grave.
A different sort of person was Max Schatz-Anin. He was born in 1885 in the little town of Nairi (Friedrichstadt, Jaunjelgava). According to the Latvian Social Democrat Fricis Menders, in 1909-1910 Schatz-Anin was in Vienna, where he was known as a Zionist-Socialist. When the Russian civil war broke out he joined the Bolsheviks. When General Denikin's White Army occupied Kiev in 1919, Schatz-Anin was arrested and tortured, losing his eyesight. Returning to Latvia at the end of 1919, Schatz-Anin, an educated and erudite man, organized a Jewish Marxist group and formed the publishing house Arbeter-Heym. This was a legal cover for the destructive activities of the banned communist party. He published brochures in Yiddish about various economic and sociologic questions and gave fiery talks at Jewish leftist youth rallies, not letting his handicap, his blindness, be an obstacle to his energetic work in furthering Lenin' s Utopia. Schatz-Anin had to interrupt his propaganda activities during the authoritarian regime (1934-1940), but his moment arrived when the Red Army entered Riga on June 17, 1940. He organized the communist Yiddish newspaper Kampf and journal Ufboj, enthusiastically touting the "Stalin Constitution," and it was clear even then that his blindness was not just physical. When the German army neared Riga, he and his relatives and friends fled -- on foot, under the scorching sun (Dov Levin, op. cit., p. 48). Via Kasan and Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan, he ended up in Moscow, where he was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. After the war ended, he returned to Riga.
Max Schatz-Anin, this utterly dedicated communist, was arrested in 1949 when Stalin unleashed his anti-Semitic campaign against "unpatriotic cosmopolites," and was held for a time in Riga's MGB (Ministry of State Security, forerunner of the KGB) prison. Even this did not cool the blind utopist's ardor. In the mid-sixties I had a lengthy conversation with Schatz-Anin, by then a frail old man, and even though he had started to take a greater interest in the Jewish national, rather than "international," cultural heritage, one could clearly see that illusions about "mankind’s radiant future under the aegis of the only true faith and teachings of Marx and Engels" still kept their hold on him. Max Schatz-Anin died a communist.
Outstanding figures in the Latvian Jewish community of the inter-war period were Max (Mordechai) Nurock (of the Misrachi Movement), Mordechai Dubin (Agudas-Isroel), Noah Maisel (the Bund), and Max Laserson (Zeire-Zion). They were all deputies in Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, defending the interests of their constituencies and reflecting the viewpoints of their respective Jewish political and religious circles.
Of interest here are Professor Max Laserson's comments in his posthumously published article in the book The Jews in Latvia (p. 182):
Towards the end of December 1933, the third and last Conference of the United Zeire-Zion and Zionist-Socialist parties met in Riga. After analyzing developments the present writer stated in his address that in the situation which had developed, the two Baltic countries, Latvia and Estonia, "are once again nothing but candidates for a transformation into German Provinces." To our regret this harsh forecast was fulfilled some time later, in summer 1941. However, I was not correct when I said in the course of the same address that the loss of Latvia was to be envisaged through Hitlerist Fascism only. Now that everything is over we have seen that it was Soviet Russia which was also prepared to swallow democratic Latvia.
The book makes significant points regarding Jewish cultural autonomy in the inter-war period:
The resurrection of the Hebrew language and culture between the two world wars took place not only in the land of Israel, but also in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic states, and nowhere were its achievements more impressive and far-reaching than in the latter. The most important achievement of the minorities in Latvia was the Law of Cultural Autonomy, an exceedingly democratic piece of legislation which served as a model for its period. It is doubtful whether there was any other parliamentary institution to be found in Europe or elsewhere which at any time dedicated so much attention to the autonomous administration of Jewish schools. Between the two world wars Latvia was the only country where the Bund had a parliamentary representative of its own.
It must be remembered that the capital of Latvia was the cradle of the worldwide Zionist-revisionist movement: a lecture in Russian by Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky led to the formation of Brit Trumpeldor (Betar) in Riga in 1923. Betar was the nucleus of a whole new Zionist stream, and one of this radical Zionist youth organization's leaders in Poland, Menachem Begin, was Israel's prime minister from 1977 to 1983.
Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, consisted of 100 deputies, among whom were representatives also of minority lists, or parties -- Germans, Russians, Poles, and Jews. Due to the peculiarities of the proportional electoral system, as well the endemic instability of the political balance in Latvia at the time, each of the minority representatives' votes carried great weight in the recurring votes of confidence in the coalition governments. In fact, the leaders of the larger parties readily "bought" the votes of the smaller parties, including those of the minority factions, making lavish promises to support their interests. This parliamentary arithmetic was not at all good for political morale, and even though Latvia was truly a model for democracy with respect to civil liberties (even the banned communist party, under a different name, was for a time represented in the Saeima and in city governments), Karlis Ulmanis easily carried out a coup on May 15,1934, dissolving the parliament and persuading the populace that the time had come to "end inter-party wrangling."
The years 1934-1940 were the years of the authoritarian regime. It must be admitted that Karlis Ulmanis, who proclaimed himself "Tautas Vadonis" (Leader of the Nation), was not only "populist" in his propaganda, but also quite popular with the people, especially among the fanners. His personality cult in the media tended to the nauseous, the press was censored, and several party leaders spent some time in a special concentration camp in Liepaja, but on the whole the Ulmanis regime was very mild, in comparison not only to Mussolini's regime in Italy and Horthy's in Hungary, for example, but also to dictatorships in Latin America in the last decades. The present presidential regime in Turkey, a member of NATO and the EC, seems barbaric when compared with the dictatorship of Ulmanis.
It is true that Ulmanis banned the Jewish Zionist parties and the Bund, but he also banned all other political parties in Latvia, including his own party, the Farmers' Union. Other organizations continued to function: the religious society Agudas-Isroel, headed by Ulmanis' personal friend Mordechai Dubin; the nationalistic youth organization Betar mentioned above; the Zionist workers' youth organization Olim (although only after a time); the associations Gordonia and Herzlia; the
trade school society ORT; the health care organization Bikur-Holim; the association Kinderfraynt (Children's friend); Jewish schools, which taught in Hebrew or Yiddish; the Latvian Jewish Minority Theater; the Jewish Club at 6 Skolas Street in Riga; Keren Kayemet, the national fund; Jewish publishing houses, libraries, bookshops, and so on.
Although Ulmanis, influenced by his friend Dubin, favored the conservative, non-Zionist society Agudas-Isroel and gave preference to the radical Betar, while restricting the activities of the Zionist workers' movement, he in no way hindered any initiatives that aimed to further Jewish emigration to Eretz Israel, Palestine. In contrast, the British government created obstacles with its infamous White Paper of 1939.
The Zionist youth organizations in Latvia had their own farms, where youngsters attended Hachshara courses, learning fanning skills that would serve them in good stead in the land of their ancestors, Eretz Israel. My cousin and her fiancée, a soldier in the Latvian army, also attended these courses. They very much wanted to get to Eretz Israel, but the Red Army's invasion of Latvia put an end to their dreams. By the next day, June 18, 1940, all Zionist youth organizations were hurriedly burning their membership rosters.
In a way Karlis Ulmanis can be said to have directly contributed to strengthening Jewish national identity. He encouraged Jewish parents to send their children not to German or Russian schools, but to schools in which the language of instruction was Yiddish or Hebrew. This can be explained by the fact that Ulmanis was an ardent Latvian nationalist, who held that every ethnic community in Latvia should develop its own authentic national culture, instead of assimilating.
Ulmanis cannot be considered an anti-Semite, even though he tried to "Latvianize" industry and, to a degree, commercial enterprises, forming semi-governmental corporations such as Latvijas Kokvilna (Latvian cotton), Degviela (fuel), and Bekona Eksports (bacon export), and buying the chocolate factory Laima from the Moshevitz family. This had nothing whatever to do with hatred of the Jews as a people. Incidentally, the Moshevitz family later founded the largest chocolate factory in the Middle East, the "Elite."
Further, during the Saeima period two rightist organizations openly advocating anti-Semitism, the National Club and Perkonkrusts (Thunder cross), had been operating semi-legally. Immediately after the May 15, 1934, coup they were declared illegal, and heavy penalties imposed for open, aggressive anti-Semitic propaganda. During the authoritarian regime the police actively pursued illegal groups, such as the communists and Perkonkrusts. The leader of the latter group was Gustavs Celmins, one of Ulmanis' bitterest enemies. When the Wehrmacht entered Latvia in 1941, he had high hopes for the Nazis, but seeing that they had no intention of renewing a "national" Latvian state, he joined the anti-Nazi resistance and was eventually arrested.
During the entire independence period Latvia gave asylum to a large number of Jews seeking refuge from both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis. The case of Roman Vishniak is instructive. Roman Vishniak, now 86 years old and living in New York, is a Russian-born Jew -- doctor, biologist, physicist, philosopher, historian, art lover, numismatist, and last but not least, a famous photographer. Recently volumes of his work were published in Zurich and New York, depicting the everyday life of Jews in Eastern Europe -- Central Poland, Galicia, Slovakia, Carpato-Ruthenia, also Lithuania and Latvia -- in the thirties, on the eve of the Holocaust. Escaping from the Bolsheviks in the twenties, Vishniak secretly crossed the Russian-Latvian border to Rezekne, and the democratic regime in Riga granted the young doctor Latvian citizenship. With a Latvian passport in his pocket Vishniak went to Berlin. The passport helped save him from persecution when Hitler came to power in Germany. With the Latvian passport still in his pocket Vishniak traveled around Europe from 1936 to 1940, recording Jewish life with his camera. When the German army occupied Paris, police of the Vichy regime arrested Vishniak and held him in a camp for foreigners as an "unwanted alien." Sooner or later he would have probably perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but he managed to make contact with one of Latvia's diplomatic representatives in Western Europe (Latvia itself by that time had been annexed to the Kremlin' s empire). The representative succeeded in having Vishniak released after three months, and at the end of 1940 he went to Portugal and from there to the United States.
Several outstanding Russian journalists of Jewish descent, M. Hanfman, M. Milrud, B. Chariton, and Dr. B. Pollack, also managed to save themselves by finding a safe haven in free Latvia. With the Latvian-born Jacob Brahms they founded the Russian-language morning newspaper Segodnia in Riga, later also the evening newspaper Segodnia Vetcherom. In the twenties and thirties Segodnia was the best Russian newspaper outside the USSR, much more interesting and informative than, say, Posledniya Novosti of Paris. This Russian-Jewish journalist and publishing group helped found the Latvian daily Pedeja Bridi (At the last minute), which competed successfully with the largest Latvian paper Jaunakas Zinas (Latest news) until 1935, when difficulties under the authoritarian regime caused it to end publication. M. Milrud and B. Chariton in the end did not escape the reach of the Bolsheviks. Both were deported in 1940-1941 and perished in the Gulag camps.
The Latvian historian Uldis Germanis, now living in Stockholm, states (newspaper Laiks, April 25, 1984): "Independent Latvia was a state that respected human rights, that gave asylum also to the Jews persecuted by Hitler (who were turned away by humanitarian Sweden)." I can vouch that that is true. A frequent guest in my parents' apartment at 13 Dzirnavu Street was an emigrant from Vienna by the name of Ben-Zion (we called him "Zionchen" because of his small stature), who was immensely grateful at having found refuge in Latvia.
The most famous of these Jewish emigrants in Latvia was the notable historian Professor Simon Dubnov (1860-1941), the author of the standard History of the Jewish People. Fleeing the Bolsheviks in 1922, he settled in Berlin, and fleeing the Nazis in 1933, he came to Riga, continuing his research in his office in the lovely Mezaparks (Kaiserwald, Forest park) neighborhood. He was too old to flee yet a third time, and was murdered by the Nazis in the Riga ghetto in 1941.
George Clare relates an interesting episode in a book (in German translation Das waren die Klaars, Ullstein, 1980. pp. 253-258) about his family, who were Austrian Jews. On September 23, 1938, in Berlin, the author's father decided that his son definitely had to get away, and the only country that then still admitted Austrian Jews was Latvia. Unfortunately the Latvian government could no longer recognize Austrian passports, as Austria had ceased to exist in March 1938, and could admit only those Austrian Jews who had been issued German passports. Prominent Latvian Jews appealed to the Ulmanis government, and the issue of the Klaar and Mandl families, who had only Austrian passports, was discussed at length in cabinet meetings, and finally resolved favorably.
As mentioned, emigrants from Germany and Austria were welcome in my parents' home. My father, a small, unlicensed real estate broker, was friends with all -- Jews, Latvians, Poles, and Baltic Germans, such as Baron Ernst von Mirbach (1888-1968), who, when the Wehrmacht occupied Latvia, became a member of Riga's governing board. My mother was active in committees that collected donations for the Jewish organizations ORT, Bikur-Holim, OZE, and Kinderfraynt.
I studied at Riga's French lycee, because my father wanted me to learn at least one foreign language well. The lycee was one of the best schools in Riga that taught in Latvian. Of course one also had intensive French courses from the first grade. In this school, studying together with Latvian boys and girls, I learned much about Latvian history and literature. In our class we had another Jewish boy, Sven Arenstam, a Boy Scout and the son of the owner of the best stationery store in Riga, and two Jewish girls, Gabriela Goldman and Betty Pevsner. There was almost no anti-Semitism in the school, not counting the rather innocuous jokes. For example, occasionally somebody would show me the flap of his coat folded into the shape of a pig' s ear. Or mischievous boys would try to get Betty Pevsner, who came from a religious family, to eat bacon, in the common, tasty Latvian dish of grey peas and bacon. Newspapers and humor magazines would run doggerel (persas) mimicking the accented Latvian spoken by some Jewish merchants, and cartoons showing fat Jewish mammas with baby carriages in the Esplanade park. Occasionally, as I walked to school from Dzirnavu Street to Aristide Briand Street, flush-faced, quite drunk carriage drivers, hauling firewood from the Precu (goods) station, threatened me with their whip handles as a "joke." But overall I personally felt fine. Since 1 was not attending a Jewish school and was approaching my bar-mitzvah, my father in 1938 arranged for a student, who was active in the national religious movement Misrachi, to come twice a week and teach me the Old Testament and modem Hebrew. The Soviet army's invasion on June 17, 1940, put an end to my Jewish education.
Janis Rainis was not the only member of the Latvian intelligentsia to interest himself in the Zionist enterprise in the Holy Land. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the firm Valters and Rapa published Janis Karklins book Legendara un moderna Palestina (Legendary and modern Palestine). The author, a journalist with the newspaper Jaunakas Zinas, described his visit to Eretz Israel with undisguised enthusiasm. Illustrated articles about the visit also ran in the weekly Atputa (Relaxation). In Palestine he met Jewish Zionist pioneer youth from Latvia (Chalutzim) -- from Riga, Ogre, Daugavpils, and Liepaja. They spoke perfect Latvian. Meeting Karklins, they said, "Let's sing Kumelini, kumelini! No -- Tek saulite tecedama..." (popular Latvian folk songs).
"Delightful Latvians," concluded Karklins. In Haifa he walked on Mount Carmel with Jewish friends, singing in Hebrew the "Jewish Marseillaise," Kadimah, ha-poel (Forward, ye worker).
To complete the picture I would like to cite from an article in the May 18, 1932, issue of Riga's largest Latvian newspaper, Jaunakas Zinas, headlined "Latvian pavilion awarded gold medal in Tel Aviv exhibition." On May 10, at the closing of the Levant Fair in Tel Aviv, the representative of the administration of Palestine, a Mr. Wolley, remarked that the organizers of the fair had been particularly impressed with the pavilions of Latvia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Rumania, and Cyprus, all
of which received gold medals. Special citations went to the Latvian firms Kuze chocolate factory, Kontinents rubber products, and Howsch and Michelson linoleum factory of Jelgava. Latvian butter, displayed by the association Konsums, received a gold medal, increasing its prospects to successfully compete with Australian butter, which until then was the only butter imported into Palestine. Almost all goods were sold out during the show, especially Latvian canned goods. The article concluded that there was a favorable opportunity for exporting Latvian goods to the Near East.
The good years in Latvia were drawing to a close. The Jews understandably grew more and more afraid of Nazi Germany's expansion, and this fact was skillfully exploited by young, energetic communist agitators like J. Eidus, M. Vulfson, V. Lifschitz, and P. Krupnikov. They held "social evenings" in the homes of rich relatives or friends, reading from works by Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann as well as Henri Barbusse, Bertold Brecht, Maxim Gorky, and Vladimir Mayakovski, and proclaiming that only the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could guarantee protection from the horrors of fascism.
The pace of events quickened. In March of 1939 the German army marched not only into Prague but also into Klaipeda (Memel), close to Latvia's border; on August 23 Ribbentrop and Molotov signed a treaty between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, in whose secret protocol the Fuhrer "sold" Latvia to the Bolsheviks; on September 1, when I celebrated my eleventh birthday, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland and World War II started; on September 17 the Soviet Union entered the war on Germany's side, attacking Poland from the rear, on October 5 Stalin forced Latvia to sign a treaty allowing Soviet military bases in this small country; on October 9 Hitler's proclamation about Baltic German evacuation from Latvia to the Wehrmacht-occupied Polish western territory, now named Warthegau, was published; on November 30 the Soviet army invaded Finland; on March 12, 1940, the USSR forced Finland to sign a peace treaty, taking 40,000 square kilometers of Finland' s territory; on April 8 the German army invaded Denmark and Norway, on May 10 -- Holland and Belgium; on June 14 the unopposed German army marched into Paris... and on the same day Molotov handed Lithuania, Latvia's southern neighbor, an ultimatum, demanding that an unlimited number of Soviet troops be allowed to enter the country and a new government "friendly" to the Soviet Union be formed. The fateful hour had struck