Sine Ira et Studio
Forty-four years have passed since the defeat of Nazi Germany, but Bolshevist Russia still exists and is still trying to expand its sphere of influence world-wide. The brown fascists were masters at setting peoples against each other -- Germans against Poles, Ukrainians against Russians, Slovaks against Czechs, Croats against Serbs, and all of them against Jews. This lesson was also well learnt by the masters of disinformation in Moscow's KGB, who artfully exploited the post-Holocaust emotions and frustrations of Jews in the Diaspora to set them against the exile communities of Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Latvians.
The main weapons in the KGB disinformation campaign were collective accusations of collaboration with the Nazis. These charges were not directed against individual murderers, who justifiably deserved to be so accused, but against whole ethnic groups of émigrés, who were indiscriminately stamped with the mark of Cain. The KGB's experts manipulated the psychic trauma of Holocaust survivors and the frustrations of overseas Jews, who had not been able to avert this tragedy. These people, and influential Canadian and American Jewish organizations, were for years sent English-language brochures fabricated in Moscow, Kiev, Vilnius, and Riga, containing proven facts intermingled with insinuations and lies. The gist of these brochures, which was picked up by various media in the US and Canada, was as follows: "Those Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, they're all Jew-baiters. Those savage Slavs and Balts fled from their homelands with the poor Jews' jewels and gold. They fled because they're afraid of just punishment, etc., etc."
Instead of stating something like "many Ukrainians" or "some Latvians" collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews, it was stated or at least insinuated that these deeds were done by "the Ukrainians" or "the Latvians." A typical example is the book Wanted! The Search for Nazis in America, by Howard Blum (Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1976). Judging from the book's contents, Blum most likely took his information on the Latvian exile community in the United States almost exclusively from Soviet pamphlets published in Riga by the KGB, written by the journalist Paulis Ducmanis and the KGB officer Imants Lesinskis, who has since defected. Lesinskis now admits that the pamphlets are an ingenious mixture of fact and fiction.
Howard Blum writes:
a Latvian SS regiment stationed at the Zedelgheim [sic] prisoner of war camp formed a group called Daugavas Vanagi, the hawks of the Daugavas [sic], a river which runs through Latvia. The hawks would be a brotherhood of exiles bound by their complicity in common crimes. They would protect each other, hoping to survive until the day Latvia was again a fascist, anti-Jewish, anticommunist state. And then, in triumph, they would return.
First, Latvia never was an "anti-Jewish" state. Second, I myself, being an Israeli, an ethnic Jew, and a Social Democrat, openly declare that I am anticommunist. It is not a shame. I personally know quite a few members of the organization Daugavas Vanagi, and can testify that most of them have no complicity whatsoever "in common crimes." They are former combatants, honest ex-soldiers, who fought in the front lines against an armed enemy, in most cases not as volunteers but as conscripts. Perhaps among this organization's members are also individual rightist extremists, some of whom may also be anti-Semites (just as there are anti-Semites among leftist extremists), but there is no basis for accusing the entire organization and all of its members of "complicity in common crimes."
Blum's assertion about the American Latvian Association, "the mysteriously well-financed Washington-based American Latvian Association," is particularly absurd. I knew the former chairman of that organization, the late Janis Riekstins, still have friendly contacts with various officers, and know that it is merely an umbrella organization that is neither rightist nor leftist, whose activities are not at all mysterious, and which is in permanent financial difficulties. How does Blum's assertion differ from assertions by anti-Semites and Soviet anti-Zionists about the "mysteriously well-financed" B'nai B'rith or American Jewish Congress, etc.?
A few years ago great controversy was caused by another book with a similar theme, Allan Ryan's Quiet Neighbors (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984). In this book Ryan with great satisfaction recounts that in mid-January, 1980, in Moscow, he was received personally by the chief prosecutor of the USSR, the late Roman Rudenko, who promised to cooperate with him in identifying Nazi war criminals in the United States and in collecting evidence.
Who was Rudenko? The same person who, on August 1, 1953, after the Nuremberg Trials, after Stalin's death, led the massacre by Soviet Chekists of prisoners at Camp No. 29 at Vorkuta. Roman Rudenko himself shot one of the prisoners, the Pole Ignatowicz (see A. Antonov-Ovseenko, The Time of Stalin, Harper and Row; also Johann Urwich-Ferry, Ohne Pass durch die UdSSR, and other sources). And from this authentic postwar criminal Allan Ryan accepted cooperation in searching out Nazi war criminals?
Ryan, born in 1944 and having no experience of the war himself, makes various errors. He confuses Latvians and Lithuanians, stating on page 18 that Latvians "were largely Catholic" and Lithuanians "were largely Protestant." In reality it is the other way around. He asserts that the Baltic states were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944; the correct date is 1940. He professes a rather naive piety when talking about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, "our wartime ally," ignoring the fact that earlier it had been Nazi Germany's ally.
Typical of Ryan's attitude is the following (p. 72,75):
Before we had left Washington, an officer on the Soviet desk at the State Department had urged us to take every opportunity to make known to the Soviet side the United States' stern disappointment of the invasion of Afghanistan. I had no intention of following his advice. We had come to Moscow for one purpose only -- to seek Soviet cooperation in our search for Nazi war criminals.... For the first time I noticed that there was an empty seat at the head of the table. My spirits rose at once. That could only have been meant for General Roman Andreyevich Rudenko, the Procurator General of the Soviet Union.
In Moscow Ryan behaved like a reverential supplicant in seeking the cooperation of a Bolshevik postwar criminal. He evidently was not aware of the Soviet chief prosecutor's past. Yet he should have been aware of what kind of totalitarian regime and what kind of system of justice he was dealing with. Later on he did receive a small shock (p. 87):
There was one striking and discomforting epilogue to our Moscow negotiations. When we arrived in Zurich, I picked up the international edition Newsweek, which had on its cover Andrei Sakharov and, inside, the story of his abrupt banishment to the closed city of Gorky, far from the scientific and academic circles of Moscow. I took the magazine to a lounge chair and leaned back, but as I opened to the story, I sat up quickly. According to Newsweek, the Soviet official who had ordered Sakharov summoned to his office, and who had read him the decree of exile, was the First Deputy Procurator General of the Soviet Union, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rekunkov.
Rekunkov was the man with whom Ryan had such a "frank, candid, and constructive session, not in the sense that those words are often used among diplomats as synonyms for halting progress, but in their full literal sense" (p. 86).
This little shock did nothing to cure Ryan of his naivete. In The New York Times in the summer of 1984, he regretted that Chernenko was not invited to participate, as "our wartime ally," in the fortieth anniversary commemoration of the Normandy invasion.
What can one say about The New York Times itself, this competent and respectable newspaper, for publishing the following on October 18,1976, in an article titled "Some Suspected of Nazi War Crimes Are Known as Model Citizens," by its staff writer Ralph Blumenthal:
Almost all the suspects are from Eastern Europe, particularly the former republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, that were overrun by the Nazis in World War II and pressed in the liquidation of the Jews and the war against the Soviet Union. The territories were taken over by the Soviets after the war, and that remains an emotional issue with the suspects, most of whom are fiercely anticommunist.
One can only wonder at the blatant ignorance displayed by not stating one word about the fact that the Baltic republics were first overrun by the Bolsheviks.
Let us return to Allan Ryan. On page 257 he writes:
Many people, particularly Eastern European émigrés, demanded to know why OSI [Office of Special Investigations] was not investigating communist persecution. The Soviets, they reminded us, were as capable as the Nazis -- deporting innocent people to Siberia, liquidating political enemies, and all the rest.... My answer was simple. Communist criminals do not come to America when their crimes are complete, and I can't prosecute someone who is not here. But my answer always included a promise: if anyone could give me information on any person within the reach of our law today who had taken part in the persecution of innocent people, for any reason under any regime, I would personally see that a full investigation was carried out.
While Ryan is no longer the director of the OSI, the office itself still exists, and it seems to me that Ryan's pledge obligates also his successor. It is theoretically possible that among the Soviet citizens, who in the seventies and eighties emigrated to the United States via Vienna and Rome under the refugee quotas, were those who had been in the GPU-NKVD-KGB apparatus. Some 35 to 55 years ago, they could have been low-level functionaries such as interrogators or armed guards in the Gulag. In their old age, hoping that no one would discover their past history, they decided to start a new life in the opulent New World, along with their adult children and grandchildren.
It is not likely that many cases like that could be found, but it is possible that individuals like this, who are war or postwar criminals, live in the West. Eastern European émigré organizations, especially the umbrella organizations, could prepare lists with the names of those Chekists about whom precise data exists, and submit these lists to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and to the Office of Special Investigations. The lists could also be submitted to appropriate offices in Canada, Australia, West Germany, and Israel. Crimes are crimes, whether committed by the SD or the NKVD. And why not bring into the open the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
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Regarding Nazi war criminals, I have to say the following. If the guilt of an individual is proved after thorough investigation by courts in the free world, if he can be tried by the laws of a democratic country, if due process is followed, if the courts are truly independent, if evidence is given freely, with no direct or indirect pressure and with the right of cross-examination, then the guilty individual has to answer for what he has done, even in old age. Usually there is no threat of a long prison term, much less the death penalty, because everything else notwithstanding, old age and poor health generally mitigate the sentence. What is ethically significant in cases like this is the fact that one has to answer for one's crimes, even if only formally or symbolically. And most importantly, one cannot generalize and accuse entire émigré or exile communities.
I repeat: I would have been among those Latvians who fled from their country in 1944 and 1945 when the Bolshevik troops approached. An uncountable number of Jews took the opportunity to flee from the German and Austrian Soviet zones to the American, British, and French zones in the spring of 1945. Fleeing from the Bolsheviks is no sin in and of itself. Germans still flee from the German Democratic Republic. And what about the "boat people"?
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If we look at the concept "collaboration with the enemy" objectively, sine ira et studio, then we also have to consider cases like the following. Jews in Finland were loyal Finnish citizens, who were not persecuted. Drafted into the Finnish army, they fought bravely against the Soviet army not only in the "Winter War" of 1939-1940, but also in the years 1941-1944, when Finland was Germany's ally. Should they have switched sides?
How is one to judge the behavior of those Jewish soldiers who served in "work companies" of the Hungarian Expeditionary Corps on the German-Soviet front? In early 1943, after the battle of Stalingrad, when Hungarian army units fled in panic to the West, with them retreated also "Jewish work companies, who in the chaos had the opportunity to await the arrival of the Russians. This they did not do, and we know of cases where the Jews even acquired arms and made their way westward by force" (Peter Gosztony, Hitlers fremde Heere, Bastei-Luebbe Verlag, 1980, p. 337).
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On December 23, 1983, an article by Lawrence S. Leshnik of New York appeared in the newspaper of the West German Jewish Association, Allgemeine. He warned that investigating and judging war criminals was a very complicated matter, and one had to be careful. As an example he gave the case of Frank Walus, who was accused in Chicago in January 1977, of having killed children, an old woman, and a cripple during the war in Poland. For two years Walus was under the threat of deportation from the United States. Suddenly he was notified that there had been a misunderstanding and that new evidence showed he was not even in Poland at the time. No one repaid the great expense he had incurred during the court case, leaving him financially ruined.
In an article published in the same newspaper on April 19, 1985, Leshnik pointed out that between 1948 and 1952 about 400,000 displaced persons arrived in the United States, of whom about 10,000 were under suspicion of being Nazi war criminals. That is 2.5 per cent. Even if this figure were not exaggerated, and even if 10,000 immigrants from Eastern Europe were to a greater or lesser degree guilty of Nazi atrocities, that is no reason to vilify all 400,000 former displaced persons, who were threatened with the Gulag and other niceties of the communist regimes. Among them was the cream of the Latvian intelligentsia -- writers and composers, artists and architects, doctors and lawyers. All of them do not deserve to be called "fascist murderers."
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Let us also look at the other side of the coin. Isaac Levinson in his book The Untold Story (Johannesburg 1958) asserts that "the Latvians heartily collaborated with the German invaders in 1941 and committed the most dastardly acts against the helpless Jews" and "the behavior of the Latvians... is one of the most inhuman and darkest pages in the history of man." In exactly the same way some Latvian émigré circles accuse the whole Jewish community of Latvia of crimes committed by the Bolsheviks. Foremost of these is the Latvian Officers' Association of Australia and New Zealand, headed by E. Germanis in Sydney. This organization' s letter to US Attorney General Edwin Meese III, full of vulgar anti-Semitism, greatly damaged Latvian interests in the United States and Canada (see Mary Thornton's article in The Washington Post, April 6, 1985).
E. Germanis, in this organization's name, protested against my being invited as a guest speaker at the Sixth Latvian World Youth Conference in Australia, referring inter alia to "the actions of the Jews in Latvia, without regard to the privileges they enjoyed in free Latvia, when Latvia was invaded for the first time by the Soviet Union.... The Jews without hesitation took the side of the communists."
In the same vein, O. Akmentins wrote on April 15, 1985, in his bulletin Vestnesis, published in Boston: "The refugees did not think that mentioning the people that committed crimes against the Latvians constituted anti-Semitism." Thus an entire people, not individuals of a particular ethnic group, are to be accused of crimes? Akmentins continues: "Jews suddenly became hostile to the Latvian state and turned savagely against the Latvian people, who had never wronged the Jews in any way." Again the sweeping condemnation, "the Jews...." And Akmentins talks of "the Holocaust myth, so much written about over the years." The word "myth" is curious, as if he disputes that the Nazis murdered Jews. Twelve of my relatives, including children, were killed by the Nazis in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. That is no myth.
A somewhat contradictory position is taken by Vilis Hazners, who complains of "Jewish retribution" in his book Varmacibas Torni (vol. 2, Vaidava, 1985). After a long court proceeding, the deportation case against him was dropped for lack of evidence. He cites his wife's laments about "Jewish lies" and "Jewish money," accuses "those trying to disgrace me, the Jews," and asserts that he was persecuted by the "three Big Powers -- the Soviet Union, Israel, and the United States of America."
In a chapter entitled "Jewish and Latvian relationships," Vilis Hazners shows he simply cannot cope with the complexity of this matter. He writes: "And it is exactly this ruthless destruction of Latvian citizens of Jewish nationality during the German occupation that has spoiled [Jewish and Latvian] relationships in these past years." But then he continues with: "I also have to mention in this regard the insolent and hostile stance taken by the Jews against me." Again -- "the Jews."
Further, he writes: "Now the Jews have published many works in their own and other languages accusing the entire Latvian people of destroying them in Latvia.... At the same time the Jews everywhere keep silent about the Russian terror in Latvia, especially in 1940-1941, in which they also played a part, and not a small one." If Hazners had read what the competent Israeli historian Dov Levin wrote about this period, he would have come to a different conclusion.
Hazners asks: "Why did twenty to thirty thousand Jews flee with the Russians when World War II started? Was it only because they were afraid of the Nazis?" If Hazners asks the question in this way, why is he, and some other Latvians, offended when Jews ask in turn, and with the same bias: "Why did 150 to 200 thousand Balts flee with the Germans when World War II ended? Was it only because they were afraid of the Bolsheviks?"
Finally Vilis Hazners rhetorically declares: "But have I ever blamed the entire Jewish people? The way the Jews blame the entire Latvian people?" Mr. Hazners, with such recriminations we will not get very far.
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Latvian-Jewish Relations is a brochure written by the former Latvian parliament (Saeima) deputy J. Lejins and published by the World Federation of Free Latvians and the Latvian National Federation in Canada (LNFC). A "Publisher's Note" states: "The LNFC is proud to publish this well-meant and carefully considered [sic] article." However, the brochure is rather one-sided and unobjective. About the well-known writer, the Irishman Frederick Forsyth, the author of The Odessa File, J. Lejins insinuates: "Presumably Solomon Tauber [the hero of the thriller] is a fictional name hiding the author of the book." Lejins considers the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis as a "figure under dispute" and writes: "It appears that the Jews are too grasping of political and/or economic power. But power not only corrupts, it embitters others, especially if they consider that such power has been obtained in doubtful ways." It hardly seems that this is "well-meant and carefully considered" opinion.
J. Lejins also writes:
During the deportations the Jews of Gulbene watched the Latvians being brutally herded away as if it was a circus show.... How many Jews took part in the various actions against Latvians during 1940/41? The exact number might be in doubt, but there is no doubt at all that this number is much larger than the number of Latvians who participated in actions against the Jews during the German occupation.... After a year of terror, many Latvians greeted the Germans as liberators.... Even at that the percentage of Latvians jubilantly greeting the German Army was far smaller than the percentage of Jews greeting the Red Army a year earlier.
Considering the recapitulations of those events given above, it seems that Lejins' arithmetic is not quite accurate.
Finally, Lejins writes: "Our best wishes to the Jews, especially to the loyal Latvian Jews wherever they may be. We also hope that those who will not admit their own errors, and who generalize the misdeeds of individuals to a whole nation, will acquire objectivity, tolerance, and true understanding." One can only agree.
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J. Lejins' brochure is mild compared to one called The Other Side of the Holocaust, in English, written and published in 1981 by a K. Willis. This is most likely a pseudonym. Willis states that he is a Latvian, a veteran of the German army, who now lives in the United States. Some excerpts will suffice to show the tone of the pamphlet:
Stalin was surrounded by so many Jewish communists in high places, like M. Litvinov, Kaganovich, and so many other Kosheroviches.... Was Hitler a Jew? [There is a] story of Reinhard Heydrich's alleged Jewish ancestry.... Hopefully, this is not true. Otherwise it could be added that Jews had better bring their own house in order.... To the Jews, communist crimes are not considered as crimes at all.... The Jews should look for skeletons in their own closets before they accuse the Eastern European people.... Who influences or controls our TV and new media?... Who is controlling our Senate, House, and administration? The Zionist Organization has a most powerful lobby which influences our elected officials....
These allegations by Willis agree almost word for word with Soviet propaganda about the "international Zionist conspiracy" and so on. It is odd indeed, that these anti-Semitic vituperations come from E. Germanis' and K. Willis' bitterest enemies, the Bolsheviks. Hundreds of Soviet propaganda brochures, books, and articles like this were published and distributed widely in the Soviet Union, especially at the end of the Brezhnev era. They were published not just in Russian, but also in the Soviet Union's many local languages, including Latvian.
A typical example of this propaganda is Vladimir Begun's book Invasion Without Weapons, published in Riga in 1981 by Avots in a Latvian edition of 12,000 copies -- a very large number for such a small country as Latvia. Some representative quotes:
The main strategic goal of the Zionist movement is the establishment of world sovereignty.... Zionism's influence in the United States of America is enormous.... Zionists have crowded into the top levels of economics, politics, ideology, science and culture.... Zionism influences the USA's domestic policy and foreign policy.... Zionists buy up editors, take over editorial boards, work as commentators, get rid of journalists they do not like -- in a word, do everything possible to control the mass media.... Zionists unremittingly repeat and force upon the public the theme of the plight and eternal suffering of the Jews....
These are only some of the peculiar paradoxes that come to light when one tries to analyze the relationships between Latvians and Jews sine ira et studio.
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Based on direct experience, I can state that in Russian-occupied Latvia, anti-Semitism among Latvians is practically nonexistent. Moreover, the Six-Day War, in which the Israeli army turned Russian armor into scrap metal in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights, furthered Latvian solidarity with the Jewish state and the national aspirations of Latvian Jewry.
Since the summer of 1987, when Gorbachev began his campaigns of glasnost and perestroika, a broad national independence movement has developed in Latvia. Latvians have formed a powerful mass organization, the Popular Front (Tautas fronte), that fights for self-determination, economic sovereignty, and basic civil rights and liberties. Characteristically, thanks to the activities of the Popular Front, there has been not only a renaissance of Latvian nationalism, but also a legal revival of Jewish national culture. A Jewish cultural society has been founded in Riga. Many Latvian Jews support the aspirations of the Latvian people. The popular Riga weekly Literatura un Maksla (Literature and Art) devoted a special issue in November of 1988 to Latvia's Jews. This was the first time since the Bolshevik coup in 1917 that a Soviet publication has praised the Jewish people as such:"... that have created such uncommon spiritual riches … that have given the world the Bible, unforgettable masterworks of literature, music, art, and science."
Today Latvian and Jewish relations in Latvia are characterized not by misunderstanding and mistrust, but by harmony and solidarity. I am happy and grateful that I can experience this time.
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