|
Anniversary of German troops
entering Latvia 
Riga - Uldis Freimanis organizes on Thursday a parade, to commemorate the anniversary of German troops
entering Latvia on July 1, 1941, which had been annexed
by the Soviet Union a year earlier. He had received the go-ahead from
the district court in Riga overturning an earlier ban of the event imposed by Riga’s City
Council. Freimanis wants the event to be a counterweight to the Russian Victory Day, which is celebrated annually on 09 May.
According to Freimanis, the 100,000 men who fought on the German side in World War
II within the elite combat forces, the Waffen-SS, were heroes
fighting for freedom.
ABCDABCD
In June 1940, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia. State administrators were liquidated and replaced by Soviet
cadres. 34,250 Latvians were deported or killed. 'Elections' were held with single pro-Soviet candidates listed for many positions, with resulting peoples assembly immediately requested admission into the
USSR. Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union on August 5, 1940 as
"The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic".
On Monday, June 17, 1940, in the early hours of the morning, the first Soviet army units crossed the Latvian
border. This was a terrible shock for the Latvian people.
The communists had sympathizers, the Jews, who welcomed the Red Army.
In Riga Jewish communists covered Soviet tanks with
flowers, jumped up on the tanks and kissed the Red tank
drivers. Jews took part in the safeguarding of Red Army
units and the prevention of hostile acts against them by Lettish military
organisations. Jewish youths ran up, exclaiming in
Russian: "Finally! How we’ve waited for you!”
According
to the Israeli historian Dov Levin it is impossible to understand the
HOLOCAUST without knowing what happened in the western Soviet territories in 1939 to
1941. Just after the Red Army crossed the Latvian border from the east and the south, the
fearsome Jewish Soviet proconsul, Andrei Januaryevich Vyshinsky arrived in Riga. Vyshinky had been the prosecutor at the Moscow
show trials of 1935–1938. He implemented the sovietization of Latvia: the instalment of a puppet
government, mock elections, the deportation of the president, and finally, outright
annexation.
ABC
Many Latvians believed that the Red regime was essentially Jewish and that
only Germany could give them back a free and independent
Latvia. Jews were appointed to responsible positions in
the Communist Party, in the trade unions, and other organizations, especially in Riga. Particularly
noticeable were those who had been active in the spheres of information
and journalism: K. Berkovits was appointed director of the propaganda section
of the Central Committee of the Latvian Communist
Party. Dr. M. Joffe was appointed to the senior position of people’s
commissar for health. J. Blumenthal was appointed director of the state
bank. Other Jews filled other high civic positions in Riga and the provincial
cities.... Even more impressive was the large number of Jews serving in the police force, including the
senior ranks. The custom in the armed forces was that Jewish soldiers who
were promoted were given duties in the political apparatus. A number of young
Jews were admitted to the officers’ academy, which at the time was known as
the Riga Infantry School. Unlimited opportunities were offered to young Jewish men and
women to participate in security and military activities upon the establishment of
the militant formation “Workers’ Guard” in its struggle against
" counterrevolutionary groups". Its members included not only
Jewish communists and Komsomol members, but also former members of the
"Bund", the left " Poale Zion", and former members of the Zionist Socialist
“hakhsharot.” Their activities were conducted in
Yiddish. The Letts identified the Jewish community with the hated Soviet
regime.
Stalin and Beria crowned all that with a
decree, appointing a Russian
Jew, Semion Shustin, as people’s commissar (minister) for state security in the Latvian SSR.
Many of his assistants, especially in the KGB, were local Jews, who knew both Russian and
Latvian. In JUne 1941, Shustin ordered the
shooting of 78 Latvians. In those terrible days when 16,000 men, women, and children were torn
from their midst, Latvians noticed that the perpetrators were not just Russians, but
Jews. And this stuck in their memory
. The actual numbers of Latvians deported
and shot by the Bolsheviks in their first year in power: 30,000 deported and 1,488
shot.
The mass deportations of June 13 and 14 broke the patience of the Latvian people. Latvian
patriots went into hiding in the woods. They were supplied with weapons that had been
hidden the previous summer by members of the paramilitary Aizsargi (Home Guard), and so
arose the first groups of national partisans, or guerrillas.
As could have been
expected, the Latvian national partisans came out of the forests and attacked the Bolshevik forces retreating
from the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg operations. During the night of June 27–28, the puppet government
of Soviet Latvia, with its cash safes, folders of documents, and bodyguards, moved to the border between Latvia and
Estonia. The commander of the Soviet Riga garrison ordered Riga Radio to announce in Latvian: “Yesterday and today
several people were arrested for counterrevolutionary
activities - sabotage, terror, signalling the enemy,
etc. All of them were sentenced to death by shooting, and the sentence has been carried out. Everyone who tries to help the enemy in any
way will be treated the same.”
On Tuesday, July 1, the German army entered Riga. An overwhelming majority of
Latvians, perhaps more than 95 per cent, looked upon the Germans as
liberators. Latvia's national anthem was being broadcast
by Riga Radio. The streets filled with joyful people, with smiles on their faces, which had
not been seen for a long time. Strangers embraced each other. Latvian national
flags appeared in front of some houses.... If German soldiers
appeared, the crowd welcomed them with applause and
cheers. The terrible nightmare year was over. The Germans
were truly liberators. Mountains of flowers were laid at the foot of the Freedom Monument. Everyone
wanted to place at least one flower by the symbol of Latvia’s freedom. Several
German armored cars were parked in the square by the National Opera.
Slender, blond, athletic, smiling youths stood by the
cars...
In 1944, part of the Latvian territory once more came under Soviet control. The Soviets immediately began to reinstate the Soviet system. After the German surrender, Latvian national partisans, soon to be joined by Germans, began their fight against
the occupier, the Soviet Union. As many as 300,000 Latvians took refuge from the Soviet army by fleeing to Germany and
Sweden The Soviets reoccupied the country in 1944–1945, and further mass deportations followed as the country was forcibly collectivised and
Sovieticised. Up to 190,000 Latvians were imprisoned, repressed or deported to Soviet
Gulags in the post war years, from 1945 to 1952. Some managed to escape arrest and joined the
partisans.
An extensive programme to impose bilingualism was initiated in Latvia, limiting the use of Latvian language in favor of
Russian. An influx of labourers, administrators, military personnel and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics started. By 1959 about 400,000 persons arrived from other Soviet republics and the ethnic Latvian population had fallen to 62%.
|
