The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned Thursday a march
in Riga celebrating the anniversary of the Nazi invasion
of Latvia on July 1, 1941, calling it the “height of insensitivity
to victims of Nazism in Latvia and across Europe.”
"The Nazi invasion of Latvia sixty-nine years ago led to the murder of 90,000
Latvians, including 70,000 Latvian Jews and
2,000 Roma. To celebrate this anniversary
and present the Nazis as the 'liberators'
of Latvia, is the height of insensitivity
to the victims of Nazism in Latvia and across
Europe," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.
He continued, "We appreciate the statement of Latvia’s prime minister and the foreign ministry
condemning this event. However, we are concerned
that this incident is part of a larger trend
among nationalists in the Baltics and elsewhere
in Eastern Europe to equate the Nazi genocide
with the repression and crimes of the Communists."
The comments came after a Latvian district court ruling on Tuesday paved the
way for the first-ever post-World War II
march on Thursday in celebration of a Nazi
occupation.
The
march will go ahead after a small, extreme-Right
group successfully petitioned against the
Riga Municipality’s refusal to allow the
event marking the 69th anniversary of the
country’s “liberation” by the German Army
on July 1, 1941, following a year of Soviet
occupation.
“This
is so outrageous; it is incomprehensible,”
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, a historian and Nazi-hunter
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The
Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
“Though
it is a marginal group, this is part of a
slippery slope,” he said, citing the annual
March 16 parade in Riga that glorifies hundreds
of Latvian veterans who fought on the side
of the Third Reich.
“This
event marking the entrance of Nazis to Latvia
is a celebration not only of the murder of
Jews by the Nazis, but also celebrating their
murdering of communists, gypsies and mentally
disabled,” he stressed.
Zuroff
also noted the joint announcement issued
by Latvia’s Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis
and Foreign Minister Aivis Ronis on Wednesday,
in which they expressed concern and consternation
over the planned march.
While
“very encouraged” by that announcement, Yad
Vashem chairman Avner Shalev remained concerned
at what he called yet another expression
of historic revisionism seeking to equate
the severity of Hitler’s crimes to Stalin’s.
“Despite
being held by a small and marginal group
within Latvian society against the will of
Riga’s municipality, the march is an expression
of the intense struggle within societies,
primarily in Baltic states, to form a national
identity through the interpretation of the
historic events from the 20th century,” he
told the Post. “On one side are the forces
that struggled against fascism, and on the
other are those who express a nationalism
that identifies with Nazism and nationalism,
and want to express their anger and hatred
at the communist regime, which inflicted
much pain and suffering upon them.”
Without
ignoring the murder and destruction that
Stalinism brought, Shalev said, “every event
should be perceived, taught, recognized and
noted distinctively. The unique horrors of
the Nazi regime and the disaster it brought
upon the Jewish people must be taught as
such.”
In
2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution
promoted by Baltic states that declares August
23 a European day of remembrance for victims
of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
On that day in 1939, the Moltov-Ribbentrop
nonaggression pact between Germany and the
Soviet Union was signed.
“Simplistically
put, the resolution blurs the character of
Hitler’s crimes and binds them together with
Stalin’s. We are doing our best to promote
and enhance the educational forces that understand
the gravity of the devastation in such an
approach, including in Latvia,” Shalev said.
“Even
in a democratic regime, you need to know
when to draw the line,” Shalev said of the
court’s decision to allow Thursday’s march.
“We understand and support Riga’s municipality’s
desire to prevent the event, and are doing
all that we can to encourage the forces that
want to present things according to the historic
truth. This is a battle over consciousness.”
It
remains to be seen what effect the march
will have on Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s
official visit to Latvia that begins on Monday.
jpost.com
|