If anyone needed additional
proof of the unsuitability of the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom
party as a partner for the British Conservatives, their response
to a ceremony held yesterday in Riga to honour the Soviet soldiers
who liberated the city in 1944 should be a stark reminder of the
lack of shared values between the two parties. A statement issued
by For Fatherland and Freedom harshly criticised Riga mayor Nils
Usakovs for placing a wreath at the local Victory Monument which
commemorates the liberation of the Latvian capital city from the
Nazi occupation and for participating in a rally to mark the event.
As far as they are concerned, Usakovs' presence at these events was "an
insult to the victims of Communist terror and a glorification of
the Soviet troops."
For Fatherland and Freedom, as by now should be well-known in Britain,
prefers to honor Latvia's Waffen-SS veterans who fought for a victory
of the Third Reich and Nazi domination of Europe, ignoring the important
historical truth as Usakovs noted yesterday in his comments that "had
Riga not been liberated from the Nazis in 1944, there would be no
independent Latvia today [and therefore] it is our duty to thank
those who fought against the Nazis."
The sad truth is that the positions taken by the Latvian politician
Roberts Zile and Kaminski are hardly exceptional in their home countries.
There, the second world war narrative accepted by the overwhelming
majority of the civilised world – victors as well as losers,
perpetrators as well as victims – has been distorted since
independence and the transition to democracy to make it more palatable
to their electorate and to minimise the role of local collaborators
in Holocaust crimes. To understand the motives behind these efforts,
it is important to note that while the Nazis were able to recruit
local helpers in every country occupied by or allied with the Third
Reich, the scope and depth of the collaboration by eastern Europeans
was far more lethal and extensive than that of other Europeans.
While local police in countries such as France, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Norway and Greece played an important role in the implementation
of the initial stages of the Final Solution – identification,
confiscation of property, separation of the Jews from the rest of
the population and preparation for deportation – they did not
participate in the mass murder of their Jewish neighbours. Their
collaboration ended at the local train station from whence the Jews
were deported to Nazi death camps in Poland.
In eastern Europe, on the other hand, numerous local collaborators
volunteered to participate in the mass murder of Jews and played
an integral role in the annihilation process, which in many countries – especially
in the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine and Croatia – took place nearby,
not in the death camps, all of which were in Poland. Baltic death
squads such as the Latvian Arajs Kommando and Lithuanian Ypatingas
Burys and 12th Auxiliary Police Battalion were among the most deadly
and the Croatian Ustasha earned notoriety for their savagery and
cruelty.
After the second world war, all of these countries were part of
the Soviet Union or under communist domination, and therefore could
not deal openly with their Holocaust crimes. And although the Soviets
and the communists made a commendable effort to prosecute the local
killers, the fate of the Jews was often manipulated for propaganda
purposes and there was no freedom of expression and debate. It was
only with the fall of communism that Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and
others finally had an opportunity to face the truth and deal with
its consequences.
Unfortunately, there were few local leaders who had the courage
to tell their people the truth and carry out the necessary painful
processes of prosecuting the guilty, rewriting history books and
school textbooks, returning stolen property, and apologising for
the crimes.
The results speak for themselves. Although there were numerous Nazi
war criminals who could still be brought to trial, not a single one
was ever punished in the Baltics, which had the worst record of local
collaboration, and only two have been punished in democratic eastern
Europe. Although various leaders issued public apologies (usually
in Israel, almost never at home), they failed to deliver in terms
of prosecution, restitution, education and documentation. Even worse,
Holocaust-related issues became the main cause of renewed local antisemitism,
which threatened the minuscule remnant Jewish communities in these
countries.
For some reason, these issues, which should have been highly significant
in determining the candidacy of these countries for European Union
and Nato membership, were apparently not taken into account. Suddenly,
these countries have the legitimacy of those memberships without
having fully internalised the concomitant values. Miliband is correct
in pointing out the obvious flaws of the Conservatives' new allies.
But they are only the tip of the eastern European right wing, which
is determined to rewrite the history of the second world war in a
way that no self-respecting European should accept. By joining forces
with parties such as Fatherland and Freedom and Law and Justice,
the Conservatives are granting important legitimacy to a false narrative
that seeks to whitewash war crimes and erase the heroic victory of
those who saved the world from Hitler and the Nazis.
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