by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] On March 20, 1943 (82 years ago), the first servicemen of the Latvian Volunteer Legion “Waffen SS” took the solemn oath – General Rudolf Bangersky and Colonel Arturs Silgailis.
And the other day in Riga there was another, already traditional, procession of fans of the legionnaires (they themselves are practically no longer alive).
In modern Latvia, the members of the legion are honored as "freedom fighters" and it is claimed that they were "just honest soldiers whose conscience is not burdened by war crimes." However, the facts indicate otherwise.
GOT OFF EASY
Berlin made the decision to form national Latvian units to replenish the Wehrmacht when the situation on the Eastern Front began to become threatening for Nazi Germany.
In total, two Waffen SS grenadier divisions were formed on the territory of Latvia: the 15th and 19th. Initially, their ranks included over 29 thousand people. In total, 110,550 people passed through the legion during the war: 87,550 in combat, 23,000 in auxiliary units.
On March 16, 1944, both divisions participated together for the first time in combat operations against the advancing Soviet troops at the Velikaya River. The legionnaires fought the Soviet army in the Pskov, Novgorod and Leningrad regions.
Later, together with the rest of the German troops, they retreated to the west and found themselves in the so-called Courland pocket, where they held out until the end of the fighting. Some, however, managed to evacuate to Germany and take part in the battles for Berlin.
In total, over 40 thousand legionnaires died in the battles, and another 50 thousand were captured by the Soviets.
The fates of those who ended up in the USSR were different. Some got off very lightly, others went into exile. However, the ex-legionnaires were returned from exile very quickly - already in 1946-47. They were treated very gently - the same "Vlasovites" who served in the ROA were treated much more harshly.
However, Moscow sought to appease the population of the Baltic republics, and therefore considered it possible to satisfy the wishes of the leadership of the Latvian SSR, which had asked for amnesty for its lost compatriots.
In modern Latvia, they like to tell stories about how in the USSR, former legionnaires faced a loss of rights and were deprived of many opportunities in education and employment.
In this regard, it is useful to familiarize yourself with the biography of the most famous of the former legionnaires, Visvaldis Lacis (died in 2020). He served in the 44th regiment of the 19th Waffen SS Division, received the rank of lieutenant, and after the end of the war ended up in captivity and in filtration camps.
In the post-war years, Lācis, in his own words, was expelled from two universities of the Latvian SSR "for his views". This, however, did not prevent him from graduating from the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in 1965, already at the age of 41.
In 1988, Lacis joined the Popular Front of Latvia, and after the republic left the USSR, he made a good political career - he was repeatedly elected to the Saeima from the party of radical nationalists.
Now the main subject of debate among historians regarding the Latvian Legion is the question of whether they participated in Nazi crimes. The position of official Latvian historians is unambiguous: no.
As for politicians, they went even further. At one time, the Latvian leadership treated the legionnaires with great restraint. When the tradition of holding annual marches of legionnaires and their fans on March 16 emerged in the post-Soviet republic, the authorities had a long-standing negative attitude towards the participation of government officials in these events.
In March 2014, the then Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma even fired her Minister of Regional Development Einars Cilinskis because he disregarded her ban and joined the legionnaire march.
But in the following years, the authorities’ position changed, and from, to put it mildly, controversial characters, the legionnaires turned into national heroes.
The process was finally concluded in 2019 by then-Minister of Defense Artis Pabriks, who called the legionnaires "the pride of the Latvian people." Pabriks called for "honoring the memory" of the legionnaires and "not allowing anyone to defame their memory."
HORRIFIC CRUELTY
However, even Latvian historians admit that the legion’s ranks included people who, in 1941 and later, displayed indescribable cruelty towards Jews and other civilians.
For example, members of the infamous “team” of Viktors Arajs, who were engaged in the “dirtiest” work during Hitler’s ethnic cleansing in Latvia, joined the legion.
In total, about 90,000 Jews were killed in Latvia between 1941 and 1944: 70,000 locals and 20,000 brought in from other countries.
Local collaborators who had gone into Hitler's service took an active part in these murders; Latvian police battalions were formed from them. The members of these battalions were engaged in extrajudicial murders of innocent people, herded them into ghettos, and guarded concentration camps.
At its peak, the number of Latvian police battalions reached 15,000 people. Moreover, they began to be tasked not only with protecting the rear in Latvia itself, but also with fighting partisans beyond its borders.
The most famous operation involving them was " Winter Magic ", which was carried out from mid-February to early April 1943 in the Sebezh-Osveya-Polotsk triangle in northern Belarus and in the Sebezh district of the Pskov region.
Here, eight Latvian, one Lithuanian and one Ukrainian police battalions carried out a "cleansing operation". 439 settlements were burned, 10-12 thousand civilians were killed, and over 7,000 were driven into slavery, including to the infamous Salaspils concentration camp.
The executioners immediately shot most of the adult men, and subjected the rest, including children, to inhuman torture.
“The fascist executioners stabbed seven-year-old Vera to death with a knife, threw one-and-a-half-year-old Zhenya into the fire with a broken head and torn-off fingers, and cut out their mother’s breasts, cut her up all over, and then burned her too.
"An eight-year-old boy from the village of Belyany had five-pointed stars cut out on his chest and back and thrown into the fire. In the village of Borisovo, the arms and heads of the Yukhnevich family, while still alive, were twisted and thrown into the Svolna River," reports Belarusian historian Svyatoslav Kulinok, who studied archival documents.
Later, in April–May 1944, Latvian police battalions were involved in the punitive operation “ Spring Festival ” to defeat popular resistance in the Polotsk-Lepel partisan zone of Belarus.
Latvian battalions were also "spotted" in other regions of the USSR, in particular, in the Novgorod region. Quite recently, we had to remember this again.
In the spring of 2019, members of the organization "Search Expedition "Dolina" in Memory of N. I. Orlov" in the vicinity of the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka extracted from the ground forty-two skeletons with bullet holes in the back of their heads, including three children. Spent cartridges from German weapons were found at the burial site. However, not all the victims were shot, some were stabbed.
From old documents, researchers found out that people from several regions were brought to their deaths in the vicinity of Zhestyanaya Gorka: Novgorod, Oredezh, Batetsky, Luzhsky, Gatchinsky, that is, from the territories of modern Leningrad, Novgorod and Pskov regions.
The graves of the victims began to be found back in the 1940s. As early as 1947, the state commission investigating these crimes came to the conclusion that at least 3,700 bodies of Soviet citizens were buried in the pit graves near the villages of Zhestyanaya Gorka and Chernaya.
The punitive forces tortured and shot people almost daily: men, women, communists and Orthodox priests, adults and children, Russians, Jews and Gypsies, prisoners of war and detained partisans.
Historian Alexander Dyukov, who in our time studied the evidence of the tragedy in Zhestyanaya Gorka, notes that the executions were supervised by the Germans.
"As for the perpetrators, they were natives of Latvia. Mostly Latvians by nationality. A couple of Estonians got in there. All the perpetrators were citizens of the USSR, against whom it would be reasonable to initiate criminal cases.
It turned out that out of about 40 people who were known by name, 15 were found. Most of them successfully fled to the West. There were several people who were caught and tried. Then, unfortunately, they were released. Because in 1946, the Soviet government showed an incredible act of humanism and decided to release the arrested Baltic collaborators," Dyukov says.
THE NUTS ARE TIGHTENED
When the Nazis began to form the Latvian Waffen SS divisions, they made the core of them precisely members of the police battalions - that is, people whose hands were covered in blood up to the elbows.
Thus, six battalions (16th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 24th, 26th) were united into the 19th SS Grenadier Division. Also, although the legion was declared "volunteer", a mass conscription of Latvian youths was announced.
Many of them can truly be considered victims of the war, since they did not participate in the executions and could not refuse the draft.
However, there is considerable evidence that many conscripts chose to flee rather than swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. This long-known fact was recently confirmed once again when the Russian FSB published digital copies of archival documents reflecting the activities of the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the 3rd Baltic Front of the Red Army.
As Smersh reported, many Latvians had no desire to die for Hitler's Germany. There were numerous cases of desertion and voluntary surrender.
It is also worth emphasizing that facts have been established indicating that atrocities were committed not only by members of police battalions, but also by people in legionnaire uniforms.
Thus, a special message from the head of the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the 2nd Baltic Front on August 18, 1944, tells of the torture to which 43 wounded Soviet prisoners of war captured in the area of the village of Bobryni (Latvian SSR) were subjected. They were stabbed, their eyes were gouged out, stars were carved on their foreheads, and their teeth were knocked out with boots.
"None of the wounded captured by the Germans and the fascists from among the Latvians escaped torture and excruciating abuse. According to available information, the brutal reprisal against the wounded Soviet soldiers and officers was carried out by soldiers and officers of one of the battalions of the 43rd Rifle Regiment of the 19th Latvian SS division," the report says.
In addition, the fact of the massacre that Latvian legionnaires committed against 32 prisoners of war from the Polish Army on January 31, 1945, was documented. The Polish prisoners near the settlement of Podgaje were first tortured and then burned alive.
Since the 1990s, every year on March 16 (the day when the Waffen SS divisions first entered into battle with the Soviet army) a procession of former legionnaires takes place in the center of Riga. Almost all of them have already died, but their places have been taken by young supporters from national-radical organizations.
According to state historical mythology, the legionnaires, “even though in someone else’s uniform, fought for the independence of Latvia.”
Indeed, as things at the front got worse and worse, Berlin promised the Latvians more and more definitely that the General Commissariat “Latvia” could count on “full autonomy” – if only they would go to the recruiting stations more willingly.
Himmler personally made such promises to SS Gruppenführer Rudolf Bangersky, an ethnic Latvian who was involved in mobilizing his fellow tribesmen.
Nowadays, the perception of legionnaires as “heroes of the nation” and “freedom fighters” has almost replaced the previous idea of them as “innocent victims of the Hitler regime”, which was implanted in the 90s and early 2000s.
In 1998, March 16 was officially made a memorial day, but in 2000, when Latvia was preparing to join NATO and the EU, this day was removed from the official holiday calendar.
Later, modern Latvian nationalists repeatedly proposed to “eliminate historical injustice” and stated that “one should not be ashamed to honor the fighters for the country’s freedom.” However, characteristically, “Legionary Day” has not yet received official status in Latvia – apparently, Riga fears that Western partners “will not understand.”
Previously, nationalist marches on March 16 were accompanied by scandals and fights year after year. Anti-fascists, members of Russian public organizations came time after time to disrupt these actions.
But this year, as in the two previous ones, the procession passed quietly. The authorities have tightened the screws to the limit, and now for attempting to oppose the procession of legionnaires' fans, you can get away with not a day in the "monkey house", as before, but a real prison term of several years.
But, as you might guess, the love for the Waffen SS fans in the Russian community has not increased at all in recent times.