It is very rare,
if not unprecedented, for an American ambassador to write
an op-ed piece in a local newspaper severely criticizing
the country he is serving in for failing to take sufficient
measures to prosecute local Nazi war criminals, but that
is precisely what Joseph De Thomas, U.S. ambassador to Estonia,
did in late May this year. In a pointed op-ed piece which
appeared on May 28 in the Estonian daily Eesti Paevaleht,
Ambassador De Thomas took his host country to task for its
failure to adequately deal with three major issues relating
to the Holocaust and suggested the following practical steps
to help remedy the situation. In his words, Estonia had to “Do
justice where justice is needed,” i.e. take a proactive
stance on the prosecution of Estonian Nazi war criminals,
not a single one of whom had been brought to trial since
Estonia obtained its independence from the Soviet Union (as
opposed to Communist criminals many of whom have been brought
to trial); “Recognize the Holocaust is part of Estonia’s
history,” i.e. observe Yom Hashoa in a dignified and
significant manner and mark all the sites in the country
in which the crimes of the Holocaust were committed; and “Teach
our children about the past,” i.e. make sure that the
subject of the Holocaust is adequately covered in Estonian
textbooks, which as far as Ambassador De Thomas understood
is not currently the case.
The article by Ambassador De Thomas aroused a flood of angry
responses from Estonian officials, local journalists and
irate Estonian citizens, practically all of whom defended
their country’s record in dealing with Holocaust issues.
Some pointed out that Estonian textbooks have more than a
page and a half on the Holocaust, as Ambassador De Thomas
alleged, while others responded that his focus on the prosecution
of Nazi, rather than Communist, criminals constituted a discriminatory
application of justice which was a violation of Estonia’s
constitution (not to mention American principles of law).
And then there were the accusations made by prominent columnist
Eerik-Niiles Kross, son of the famous Estonian novelist Jaan
Kross and former director of the Estonian Secret Service,
who had the audacity to suggest that if Estonians have not
rushed to cherish the memory of Estonian Jews who perished
during the German occupation it was primarily dire to the “ridiculous
exaggerations of Efraim Zuroff [regarding the complicity
of Estonians in the crime of the Holocaust]
and the activities of Estonian Jews in the Soviet destroyer battalions [KGB
operatives who took harsh measures against thousands of Estonian citizens,
among them hundreds of Jews, in 1941 and after World War II].” In short,
the Estonian response was essentially one of denial, especially in regard to
the issue of the prosecution of Estonian Nazi war criminals.
As someone who has followed this issue closely for many
years and has actively sought to bring Estonian Nazi war
criminals to justice, I think that Ambassador De Thomas’ article
not only accurately reflected the Estonian reality, but focused
on the heart of the problem – the refusal of Estonians
to fully acknowledge and internalize the fact that numerous
Estonians participated in the crimes of the Holocaust. And
although the amnesia regarding the role played by local collaborators
in implementing the Final Solution is endemic throughout
the Baltics, the situation in Estonia is particularly difficult
for several reasons. The first is the extremely small size
of the prewar local Jewish community which only numbered
approximately four thousand five hundred Jews. The second
is the fact that close to eighty percent of Estonian Jewry
succeeded in escaping to the Soviet interior before the Nazis
arrived in the country, leaving behind only about one thousand
local Jews in Estonia while it was under Nazi occupation.
The third factor is that numerically speaking far more foreign
Jews were murdered in Estonia than local Jews, which makes
identification and/or sympathy with the victims, as well
as assuming responsibility to punish the perpetrators, more
difficult. The last factor is that many of the crimes committed
against Jews by Estonian police battalions, both inside Estonia
but especially outside the country (in Belarus, Poland, and
Lithuania) were virtually unknown to the Estonian public
which only recently found out that they had transpired.
All of these factors led many Estonians to believe that unlike
their Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Latvia, who have been
forced to deal with the issue of local collaboration with the
Nazis from the moment they obtained their independence, that
question was virtually irrelevant in Estonia. The historic
facts, however, clearly prove otherwise, as has been unequivocally
demonstrated by the findings of the International Commission
for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity established
by Estonian President Lemart Meri in 1998 to investigate the
crimes committed during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of
Estonia. According to the summary findings of the commission
which were released in January 2001, numerous Estonians bear
at least a share of the responsibility for:
1. |
the murder of
virtually all the Estonian Jews who were living in the
country when it was occupied by the Nazis; |
2. |
the murder of approximately
3,000 Jews deported in 1942 from the Theresienstadt Ghetto
to the Jagala labor camp who were killed at Kalevi-Liiva; |
3. |
the murder of thousands of
Jews deported to the Vaivara camp complex who were killed
prior to the Russian advance into Estonia; |
4. |
the persecution and/or murder
of thousands of Jews in Estonia, Belarus, Poland and
Lithuania by members of the Estonian Legion and various
Estonian police battalions. |
Yet neither these events themselves nor their revelation
by the commission have ever been translated into practical
legal action against a single Estonian Holocaust perpetrator
(living in the country or abroad) during more than a decade
which has passed since Estonia regained its independence.
In fact, throughout this period, the Estonian authorities
have failed to launch a single such investigation on their
our initiative. In this regard, Estonians like to point to
the numerous prosecutions of local Nazi collaborators carried
out by the Soviet authorities immediately after World War
II and well into the early seventies, which ostensibly rid
the country of any and all unprosecuted Holocaust perpetrators.
The fact remains, however, that Estonia could have taken
legal action against numerous Nazi war criminals since it
obtained independence, but there was no political will to
do so. The most blatant examples of Estonia’s failure
to take action against Estonian Nazi war criminals are the
cases of Evald Mikson and Harri Mannil, both of whom escaped
overseas during World War II and were discovered living in
Iceland and Venezuela respectively. Mikson had been the leader
of the Omakaitse (a group of Estonian nationalists who volunteered
for security tasks and served as vigilante squads during
the initial weeks following the Nazi invasion of Poland and
the Baltics) in the Vonnu district and later served as Deputy
Chief of the Estonian Political Police in the Tallinn-Harju
district. In both capacities, he actively participated in
the persecution and murder of numerous civilians, primarily
Jews. Mannil served under Mikson in Tallinn and was an active
participant in the arrest of many civilians who were subsequently
murdered by the Estonian police.
Rather than actively seek the extradition of these two criminals,
the Estonian authorities initially chose to provide support
for Mikson and to ignore Mannil. Thus, for example, after
Mikson’s presence in Reykjavik was exposed by the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, which demanded that Iceland take action
against him, the Estonian Foreign Ministry published a communiqué claiming
that Mikson “was not guilty of any crimes, and least
of all against the Jewish people,” and accused Soviet
officials of trying to frame him, despite the existence in
the Estonian archives of highly –incriminating documents
clearly proving Mikson’s involvement in serious crimes.
In Mannil’s case, it was only after the Wiesenthal
Center submitted an official request for his case to be investigated
by the Estonian authorities that such a step was finally
taken last year. In that regard, the fact that Mannil is
reputedly not only the world’s richest Estonian but
also a very generous contributor to local cultural institutions
undoubtedly reinforced the general reluctance of the Estonian
authorities to actively pursue the cases of Estonian Nazi
war criminals. (Such reluctance, it should be noted, has
never been the case in Estonia as far as Communist criminals
are concerned, many of whom have already been put on trial.)
Following the revelations last year by the International
Commission of the participation of members of the 36th Estonian
Police Battalion in the murder of approximately 2,500 Jews
on August 7, 1942 in Nowogrudok, Poland and the active involvement
of Estonian Police Battalions in genocide and crimes against
humanity in Estonia, Poland and Lithuania, I urged Prime
Minister Mart Laar to establish a special unit to investigates
Estonian Nazi war criminals. To my surprise, Laar responded
by informing me that such a unit had already been set up
in the framework of the Security Police. Under such circumstances,
one would imagine that for the first time, Estonia would
initiate investigations of Estonian Nazi war criminals which
might result in prosecutions. Yet almost a year later, not
a single such investigation has been launched and we can
only hope that some action will be taken so that at least
a few of those Estonian murderers who committed the crimes
of the Shoa will indeed be held accountable for their crimes.
And this is precisely why Ambassador De Thomas’ article
was not only accurate in this regard, but was long overdue
and badly needed by a society in deep denial of the complicity
of its nationals in the Holocaust.
|