Within the last two weeks, both Lithuania and Latvia hosted well-attended marches
likely to send shivers down Holocaust survivors’ spines and arouse
tragic memories.
These are hard times for the Jews of Lithuania and Latvia, especially
for the Holocaust survivors among them. Within the last two weeks,
one of the main avenues of the capital cities of each country hosted
a well-attended march likely to send shivers down their spines and
arouse tragic memories.
On March 11, about one thousand Lithuanian ultranationalists and neo- Nazis,
bolstered by a delegation of their German counterparts, marched down
Gediminas Avenue in the heart of Vilnius under police protection
(the only persons arrested were two of the handful of brave Lithuanian
protestors) shouting “Lithuania for Lithuanians” and waving swastika
symbols, which in May 2010 were approved by a local court as “symbols
of Lithuanian heritage.”
Five days later, about 2,500 Latvians gathered to
support a march in Riga by veterans of the Latvian SS Legion from
a local church to lay wreaths at the Freedom Monument, the symbol
of Latvian independence. And while the marches are ostensibly different
– the one in Lithuania focusing on the present and the one in Latvia
dedicated to remembering the past - they both broadcast a chilling
message of hostility for minorities and support for the same fascist
nationalism which spawned the zealous collaboration of so many of
their countrymen with Nazi Germany in the mass murder of Jews during
the Holocaust.
THIS WAS not the first time these marches have taken
place. The one in Lithuania was held for the fourth year in a row
and the number of its participants has steadily grown. The Latvian
march has been going on for longer, but in this case as well, it
appears that this year’s crowd was larger than in the past. Every
year, efforts are made in both countries to legally prohibit the
events, but ultimately local courts opt for freedom of expression.
After all, similar marches are held in Germany (without Nazi or SS
symbols which are banned by law) and in the United States and other
countries. Thus while Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Lithuania
punishable by incarceration, local officials and judges fail to see
the connection between swastika- bearing demonstrators marching in
the capital of a member-state in good standing of the European Union
and NATO and the crimes committed under that very symbol.
In Latvia, the situation is slightly more complicated,
but ultimately it is the same ultranationalism and xenophobia, coupled
with a healthy dose of anti-Semitism, which feuls the determination
of Latvians to glorify those who fought alongside Nazi Germany for
a victory of the Third Reich.
Advocates of the march continue to insist that those
who served in the Latvian SS Legion had no allegiance to Germany
and were “freedom fighters,” battling for an independent Latvia,
but the sad reality is that the Nazis had no such intentions, regardless
of the number of locals serving in the Waffen-SS.
Even worse, these nationalists fail to acknowledge
the important fact that many of Latvia’s worst murderers of Jews
volunteered to serve in the Legion and were among its officers. Thus
the attempts to turn these Legion veterans into Latvian heroes is
not only a distortion of history, but is also a heartless affront
to the Jewish communiy in general, and the survivors among them in
particular.
If these marches had been organized by marginal political
elements and had been roundly criticized by local government leaders,
it might have been possible to dismiss them as upsetting although
not critical, but unfortunately, that is not the case.
In Lithuania, the political leadership failed to speak
out in real time and only did so half-heartedly in response to criticism,
mostly from Jewish groups abroad. Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius
criticized the march only because it discredited “patriotism,” while
it took President Dalia Grybauskaite five days to say that “patriotic
parades are welcome, but marches inciting ethnic hatred shouldn’t
take place.”
Given the fact that among the leaders of the march
in Vilnius were Kazimieras Uoka, a member of parliament from the
prime minister’s party and Ricardas Cekutis, a high official of the
government-sponsored Genocide Research Center, much more unequivocal
criticism was sorely lacking. In Latvia, Foreign Minister Girts Kristovskis
has nothing bad to say about the march by SS veterans, but used the
occasion to lump together Communist and Nazi crimes,as part of the
ongoing campaign by the Baltic countries to relativize Holocaust
crimes and help hide their own extensive complicity in the atrocities
of the Shoa.
IN THIS dismal landscape, a letter of protest signed
by 600 Lithuanian intellectuals calling upon the leaders of their
country to “condemn and distance themselves from the march of the
extreme right and neo-Nazis,” shines out like a beacon of hope, but
without external support and pressure, the chances for its success
are very minimal.
And in that context, the silence from Brussels, Washington,
and Jerusalem is incomprehensible.
jpost.com
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