Holocaust in Baltics; Updated!

Stahlecker reported in the winter of 1941 to Berlin that his Einatzgruppe A had done an exceptional job in the field and murdered nearly an horrific 250,000 Jewish citizens in the Baltic states
http://hubpages.com/hub/Arjas-Kommando-Hitlers-Latvian-Executioners

Bruno Jadicke, another nazi, Holocaust in Latvia

Baltics:
In April 1941, on the eve on the German invasion, Alfred Rosenberg [dead], Reich minister for the Occupied Eastern territories, a Baltic German, born and raised in Tallinn, Estonia, laid out his plans for the East. According to Rosenberg a future policy was created:

Germanization (Eindeutschung) of the “racially suitable” elements.
Colonization by Germanic peoples.
Exile, deportations of undesirable elements.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Estonia_during_World_War_II

The training and replacement units of the division based at Klooga under the command of Sturmbannführer Georg Ahlemann (d. 1991) provided guards for the perimeters : 20th Waffen division , wiki

Evald Mikson (Icelandic: Eðvald Hinriksson), (12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1911, Tartu, Livonia, Russian Empire – 27 December 1993, Reykjavík, Iceland) was a goalkeeper in the Estonian national football team,  winning 7 caps between 1934 and 1938. He has been accused of playing an active  role in the murder of Jews in Estonia during his service as Deputy Chief of the  Estonian Sicherheitspolizei in the Tallinn-Harju  district during World War II.^[1]

Mikson has been accused  by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of committing  serious war crimes against Jews during the Second  World War, when he was working as Deputy Head of Police in Tallinn/Harjumaa. At the end of the war, he escaped to Sweden, where he was considered an  undesired person and war criminal after being questioned by a Stockholm court.  There was never any question of extradition to the Soviet Union. In 1946 he was transported to the  Norwegian border where a boat to Venezuela waited in Halden. However, the boat stranded in Iceland where he  remained until his death. An application for a visa to the United States was denied in  1947, after information on his background as war criminal had been distributed  via FBI^{[citation  needed]}.

In 1993, the Icelandic government set up a war crime investigation against  Mikson, but he died before coming before court.

Estonian Historical  Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity confirmed that  Mikson was guilty of war crimes.^[1]

Ain Ervin Mere, d. 1969, free in UK.

Estonia became a part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. A Sicherheitspolizei  (Security Police) was established for internal security under the leadership of Ain Mere in  1942. Estonia was declared Judenfrei quite early by the German occupation  regime at the Wannsee Conference.^[4] Jews  that had remained in Estonia (929 according to the most recent calculation^[5]) were  killed.^[6] Fewer than a  dozen Estonian Jews are known to have survived the war in Estonia.^[5]

Hans Aumeier (August 20, 1906 – January 28, 1948) was a Nazi war criminal, an SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) and the deputy commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. He was also responsible for the camps in Estonia.

=======
A few more Nazi names associated with the Holocaust:
Lucian Damianus Wysocki (* 18. Januar 1899 in Gentomie, Kreis Preußisch Stargard; † 13. Dezember 1964 in Rheinhausen

Wilhelm Christian von Grolman (* 16. Juli 1894 in Schweidnitz; † 20. Juni 1985 in München)

Walther Schröder, auch Walter Schröder (* 26. November 1902 in Lübeck; † 31. Oktober 1973 )

Walter C. A. Alnor (* 29. Oktober 1892 in Gaarden / Holstein; † 13. Dezember 1972 in Bad Segeberg) Reichskommissariat Ostland im lettischen Libau (Liepāja).

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskommissariat_Ostland
More names here. “To what extent Walter Alnor in the murder of the Jews in his district was involved, cannot be determined on the basis of existing sources.” source: Wiki.de, bio

Hugo Wittrock (* 19. Juli 1873 in Laugo auf Ösel in Estland; † 25. August 1958 in Lübeck

tvijas okupācija 1941-1945 wikipedia lv, source

Third, was arrested after the driver of the order of self-defense. Fourth, the arrested people who tried to settle personal hostility. 1941st July V. Štālekera appointed prefect of Riga, *Robert Stiglitz reported Latvian Security Police and SD chief *Krauzem only in July during the first nine days alone in Riga had been arrested or detained persons in 1192. *John Limbēns (1919), who 1941st July voluntarily joined Arāja team, check showed that the team 1941st In the summer every night arrests of 30-40 people.

Edgar Laipenieks [d. 1998], Tscherim Soobzokov und Vilis Hazners.
accused, but not found guilty.

http://forum.axishistory.com/v­iewtopic.php?t=9938&highlight=­viktors+arajs
More on Arais Commando

Lithuanian and Latvian auxiliary military units with German Einsatzgruppen detachments participated in the extermination of the Jewish population in their countries, as well as assisting the Nazis elsewhere, such as deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto. The Arajs Commando, a Latvian volunteer police unit, for example, killed 26,000 Latvian Jews and was responsible for assisting in the killing of 60,000 more Jews.

About 75% of Estonia’s Jewish community, aware of the fate that otherwise awaited them, managed to escape to the Soviet Union; virtually all the remainder (between 950 and 1000 people) were killed by Einsatzgruppe A and local collaborators before the end of 1941. (Source: Max Jakobson Commission Investigation of Crimes against Humanity)

http://www.martinfrost.ws/html­files/holocaust.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar­y.org/jsource/Holocaust/batdia­ry.html
Men from the Baltic States were with Stroop when he burned down the Warsaw Ghetto.

Rudolf Pannier:survived the war. He died on the 19 August 1978 in Hamburg.[2]

1943 he was given commanded of SS Jäger Battalion 500,[2] a Waffen SS unit that specialized in antipartisans warfare and was stationed in the Minsk area. This unit was disbanded in June 1944, and all its men sent as replacements to others Waffen-SS units. In November 1944 Pannier was given command of the 31st Waffen-Grenadier Regiment der SS, 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galicia (1st Ukrainian).[2]

The 204th Schutzmannschafts Battalion was an SS guard unit composed from the ethnic Ukrainians personnel drafted at the Lemberg area of the Distrikt Galizien at January — February 1943. Members of the unit committed atrocities against Jews and Communist party members during early German occupation[1] The unit provided guards for concentration camp Pustków[2]. In July 1943 it was reinforced to 800 strength by the volunteers signed for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian). In late July 1944 battalion personnel was transferred into reserve regiment of the 14 SS Freiwilligen Division “Galizien”.[3]
Thousands died at this camp

Maksym Skorupsky (Maks) (Ukrainian: Максим Скорупський; also known by his pseudonym Maks) (November 12, 1912 — December 11, 1985) was a Ukrainian military leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Associated with above-mentioned Galician SS.

http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Latvia-1941-1944-Missing-Center/1
Ezergailis, book on Holocaust in Latvia

another book on the same subject

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/world-news/latvians-celebrate-ss-soldiers-2100980.html

Latvia Legionnaires

Some Latvian Police who participated in the Holocaust later joined the fight against the Soviet Union.

forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=133151

Baltics, Holocaust

The Holocaust in latvia
The 15th division of the Waffen SS, to which the men of Einsatzkommandos were joined after all ghettos were annihilated”.

axishistory

Veterans of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS now parade through Riga
—————————
http://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/latvia/history/legion/

They The Latvian gov’t is actively trying to downplay the role of the Arajs Commando in the formation of the Latvian Legionnaires, who were subject to the German Waffen SS and Wehrmacht.

This document, put out by Latvia, has only one sentence or two about the Holocaust (of the Jews).

‘The * document speaks to the emergence of pro-Fascist organisations, which supposedly emerged after World War I. It says that the “Aizsargi” (Home Guard) organisation appeared and helped the leader of the Latvian Farmers Union, Kārlis Ulmanis, to stage his coup on May 15, 1934. In the late 1930s, according to the authors of this document, the Home Guard, members of the Pērkoņkrusts (Cross of Thunder) organisation and other nationalists began to collaborate with Germany, which in June 1941 led them to be active participants in the destruction of the Latvian Jewish community. Later, claims the Foreign Ministry, Latvian police battalions became involved in the slaughter of civilians, as did Waffen-SS units of Latvians. ”

*They’re referring to a Russian document.

“There is absolutely no reason to claim that there were any direct links between the Latvian Legion, which was established only at the beginning of 1943, and the war crimes that were previously committed by military or paramilitary organisations. The propaganda that is being waged against Latvia seeks to establish links between self-defence units, police battalions and the Latvian Legion, but the bottom line is that these links are absolutely false. Latvian soldiers did not take part in any slaughter of civilians, they fought against the military of the Soviet Union and the Red Army which had only a few years earlier put an end to the country’s independence, had killed and deported countless civilians and was threatening to re-occupy Latvia. There has never been a court case in which a member of the Latvian Legion has been accused of war crimes that have been committed in the context of the Legion. ”

“The Latvian Legion was established approximately one year after the last mass murder of Jews in Latvia. At the very end of World War II, people who had committed war crimes joined the Nazi Party and the security services (Sicherheitsdienst) of the SS, but that does not mean that the entire Latvian Legion was a criminal organisation. No community can be judged on the basis of what individuals have done.”

This is a whitewash of the percentage of the Legionnaires who did participate in the Holocaust

http://www.amazon.com/Latvian Legion Arturs Silgailis/dp/0912138351
*Arturs Silgailis was in charge of staff!

Here again in a comment, it shows that the author of this book barely mentions the role of Latvians in the Holocaust

http://www.youtube.com/watch=3dn_gxwd1Z8&feature=related

German “liberators” of Latvia

The Latvian Auxiliary Police Battalions and the latvian Legion were involved, alongside the Nazis, in the Holocaust. The murder of Latvian Jews was basically completed by the end of 1941. The Schutzmannschaften Battalions were formed by the German authorities in late 1941 and 1942. There were two controversial Soviet trials against members of two of the battalions, which resulted in convictions. It is also known that two battalions were involved in guard duties at the Warsaw Ghetto.

However, the “Latvian SS Volunteer Legion”, as it was officially called despite the fact that most of the soldiers were conscripted, was founded by Hitler’s decree of 10 February 1943. It included some of the front-line police battalions and eventually some members of the Arājs Commando, but the Legion’s two divisions, manned basically by conscripts, were only involved in military combat actions.

source : Latvian gov’t

http://www.li.lv/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=141

The members of the Latvian divisions of the SS were not all part of the Holocaust. Many went on to assist the Allied policing of Nuremberg during the trial. But they cannot whitewash history.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/08/holocaust-baltic-lithuania-latvia

The real meaning of the attempt to equate Nazi genocide with Soviet repression is clearest in the Baltic republics, where collaboration with SS death squads and direct participation in the mass murder of Jews was at its most extreme, and politicians are at pains to turn perpetrators into victims.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/second-world-war-soviet-pact

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/03/baltic-far-right-eu

article on the problems

===========
http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/holocaust.html

Holocaust in the Baltics. Thousands of Jews were sent to Siberia by the Soviets, disproving many of the lies now spreading on the internet.

http://www.otto5.com/_glp/LatvianSSMen.htm

Analysis of Latvian SS. Before 1943, it was involved in the Holocaust. Afterward, it was formed into a military unit, and drafted men to fight the USSR. Hence the controversy on whether or not the marches should be banned.

ithaca.edu/icq/2006v4/depts/south_hill/sht2006_4latvia.htm
Ezergailis, Historian honored by Latvia

http://holocaustcontroversiesblogspot.com/2008/04/liepaja.html

“Liepaja LATVIA therefore gives us a further demonstration of the bankruptcy of Holocaust denial. To deny that the Nazis deliberately killed women and children from Liepaja, deniers have to ignore the existence of a handwritten diary by the SS and Police Chief, photographs taken by a perpetrator who was tried in a West German court, a census that the Nazis carried out two months after they invaded Latvia, and residential data collected by the Nazis in 1942, showing that many of the people in earlier censuses had been killed. Such denial can only be a deliberate blindness to evidence of genocide.”

**http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/holocaust.html
=====

Estonia:

Ralf Gerrets hanged in Estonia.

Jaan Viik, hanged.

Wilhelm Werle (?) No info on axishistory. b. 1895. Presumed dead.

Janis Alfred Berzins, holocaust in latvia. Latvian

Paul Heyler, holocaust in estonia. German.

http://web.me.com/ezergail/A._Ezergailis_on_Holocaust/Weiss-Wendt_on_Estonia.html

 
Estonian units took an active part in at least one well-documented round-up and mass murder in Belarus. The 36th Police Battalion participated on August 7, 1942 in the gathering together and shooting of almost all the Jews still surviving in the town of Novogrudok

forum.axishistory.com/v­iewtopic.php?t=51105

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?MediaId=522

Image of Klooga camp, Estonia. Strong image, careful viewing.

Estonian SS.

Estonian Auxiliary Police, murdered the Jews of Estonia along with Nazis. DId those Policemen later go on to join the Nazis in the fight against the Soviets?

Estonian SS and Nazi SS murdered **2,000 Jewish prisoners at Klooga-Vaivara. source

Estonian Report on Crimes against Humanity acknowledges that “287th Estonian Schuma (later incorporated into the 20th SS Division) battalion helped execute the 2,000 surviving KZ inmates at Klooga due to the Soviet advance ”

———
Julius Ennok

http://www.axishistory.com/ind;ex.php?id=1931

It clearly shows that a certain number of 20 th Grenadier Waffen SS were involved in death camps and Einsatzgruppen.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=133477

Estonian SS, involved in war crimes

Ervin Viks
===========
Lithuania:
Vilnius’s Museum of Genocide Victims barely mentions the 200,000 Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust and Estonian parliamentarians honour those who served the Third Reich as “fighters for independence”.

Margolis is especially loathed by proponents of the “double genocide” industry because she rediscovered, deciphered and published the long-lost diary of a Christian Pole, Kazimierz Sakowicz. Sakowicz, witness to tens of thousands of murders at the Ponar (Paneriai) site outside Vilnius recorded accurately that most of the killers were enthusiastic locals. Now resident in Rechovot, Israel, she is unable to return to her beloved hometown in Lithuania for fear of prosecutorial harassment.

But prosecuting those criminals for war crimes has been a disappointment, says Zuroff, because since its independence in 1991, Lithuania has failed to punish a single one of its own Holocaust war criminals.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/06/03/lithuania.nazi.prosecutions/index.html

Now, says Zuroff, Lithuania is trying to rewrite Holocaust history. “Nowhere in the world,” he says, “has a government gone to such lengths to obscure their role in the Holocaust. … Their mission is to change the history of the Holocaust to make themselves blameless.”

There is a report about Lithuanian Holocaust that explains it all very well. Yet they still foot dragged long enough until most perpetrators were dead. Clearly they have something to hide in Lithuania.

“The Nazis arrived after a year of occupation by the Soviet Union that was so brutal that many Lithuanians welcomed the Nazis when they arrived in June 1941.” The Holocaust happened in the wake of Nazi-Lithuanian-Soviet intrigue. The Nazis and Soviets both persecuted Jews, but the Nazis had the plan to destroy utterly the Jews of Lithuania.

The state-funded Museum of Genocide Victims in Lithuania
mandated to “collect, keep and present historic documents about forms of physical and spiritual genocide against the Lithuanian people”–omits over 200,000 Lithuanian Jews murdered by the Nazis with the help of local collaborators–apparently because Jews, then or now, aren’t real Lithuanians.
source: Simon Wiesenthal Center
——
The Nazis ordered the Holocaust, but they could not have completed it without ‘Helpers’ in the Baltic nations.

=====
new info:

Latvia
Voldemars Weiss d. 1944
wiki bio: On July 20 the Nazis disbanded this organization and ordered the formation of auxiliary police forces instead, with Lt. Col. Veiss being appointed Chief of the Auxiliary Police. At the end of 1941, he became First Deputy Director General of the Director General of the Interior when the Latvian Self-Administration was reorganized.

As early as autumn 1941 Latvian auxiliary police units, temporarily attached to the Wehrmacht, were first used in front line duties. This occasional employment continued until the 2nd Latvian Brigade was formed from six Latvian battalions, four of which had combat experience. At the end of April 1943 a three battalion formation fighting under name of Latvian Legion was withdrawn from the front line and renamed 1st Volunteer Regiment of the SS (Latvian), with a change of Wehrmacht ranks to those of Waffen-SS. Voldemārs Veiss was given command of this regiment, which was a part of the 2nd Latvian Brigade, and received a rank of Legion-Obersturmbannführer.

Martin Vagulāns
The Jelgava massacres were the killing of the Jewish population of the Jews of the city of Jelgava, Latvia that occurred in the second half of July or in early August 1941. The murders were carried out by German police units under the command of *Alfred Becu, with a significant contribution by Latvian auxiliary police organized by Mārtiņš Vagulāns. source: Jelgava massacres, wikipedia

Albert Sauer d. 1945

subsequently by the side in 17 February 1939 ordered to Mauthausen SS Sturmbannführer Franz Ziereis (executed) whom he replaced as commandant.[3]

In the period from 1941 to 1942, he had a service position in the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German nationality.

From September 1942 to April 1943 was again Sauer protective custody camp in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[4] Sauer was 1943 at the resolution of the Riga Ghetto involved. Later he was at times in camp commander KZ Riga-Slavkov Forest, the 1944 was vacated in July. This action was completed in September 1944. This resulted in Riga itself to larger massacres of prisoners and trapped.
=====
Otto Bräutigam (* 14. Mai 1895 in Wesel; † 30. April 1992 in Coesfeld)

Stahlecker; Prutzmann; Lange; all dead SD men (Gestapo).
—
Estonians:
Hjalmar-Johannes Mäe d 1978, quisling
Johanne Soodla, General d. 1965

Gustavs Celmiņš (April 1, 1899 – April 10, 1968)
was brought to America. He organized the Latvian Volunteers, which recruited the Latvian Aux. Police.

Major General Walter Schröder, the SS and Police Leader in Latvia;
(* November 26 1902 in Lübeck, † October 31 1973 ) was a German mechanical engineer, Nazi leaders (including as a member of the Reichstag and a member of the Lübeck citizenship), SS brigade leader and Police in Lübeck and as SS and Police Leader in Latvia; one of the most responsible for the murder of the Jews in the Reich Commissariat Ostland.

Kassner __?
Theodore Fründt, d 1984; escaped prosecution
http://www.gegenwind.info/128/reichskommissariat.html

Hugo Wittrock (* July 19 1873 in Laugo on Saaremaa in Estonia , † August 25 1958 in Lübeck)
Kube, Wilhelm (dead)
Zenner
Dr. Bush, couldn’t find anything
Litzmann, Karl Siegmund: d 1945

Hinrich Möller (*[see below] April 20th 1906 in Grevenkop ; † October 13th 1974 in Neumünster ), the final SS brigadier and major general of police, was since 1934 head of the SS regiment 50 Flensburg and police officials there to. In 1941 he was in Estonia one of the most responsible for the murder of the Jews in the Reich Commissariat Ostland .
3 years

Gewecke, Hans d. 1991
received 4 1/2 years in 1971

Almost all other area commissioners and even their subordinates were never indicted.

Hinrich Lohse died in 1964, but three of the four former Department Head of the Imperial Commissioner at that time lived again in Schleswig-Holstein, in addition to Theodor Fründt (d. 1984; no punishment); the farmer Martin Matthiessen (d. 1990), president of the Water and Shipping Directorate in Kiel ; retired *Johann Lorenzen in Kiel; former Councilor William [Wilhelm?] Burmeister (d, 1984 )

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=144372), after Fründt the representative of the Reich Commissioner, now resided, 1968, in West Berlin. Also available as a potential suspect in Schleswig-Holstein: the active Secretary Heinz Wichmann [dead?], former personal assistant Lohse in Riga, and the former head of the department head of the Reich Commissioner, now director of government Dr. Karl Eger in Kiel [dead?].

Major General [Hinreich] Möller, the SS and Police Leader in Estonia; and Major General Lucian Wysocki, d. 1964 the SS and Police Leader in Lithuania.”
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian Wysocki

one of Eichmann’s men:
Carl Albrecht Oberg (* January 27th 1897 in Hamburg, † June 3rd 1965 in Flensburg) was a German businessman, National Socialist and SS and police leaders in Paris with ranks Obergruppenfiihrer (1944) and General of Police (1944) and Weapons SS (1945).[1]
Not much punishment, deported Jews of France. 8 years.

Carl Vincent Krogmann (* March 3rd 1889 in Hamburg, † March 14 1978 ) was a shipowner, banker and industrialist from Hamburg during the period of National Socialism, First Mayor of the city.

http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp530.htm

Dr. Adrian von Renteln,
In 1940, he was the “main office Head of Trade and Crafts in the national leadership of the Nazi Party,” a year later, Commissioner General in Lithuania, as such, he was on the part of civil administration in the mainly responsible for the murder of Lithuanian Jews during the German occupation.

1946 Renteln in the Soviet Union was executed. But according to another view (Dieckmann) may have succeeded to escape to South America.

Otto Teckmeier
Richard Nickel

Helmut Beck Broichsitter (1914-2000),[27], nothing on Wiki de

Lobe, Karlis
Latvian killer of Jews who went free

F­ritz Dietrich [Diedrich]
(Nazi_official) d. 1948. Involved in Latvian crimes; executed.

Maj. Gen. Emil Just –
Rumania

=====
I’m sorry for the google translations, but this proves that so many were never punished. [Hans Adolfss Pricmanis is Hans Adolf Prutzmann, de. And Victor Ploughman or Plowman, is Viktor Araijs]

Google translation of Latvian document on Genocide in Latvia, in comments section.
===
Estonian, not proved to have taken part in the Holocaust.
Alfons Rebane occurred after the study in the Estonian army, which he served until the occupation of Estonia in 1940 by the Red Army as an officer. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in 1941, he joined and this was the 15th Ski Company of the Police Battalion 184 allocated. In the winter of 1941-42 because of the tense situation and police units were sent to the front. In June 1942 he was promoted to major and commander of the Volunteer Battalion 658th
=====

GRAPHIC! BE FOREWARNED:

‘Operation 1005’ in Riga
by Jens Hoffmann

Introduction

The subject of my lecture is what the American novelist Saul Bellow laconically described as the German’s “sudden sensitivity about evidence”.

After their arrival in Riga in April 1944 Helfsgott and his men were accommodated near the concentration camp Salaspils.
There, Jewish men who had been deported from Germany to Riga, were forced to build shacks for the first prisoners in January 1941st Approximately more than 25.000 people were kept there at the same time in a total of 45 shacks. During the first months Salaspils was managed solely as a death camp for Jewish men from Germany. Since May 1942 together with these thousands of “Reichsjuden” – Jews from the German Reich – several thousand Latvian political prisoners were kept in the camp. The number and composition of the imprisoned changed again in summer 1943, when the Germans brought Latvian families to Salaspils who were suspected of acts of resistance.

The guards of the camp locked children up to the age of five in a special shack, several hundred of these infants died during their custody.

The commanders of office Salaspils used the system of different classes of prisoners Which was typical for the German concentration camps as to additional instrument of their command. In shacks that 200 Latvian prisoners had to share usually 400 Jewish prisoners were crammed.

Besides the concentration camp, a camp for Soviet POWs was located in Salaspils. In the fall of 1941 the first soldiers were locked in old barracks there, later the Germans kept them in two open sites were fenced with barbwire. The estimated number of POWs in the end of fall 1941 is several tens of thousand, in June 1942 only 3.434 of them were still alive. (5)

The members of the Special Squad 1005 B used the localities of the camp guards from Salaspils for accommodation. The commander of the camp, that was officially designated as “work-correction-camp” (Arbeitserziehungslager), at that time was Kurt Krause who was subordinated to Rudolf Lange, the Commander of the Sipo-SD (KdS) in Riga, and with Lange Helfsgott discussed the details of >Operation 1005<. The two officials localized the mass graves in Riga and its vicinity and agreed that exclusively Jewish prisoners should be used for the work at the graves and the pyres. Lange would supply them from his camps and prisons. They also agreed that the prisoners should be killed, as they were witnesses to the destruction of evidence.

The Special Squad’s first working site was located in the forest of Rumbula, in front of the city station of the same name, beside the main street to Daugavpils. At least 23.000 Jewish men, women and children from the Ghetto of Riga had been shot in that forest within two days in November/December 1941 by German perpetrators and their Latvian helpers.

Unlike the executions of November some of the Jews who were forced into the forest in December succeeded to escape the German murderers. Together with Ella Madalje, Frida Michelson and the married couple Lutrins, Beila Hamburg survived who was just twenty-two years old at that time. (6)

About 2 and a 1 / 2 years after the mass murder in Rumbula the Special Squad began it’s work at the site that was overgrown by plants again. From the end of April to around the first days of June 1944 at least 30 Jewish prisoners who had been handed over by Langes command had to open several graves in the forest. Temporarily, Helfsgott used an excavator that was driven by Walter Fiedler, a member of the unit. The workers were forced to pull the corpses with metal hooks out of the pits and to arrange them alternately with layers of wood to huge bonfires that were poured with burning fluids like oil or gasoline before they were set on fire.

After the cremation and according to the usual procedures of >Operation 1005 in Bikernieki in the middle of September 1944. According to the conviction of the judges Walter Helfsgott stayed at the site during the executions but did not take part in the shootings:

“Certainly he [Helfsgott, JH] too considered the executions as unavoidable to keep the secrecy of the National Socialist atrocities and to preserve the German people from the enemies revenge. But it seems to be that he would have liked to avoid his personal involvement and presence during the executions and only took part in them because he thought to be bound on Dr. Langes orders and believed that a refusal would have deepest and perilous consequences. In any case Helfsgott endeavored to take part only on the side lines of the executions, for instance by dividing and supervising the cordons and things like that.” (12)

The involvement of the defendant “on the sidelines” of the executions that he considered as “unavoidable” was regarded by the judges as a sufficient reason for Walter Helfsgotts release.

Moreover the judges in the trail of son and others were not able to ascertain without any doubt that the Special Squad erased traces of mass crimes in the concentration camp Kaiserwald before it’s withdrawal from Latvia. But there are at least indications that members of the unit forced 40 to 60 prisoners of the camp to start the destruction of evidence at the mass graves near Slavkov Forest. (13) (13)

At the end of September 1944 Helfsgott and his men left Riga and were shipped to Gdansk. There were many prisoners of the Germans on the ship too, probably from Slavkov Forest. After the arrival in Gdansk, the majority of the female prisoners were brought to Stutthof concentration camp. The Germans pushed the male prisoners in “death-marches” (TodesmÄrsche) to different forced-labour- and concentration camps of the Reich.

On 13 October 1944, Riga was liberated by units of the Red Army. The soldiers met approximately 150 Jewish survivors. (14)

In fall 1944 the “Operation 1005 IltisOperation 1005<. From all the members of Special Squad 1005 B only Hans Sohns and Fritz Zietlow were sentenced for their actions in Federal Republic of Germany. In their remarkable judgment the judges wrote:

“One can not totally refuse to accept that the defendants conceived to act according to the interests of the people when they personally backed up the criminal plan of covering the traces through the extinction of mass graves and the killing of prisoners who were used for the work. In comparison to other racial motivated arbitrary actions which were committed during the National Socialist era this point of view does not allow to pronounce their civil degradation.” () (17)

For the present, Sohns and Zietlow were convicted to 4 respectively 2 years and 6 months penal servitude for aided and abetted murder in 280 respectively 30 cases. In August 1971 the punishment was changed to a sentence of life imprisonment.

http://www.buero-schwimmer.de/kuldiga/Hoffmann.html
Helfsgott and his men were accommodated near the concentration camp Salaspils.

more Nazis:
Kurt Krause [no info] may be “Krausem.”
Walter Fiedler
Walter Helfsgott, released.
Adolf von Schell (1893–1967)
SS-Sturmscharführer Fritz Kirstein
Wolf Schenke
————-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl­d/2011/apr/11/eichmann-sought-­trial-germany-1956?INTCMP=SRCH­

As Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Centre’s Israel office, puts it:

Since they obtained independence in 1991, the Baltic countries’ record vis-a-vis the prosecution of local Nazi war criminals has been an abysmal failure. Not a single such person has ever been punished for their crimes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf­ree/2010/jan/08/holocaust-balt­ic-lithuania-latvia?INTCMP=ILC­NETTXT3487
http://www.chicagotribune.com/­topic/chi-081015-nazi-hunters,­0,3958619.story
They’re still looking for Nazis. Often the victims just want their stories told, since the remaining Nazis are over 80 years old and evidence can be hard to find. The reason evidence can be hard to find is because they killed so many innocent people.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03­/23/us/head-of-epa-bars-nazi-d­ata-in-study-on-gas.html?pagew­anted=3&src=pm

The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, alerted by a letter of protest from agency scientists, has barred from an E.P.A. report on a toxic gas any data that the Nazis acquired in experiments on concentration camp prisoners.

“The walls of the ghetto were surrounded during the night by the special units of the bluep olice and German auxiliary units: Lithuanian, Latvian, and Ukrainian. The [Warsaw] Ghetto came under the authority of the SD [Gestapo]. ” Source: Warsaw Ghetto, a guide to the perished city

http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/angl­iski.htm
article on Latvia in English

http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/ezer­gailis.htm
Holocaust in Latvia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L­ist_of_denaturalized_former_ci­tizens_of_the_United_States

Incredible list! Is this the best we can do, “deport” Nazis? There are dozens more names on it!

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08­/13/nyregion/suspect-in-nazi-w­ar-crimes-claims-ignorance-of-­killings.html?src=pm
Yesterday, Mr. Reimer maintained that by the time he arrived at the pit, all of the victims were dead. He said that they had been executed by a group of SS men who had arrived earlier. He said that he took only one shot, on orders from an SS officer, but directed his rifle away from the victims.

”I had to fire a shot,” he said. Speaking of the SS officer, he added, ”Otherwise — it is war time — he could have shot me on the spot.”

But then he acknowledged that one of the victims might have been alive.

http://holocaustinthebaltics.c­om/holocaust/lithuania/rehabil­itations

Corrected: Last comment does not mean that 500 of the marchers took part in the destruction of the Latvian Riga Ghetto, rather that 500 of the overall members of the Latvian Legion had done so.

http://www.lithuaniatribune.co­m/2011/03/15/jewish-community-­complains-over-neo-nazi-march/
More neo nazis

Daily Mail reports on Latvian Legion March. Included in the ranks of the young conscripts [to the Latvian Legion] were at least 500 men who had participated in the liquidation of the 40,000 Jews of the Riga ghetto.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new­s/worldnews/article-1258331/Na­zi-SS-veterans-march-Riga-even­t-organised-right-wing-party-l­inked-Tories.html#ixzz1GvmGTwf­3

http://www.seligman.org.il/kraslava_holocaust.html
Colonel Vytautas Reivytis and Lieutenant Bronius Norkus, who traversed the countryside slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews.

Tags: baltic holocaust; gestapo;, estonian holocaust; estonia; latvia; lithuania; baltics, estonian ss; latvian ss; latvian auxiliary police; estonian police, lithuania holocaust; latvian holocast