I don’t
know about you, but I don’t like Nazis very much. Call me crazy, but all that Judenhass, genocide, invading other
people’s countries, war and Thousand Year Reich stuff- it’s just not for me.
It’s kind of, you know- evil.
Now
Latvians on the other hand, they’re a different kettle of fish. They’re totally
nuts for Nazis! No, really! It’s incredible! Is it the black leather and the
skulls? The uniforms? The cool salute? The goose stepping? The death camps?
It’s difficult to say, but one thing’s for sure, in Latvia the Swastika never goes out
of style!
You think
I’m joking, that this is an unpardonable slur on the fine nation that gave us
Henrijs Stolovs the famous…er… stamp dealer? Well, perhaps it is, in that not
all Latvians love Nazis. I’m quite certain that many if not most of them
realize that Hitler= bad man. But there are quite a few who still think that
fighting for Hitler= totally groovy. And every now and then they like to come
out in the street and celebrate.
Consider
what happened last Friday in Bauska, a town in Southern
Latvia that for many years was home to a thriving Jewish
population- until they were all murdered, in 1941. Local lawmakers and officials
gathered for the official unveiling of a monument dedicated not to these
murdered Jews but rather the members of Latvia ’s Waffen SS legion.
Yes, that’s
right the SS- you know, Heinrich Himmler’s pals, the ones with the death’s
heads on their uniforms! They weren’t even subtle about their evil. If you look
at photographs from the unveiling it’s quite remarkable- there’s even a
clergyman with a giant cross round his neck, marching along with flowers in his
hands. And behind him: a bunch of SS-lovers. Somebody will have to remind me in
which of the gospels Jesus instructs us to revere fascists because I’ve
forgotten.
This isn’t
the first time a bunch of Latvians have gathered to weep over their fallen Nazi
brethren. This March they had a nice little do in Riga to commemorate the awesomeness of the
SS. They do it every year. It’s a nice day out, if you dig Nazis.
“But wait,
wait,” say these SS lovers. “The Latvian SS weren’t Nazis, they were, er,
freedom fighters!” The argument, such as it is, goes like this: these soldiers were
brave patriots who fought not for Hitler’s evil war machine but rather to free
their country from Stalin’s monstrous regime. The problem with this line of
reasoning is as follows: they were fighting for Hitler’s evil war machine. Some
of them were conscripts but at least 30% jumped right in there- they couldn’t
wait to get stuck in! Didn’t they notice the little skulls on their uniforms? Didn’t
they listen to all the stuff about untermenshcen?
What? Were they so naive that they thought Hitler would grant them independence
once the war was over?
“But wait!”
say the apologists. “These SS guys, they were non-racist SS guys! They didn’t
kill any Jews! Hell, they probably loved bagels!” But that’s because 90% of Latvia ’s Jews
were murdered two years before the SS units were formed. And naturally the
Waffen SS recruited heavily from the Latvian Security Police units that had
massacred those Jews, and which had also done a spot of bonus Jew-killing in Belarus too,
thank you very much. Unsurprisingly these unlovely chaps were very quick to
sign up for Uncle Adolph’s marching annihilation band.
All very
appalling, then. To me, however, perhaps the most shocking thing about Latvian
Nazi-nostalgia is the almost total lack of outrage it provokes among other
member nations of the EU. When the Freedom Party- which included a rather
unpleasant racist named Jorg Haider in its ranks- joined Austria ’s government
the EU placed weird pseudo-sanctions on the country. I’d like to point out that
even Jorg Haider NEVER LAID FLOWERS AT A MONUMENT TO SS KILLERS.
Meanwhile if
a solitary skinhead is caught in Chemnitz leafing
through a copy of Mein Kampf in the street and mumbling to himself, “Ja, ja! Ich
liebe es!” then the international media will be all over the terrifying rise in
neo-Nazi feeling in Germany .
But if a
crowd of Latvian politicians, clergymen and ACTUAL SS MEN whoop it up in front
of a statue dedicated to Nazi troops, then it’s, eh- who cares?
Why is
this? Well, largely because Latvia
is a small and not very important country that nobody much cares about. Even
so, given all the stuff about human rights and solidarity and equality that
flows out of Brussels you’d think somebody in Europe might say- Hang on, all this love for the SS … it’s a
bit off.
Let’s be
clear here- the Latvians faced a terrible choice in World War II. It was
basically fight for the devil or… fight for the devil. To be caught between two
variants of Satan is an unenviable fate. It’s a tragedy, in fact. And to
pretend otherwise, to treat Nazi collaborators as heroes, is to take that
tragedy and render it a travesty.