In the 12th and 15th centuries, the German, Danish and Swedish knights, on the initiative of the Catholic Church, launched a series of campaigns against the Baltic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric peoples living in the Baltic States. As a result, vast lands on the shores of the Baltic Sea came under the control of Germanic chivalry. According to the results of the Livonian war of the XVI century, most of the Baltic territory was divided between Sweden, Denmark and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the XVIII century, the Baltic States came under the control of the Russian Empire. It was organized in the so-called Ostsee provinces, which enjoyed a rather wide autonomy.

“Despite the fact that the German population in the Ostsee provinces was not very much, it was in the Baltics political, economic and cultural elite. However, after the independence of the Baltic states, including Latvia, was proclaimed, the role of the Germans was sharply reduced, they were remembered by past offenses. Many of the Germans left for Germany, but the land of Latvia was still perceived as their own, ”said the President of the Russian Association of Baltic Studies Nikolay Mezhevich in an interview with RT.

Arais team and others

“On the eve of World War II, German intelligence agencies launched a reconnaissance network among representatives of the authorities and security forces of Latvia. And when developing strategic plans, Latvians ranked as peoples who could be ariized, ”said Alexander Dyukov, director of the Historical Memory Foundation, in an interview with RT.

According to Nikolai Mezhevich, when the Germans returned to Latvia in 1941, they were absolutely sure that they had received their property back.

“Therefore, despite some modern myths, Latvia’s independence could not even be discussed. The Nazis threw a bone to local nationalists, creating a puppet self-government and police formations among them, ”explained the expert.

One of those who stood at the origins of the mass collaborationist movement in Latvia was Viktor Arais. He was born in 1910 in a Latvian-German family. Victor's childhood passed in poverty. After graduating from high school and having completed military service in artillery, Arajs entered the law faculty of the University of Latvia. However, he did not have enough money to live on, and he got into the police. Araiz did not manage to combine his studies with the service, then he graduated from the police school and received lieutenant shoulder straps.

After the Baltic states became part of the USSR, Arajs continued his studies at the university, passed exams (including Marxism-Leninism) and graduated in law. According to the stories of Arajs himself, he later became disillusioned with the Soviet regime and went underground, but this fact was not confirmed by anything.

On July 1, 1941, Victor Arajs welcomed in Riga the head of the Ainsaz Group “A”, Walter Stahlecker. Among the persons accompanying Shtaleker was the German Ostsee Hans Dresler - a comrade from the gymnasium and colleague Araissa. He recommended a friend to the command, and the very next day, during a personal audience with Shtaleker, Viktor was given the task to form a punitive police force - the future Sonderkom team of Arajs.

  • Zonderkommanda Victor Arajsa
  • © Archive of the Latvian National Library

The group recruited former police, military, militias, students and even schoolchildren. Already in July, its number reached a hundred people. In the very first days of the “work,” the fighters of Arajs began bringing Jews from their streets to their headquarters. There, the commander extorted bribes from them, and if they refused to pay, he would kill them.

In July, the Nazis gave welcome to the Latvian collaborators on uncontrolled pogroms. Jews were robbed, driven out of their homes and burned alive in the synagogues. Several thousand Jews were taken to the prison in Riga, and women associated with collaborationists visited their relatives and extorted money for allegedly organizing their programs, although in reality there was no such possibility. After some time, the riots ceased: the Nazis ordered the extermination of Jews systematically, and the formation of new divisions began on the basis of the Arajder command team.

Police battalions and the Holocaust

In Latvia, there were several main destinations for the extermination of Jews, Russians and Communists. Thus, from 1941 to 1944, the Arajs team, led by the Nazis, killed more than 46,000 peaceful Latvians in the Bikerniek forest.

Another place of mass executions was the Rumbuli Forest, where at the end of 1941 Arajah’s militants killed 28,000 Jews, including hundreds of children. After the war, witnesses of these atrocities told how the Nazis and their Latvian accomplices beat children to death with rifle butts and pistol grips. Some were buried alive.

  • Latvian collaborators prepare a group of Jews for execution, 1941
  • © Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)

18 kilometers from Riga, near the city of Salaspils, in October 1941, the Kurtenhof concentration camp was established. Initially it was created for the maintenance and destruction of the Jews. Then they began to place civilians in Belarus, the Leningrad and Pskov regions captured during punitive operations.

The prisoners were destroyed in the cars-gas chambers, brought to starvation, cut off the limbs, causing a painful shock, shot, hung, poisoned with arsenic. Latvian police officers poured cold water on children, and then drove them naked into unheated barracks, where they died within 5-6 days. In addition, the children put on various experiments and pumped blood. The total number of people killed in the "Kurtenhof" was more than 100 thousand people.

Taking into account the successful experience for them with the Arajder Sonderkommando, as well as with the police detachment formed by Waldemar Weiss, the former head of the Latvian army mobilization organization department, the Nazis began to create Latvian police battalions for punitive operations.

The 16th Zemgale police battalion was formed in September 1941, the 17th Vidzeme - in December. In all, the Nazis created over 40 battalions of auxiliary police in Latvia, in each of which several hundred local people served. Some of the divisions have received particularly grim fame.

  • During the persecutions of Jews in Latvia occupied by the fascists, representatives of this people were significantly restricted in their rights. So, the Jews could not use the sidewalks for movement - they were pushed onto the roadway. 1942
  • © Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)

The 17th battalion was sent to the region of Polotsk and Vitebsk, where the local population was destroyed. About 1.5 thousand people his soldiers killed only during the liquidation of the Lepel ghetto. In the spring of 1942, he was transferred to Dnepropetrovsk.

The 18th Schutzmanshafta battalion, created on the basis of the 1st Riga, served in the Don and in Belarus. His fighters destroyed the Slonim ghetto, killing about 25,000 Jews with SD and Wehrmacht soldiers. Subsequently, the battalion personnel were involved in punitive operations in the Minsk region, and also took part in massacres and robberies in the settlements of Zhodino, Brod, Sutoki and Smolevichi.

Immediately seven Latvian battalions together with the SD, German army and Ukrainian police units took part in the punitive operation "Winter Magic", which went down in history as the Osveisk tragedy. Then there were mass relocations and killings of civilians in the border area of ​​the RSFSR and the BSSR. People were driven to concentration camps, shot, tortured. The victims were cut out the stars on their backs, the children were burned alive.

“The auxiliary police in Latvia received more money than collaborators in many other occupied territories. The efforts of the Nazis led to the fact that already in 1942 they received a numerous structure, which was used during the massacres and punitive operations not only in Latvia itself, but also practically in the entire occupation zone.

The share of collaborators among the population of Latvia turned out to be one of the highest in the occupied territories, ”said Alexander Dyukov.

Latvian SS Legion

“Latvians had a special status. At the beginning of the war, the Nazis were loyally looking at the possibility of accepting them into the SS, ”said Nikolai Mezhevich.

After the counter-offensive of the Red Army near Moscow on the basis of several Latvian police battalions, the 2nd SS mechanized brigade was formed and sent to Leningrad.

In February 1943, an order was issued to form the Latvian SS Volunteer Division, which later became the 15th Waffen-Grenadier Division. In November 1943, its units fought at the front in the Pskov Region, but the Latvians did not stop the advance of the Red Army.

  • Latvian SS men, 1942
  • globallookpress.com
  • © Scherl

The 2nd SS Mechanized Brigade, reassigning a number of additional police battalions to it, was renamed the 2nd Latvian Volunteer Brigade. And in February 1944, the 19th Waffen-Grenadier SS Division was deployed at its base.

In addition to the fighters of the police battalions, volunteers were also received in the SS division. Some of them were enrolled in the SS on their own initiative, others were offered a choice: SS, labor service, or auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht. The service in the SS was the highest paid and gave benefits, so many young Latvians preferred it.

Both divisions were united in the so-called Latvian SS Volunteer Legion. Unlike many other collaborationist units, Latvians occupied positions in the Legion, up to regimental commanders.

On March 16, 1944, the combined forces of the Latvian Legion as part of the 6th SS building were abandoned against the Red Army on the Velikaya River in the Pskov Region. Under the pressure of the advancing Soviet forces, the Latvian SS men retreated and in the fall of 1944 fell into the Kurland cauldron. The 19th Division fought in it until the end of May 1945, and the 15th was evacuated to West Prussia. She participated in the battles for Neubrandenburg and Berlin. Her reconnaissance battalion is considered one of the last units defending the Reichstag.

Of the 115 thousand Latvians who passed through the legion, about 40 thousand died, about 50 thousand more were captured by the Soviet troops. The rest surrendered in Germany to the Americans. The Allies refused to extradite them to the USSR and formed of them "watch companies", the soldiers of which guarded the prisons and even the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. Ironically, the Latvian SS men became the escorts of their former German chiefs.

Most of the personnel of the Latvian SS Legion were recruited from among the fighters of police battalions participating in the Holocaust and other massacres of civilians in the occupied territories. However, they committed war crimes in SS uniforms. They were attracted to participate in punitive operations against the civilian population on the territory of the Leningrad and Novgorod regions, as well as in Belarus. In August 1944, they brutally tortured a group of Soviet prisoners of war. In 1945, Latvian SS men burned alive a group of Polish prisoners in Poland.

“From the point of view of historical reality and morality, the Latvian SS men were no different from the German ones. There was a chain in Latvia: a nationalist - a member of the police battalion - an SS man, ”Mezhevich emphasized.

During the war years, the Nazis, with the complicity of collaborators, killed more than 300 thousand civilians (about 40 thousand children) and about 300 thousand Soviet prisoners of war in Latvia. Despite this, the Saeima of Latvia in 1998 adopted a declaration declaring the SS men as defenders of the country. Official Riga guaranteed protection of their honor and stated that it did not consider them war criminals.

On March 16, on the anniversary of the first joint battle of the legion, right-wing organizations celebrate the Day of Remembrance of Latvian Legionnaires. Although formally it is not a public holiday, many influential politicians take part in mass marches and rallies.

“The declaration of the Latvian authorities demonstrates that they are actually engaged in the glorification of Nazi criminals. And it gives the right to the people who have suffered at the hands of Latvian collaborators and their heirs to file lawsuits against official Riga, ”summed up Dyukov.