THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

At the beginning of 2001 there were about 22,800 Jews in the Baltic states; 12,300 in Latvia, 7,500 in Lithuania, and 3,000 in Estonia. During the year the Jewish population deceased by 1,700 of whom 800 emigrated to Israel and 700 to the West, and the rest were lost to the declining birth rate.

About 35 Jewish organizations and religious communities function in the Baltic republics, their leaders representing the Jewish population when dealing with the local authorities and with Jewish organizations in the West and in Israel. They operate independently of those in the other states of the former Soviet Union, and enjoy increasing cooperation with European and American Jewish organizations. Their principal concerns are Jewish education (they maintain 14 schools serving about a thousand students), preservation of Jewish traditions, commemoration of the Holocaust, combating antisemitism, which is still a factor in these states, and providing for the needy.

ANTISEMITISM AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST

Relations between the native population and other national minorities, such as the large Slavic or the small Jewish minorities, continued to be a subject of public discourse in 2000 and early 2001 (see ASW 1999/2000). The problem of the ethnic Slavic population, particularly those who settled in the Baltic republics after World War II, is gradually being resolved, under pressure from the European Community, into which the Baltic republics seek to be integrated.

The events of the years 1940–45 gave rise to complex national and historical issues, touching on national identity, which are still being debated, particularly in Latvia and Lithuania. A crucial aspect of this identity crisis is the Baltic people’s contemporary perception of the Jews, the Holocaust and the active participation of the native population in the extermination of the Jews who lived in their lands before World War II. Opinions range from justifying the Holocaust, on the grounds that the Jews betrayed their homelands by cooperating with the Soviets and participating in the murder and exile of many Baltic people in 1940–41, to denying any involvement of the local population in the extermination of Jews during the Nazi era, or admitting to the participation of a few isolated individuals. The continued discussion of these questions results, in part, from a hesitant and ambiguous government policy regarding the veterans of Baltic SS divisions (especially in Latvia) and the trials of Nazi war criminals in Lithuania. However, with the passage of time, the level of acrimony in the public discourse has declined and antisemitism is on the wane. The number of ideologically antisemitic organizations has decreased and relations between the Jewish community and the regime are correct.

LATVIA

Several nationalist organizations exist on the political fringe in Latvia. For the Fatherland and Freedom, which has 17 out of the 100 representatives in the Latvian parliament, seeks recognition of Latvian SS veterans as national heroes. Its most extreme wing fights the extradition and trial of Nazi war criminals and supports the re-issuing of the virulently antisemitic Nazi collection Baigas Gads (Years of Awe, 1997; see ASW 1999/2000), which it disseminates on the Internet in Latvian, Russian and English. Nine members of Perkonkrusts (Thundercross – the Latvian version of the swastika), a party now banned, were sentenced on 29 May 2000 to varying periods in jail for vandalizing sites which mark the period of Soviet conquest of Latvia. The Latvian branch of the Russian Nazi party Russian National Unity (RNE) has a decreasing membership and mainly distributes nationalist propaganda amongst Russian-speaking Latvians. It is not a registered party and is under permanent surveillance of the local security service. Party leader Evgenii Osipov was fined on 16 June 2000 for conducting illegal political activity.

There were a few antisemitic incidents in Latvia in 2000 and early 2001. The ruins of a Riga synagogue in which the Nazis burned 2,000 Jews in 1941 were desecrated. On 3 July 2000, the eve of the official Latvian Holocaust Memorial Day, when the president presented a decoration to five Latvians who had saved the lives of Jews during World War II, a memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust in the Rumbula forest was vandalized and swastikas appeared on the walls of the Shalom restaurant in Riga. The president and Prime Minister Andris Berzinsh severely censured these acts. Two Russian residents of Daugaupils were found guilty, on 24 May 2000, of desecrating a Holocaust memorial site on 25 October 1999 in that city, and sentenced to three years in prison.

Since public interest in the Latvian past and the status of Russian-speaking Latvians has decreased, the large circulation newspapers have carried less antisemitic material. Also, the Latvian legal authorities have taken steps to curb open antisemitism in the media. The editor of the magazine Patriots (printed in Liepaja from October 1999 to January 2000), Guntars Landmanis, was sentenced to eight months in jail on 12 January 2001 for publishing racist and antisemitic materials in the journal, under Article 78 of the Latvian criminal code. Editor-in-chief of the economic periodical Kapitals, Guntis Rozenbergs, and reporter Normunds Lisovskis were being investigated for the latter’s antisemitic article “The Jews Run the World,” which appeared in the August 2000 issue. However, several Latvian newspapers, such as Lauku Avize (The Country Paper) and Latvietis Latvija (The Latvian in Latvia), continued to carry antisemitic articles without any legal measures being taken against them.

The public discourse in Latvia in 2000/1 focused on two issues: the disposition of the Latvian government to try Latvian Nazi war criminals and the status of Latvian SS division veterans. The Latvian authorities have shown increasing readiness to try war criminals. Senior government officials, including President Vaira Vike-Freiberga (elected 18 February 2000), denounced Nazi war criminals, including Latvians, stressing the need to try them without regard to the statute of limitations. Konrads Kaleis and Karlis Ozols, both over 90 and living in Australia, allegedly took part in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in Latvia and Belarus. The Latvian authorities began criminal proceedings against both men on the basis of Articles 71 and 74 of the Latvian criminal code dealing with genocide and war crimes. Karlis Ozols died on 23 March 2001 in Australia. The request of the attorney general for the extradition of Kaleis, made on 12 December 2000, has still not been acted upon, despite the decision of a Melbourne court on 14 March 2001.

On 16 March 2000, as in past years, veterans of the Waffen-SS 15th and 19th Latvian divisions held parades through Riga. Two thousand men, including 400 SS veterans, marched in memory of the first battle between these divisions and the Soviet army in 1944. The official status given this date in 1998 was rescinded by the Latvian parliament in early 2000. Now only a public event, government officials refrain from appearing at it. The president considered the celebration a mistake, and remarked that she understood the rationale of foreign, especially Russian, protests, of this event. This attitude should be seen in the context of Latvia’s aspirations to join the European Union. In 2001, there was no parade at all since the Latvian freedom statue which served as the focus for the parades was being repaired.

LITHUANIA

A few antisemitic incidents occurred in 2000 and early 2001. Nazi flags were waved and antisemitic slogans appeared in Vilnius and Kaunas on 20 April 2000, the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in Pasualis on 2 June 2000, and in Vilnius, Kaunas and Kelme in August. The perpetrators in the last two cases were apprehended and face criminal charges.

In Lithuania, as in Latvia, the prosecution of war crimini2000 and the first half of 2001 was impeded by bureaucratic delays. The cases of Aleksandras Lileikis, commander of the security police, 1941-44, and his deputy Kazys Gimzauskas, both 92, were on trial for over three years. Both men had been deprived of their citizenship and deported (Lileikis in 1996 and Gimzauskas in 1993) from the United States, where they had lived since the end of World War II, for concealing their Nazi past. In February 1999, their trials were halted on the grounds of ill health since Lithuanian law forbade trying a man who was unable to appear in court. On 15 February 2000 parliament amended this law to permit those suspected of genocide to be tried even when their health did not permit their appearance in court, and the trials of both were re-opened at the end of April 2000.

In contrast to the legal delays and the evident unwillingness of the Lithuanian public to re-examine cases of World War II criminals, the official position of the government is firmly in favor of trying Lithuanian Nazi war criminals and of combating any evidence of current antisemitism. This was the position taken by President Valdas Adamkas and by Prime Minister Andrius Kubelius on 22 September 2000 when they marked the memorial day to those killed in the Vilnius ghetto. The Lithuanian Catholic Church joined them in condemning antisemitism when, at a conference of bishops on 13 March 2000, the participants expressed regret that during the Nazi period “some of the faithful showed no charity to the persecuted Jews, failed to grasp an opportunity to defend them and lacked the determination to influence those who aided the Nazis.”

In the course of 2000 the trials of Nazi war criminals drew to their close with the death of Aleksandras Lileikis on 27 September, before the court could issue a decision, and a guilty verdict for Kazys Gimauskas at his trial by a Vilnius court on 14 February 2001. No jail sentence was imposed on Gimauskas on the grounds that he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, the Lithuanian government asked Britain to extradite Antanas Gecas, 85, who lived in Edinburgh, and who is suspected of taking part in the mass murder of Jews during World War II in Lithuania and Belarus. Investigation of Gecas’ activities was begun in 1987, under the Soviet regime in Lithuania, but was hastily closed when there seemed to be little evidence.

In this connection it should be mentioned that on 12 September 2000, there was an attempt by extreme rightists in parliament to give national status to the parliamentary declaration of 23 June 1941, when a provisional government was set up under the Nazis. Public outrage at this legislation, which would have made Lithuania, and not the conquering power, culpable of the mass murder of Jews during the war, forced the lawmakers to retract and cancel this proposal within a week. The Nazis themselves had actually abolished Lithuanian independence on 5 August 1941, less than two months after the provisional government was declared, adding Lithuania to their province Ostland, which also included Latvia, Estonia and bordering Russian areas.

ESTONIA

There were no violent antisemitic incidents reported in Estonia in 2000 and early 2001. A small group of neo-Nazis in Tallinn marked Adolf Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 2000. Russian branches of the ultra-nationalist Russian National Unity (RNE) continued to work among the Russian minority in Tallinn and Narva. From time to time the Estonian police searched the homes of party activists in an attempt to confiscate nationalist and antisemitic propaganda smuggled into Estonia from Russia. The scope of activity of the RNE in Estonia is decreasing.

In Estonia, as in Latvia and Lithuania, in 2000/1, the commemoration of events in World War II had antisemitic overtones. A public dispute arose after Estonian President Lennart Meri placed 19 citizens who had fought the Red Army during the war, including veterans of the Estonian SS division, on the list of those to receive the Eagle Cross decoration on 8 February 2000. In the resort city of Piarnu, during July–August 2000, an exhibition on the Estonian SS legion was held. The local Jewish population protested the declaration of Minister of Education Tonis Lukas, on 23 October 2000, that he saw no reason to study the Holocaust or mark Holocaust Day in the schools. This was in direct contradiction of a decision of education ministers made at a meeting of the Council of Europe in Kharkov, Poland, in October 2000.