The Jewish Population

At the beginning of 1998, the Jewish population of the three Baltic republics was about 29,000: 16,000 in Latvia, 9,600 in Lithuania, and 3,400 in Estonia. The Jewish population has been decreasing at the rate of about 3,000 per year. In 1997, 1,021 emigrated to Israel and 1,650 to the West, while the loss due to negative population growth was about 650 per year. From 1989 to the present about 33,300 Jews left the Baltic republics, of whom about 19,300 went to Israel.

There are 46 Jewish organizations in the Baltic republics, including communities and religious foundations, 22 of them in Latvia, 17 in Lithuania, and seven in Estonia. They publish four newspapers, the largest being Evreiskii Vestnik (Jewish News) in Riga, and The Dawn, in Tallinn. All types of Jewish activity, including promotion of emigration, take place with no government interference.

After the break-up of the USSR in 1991, the Jewish organizations in the Baltic republics left the umbrella organizations of the CIS and began functioning on their own, with the cooperation of Israel, and European and American Jewish organizations. They are concerned with Jewish education, aid to the needy and the maintenance of cultural and religious institutions in the capital cities and among the smaller concentrations of Jewish population.

About half of the Jewish population of Latvia and Estonia are not eligible for citizenship because of the way the law is phrased: since they migrated to Latvia and Estonia when World War II was over, do not speak the local language and fail to meet other local criteria for citizenship, they remain there with the status of "residents." This applies equally to other ethnic Russian immigrants and is in no way discriminatory toward Jews.

Background to Anti-Semitism

The Baltic republics have a long tradition of anti-Semitism, beginning with official discrimination against Jews in the short period of their independence between the wars, and ending with the time of the Nazi occupation, and even prior to it, when many local residents played a large part in the destruction of the Jewish communities.

A powerful nationalist fervor spread over these lands when they became independent of the Soviet Union in 1990, accompanied by a desire to even old scores with anyone they considered as having violated their sovereignty, or harmed their citizenry or their economies during the years of Soviet occupation, 1940-41 and 1944-90. The Baltic nationalists blamed the Jews for cooperating with the Soviets, especially in the deportation of the local intellectual and political ?lite to Russia, and used these charges to justify the cooperation of very many Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians with the occupying Nazis during World War II, and in helping them to wipe out local Jewish communities.

Nationalist political groups were established during this period, some of them in the extremist and anti-Semitic tradition which existed in these countries before and during the war. For instance, the organization of veterans of the Waffen SS (Divisions 15 and 19, made up of Latvians, and Division 20, made up of Estonians), recognized by the authorities as World War II veterans, and their military traditions, were considered as an official part of the military history of these countries.

More moderate nationalists, on the other hand, claimed that the number of local collaborators was very small, and that the entire blame for the extermination of Jews should fall upon the German occupiers. These nationalists, however, accuse the contemporary local Jewish communities of creating a negative image of the Baltic republics in Western and Israeli public opinion, thus preventing the complete integration of these countries into Western Europe.

In spite of this, extremist activity diminished in 1998 in the Baltic republics, as did anti-Semitic incidents and propaganda.

LATVIA

Extremist Organizations and Anti-Semitic Activity

Two extremist organizations are active in Latvia: For The Homeland and Liberation (TB) and the Latvian National Independence Movement (LNNK). Both reduced their political activity in 1997. Their newspapers, The Citizen and For the Homeland and Liberation had a very limited circulation.

In contrast, the activities of the ultra-nationalist party, the Democratic National Party of Latvia (LNDP), and of the extremist Daugavas Eagles, the SS veterans of Latvia, founded in England at the end of the 1940s and with an active branch in Latvia, have increased.

The Nazi group Thundercross (Perkonkrusts), banned by the authorities in 1995 and working underground since then, resumed operations openly in 1997. Its members carried out three acts of sabotage against the remnants of Soviet presence in the country, and distributed leaflets with blatantly anti-Russian and anti-Semitic content. Three leaders of the group were arrested by the security police and will stand trial.

The group was also responsible for placing a bomb near a Jewish hospital, Bikur Holim Hospital in Riga on July 9, 1997, and defacing a Jewish school in Riga with Nazi slogans and swastikas on December 17. No one was apprehended.

A bomb placed beside a Riga synagogue on April 2, 1998, while it took no lives, heavily damaged the building, reminding everyone that in May 1995 extremists had attempted to blow up this synagogue. To date police efforts to identify the perpetrators have been fruitless, although evidence left at the spot points to the Perkonkrusts. The security council of Riga dismissed the police chief, Aldis Lieljuksis, for failing to take steps necessary to protect the building. The Latvian government will undertake repair of the building at public expense.

Attitudes to the Holocaust and the Nazi Era

In Latvia and abroad the question of Latvian collaboration with the Nazis, specifically of the 150,000 men who volunteered or were drafted into the 15th and 19th divisions of the SS, has become an issue. The attitude of the Latvian authorities contains a contradiction. On the one hand, they claim that, during the Nazi occupation, Latvia, as a sovereign country, did not exist from 1941-44, that the mobilization of Latvians into the SS was forced on the country by the Germans, and that these were front-line soldiers fighting the Soviet enemy and not involved in murdering Jews. On the other hand, the government includes the battle traditions of these divisions as an official part of the country's military history, on display in the National Military Museum, run by the Latvian Department of Education, as a permanent exhibit.

The debate on this issue came to a head when, on March 16, l998, these divisions celebrated the 55th anniversary of their founding with a march past the Statue of Liberation in Riga of about 1,000 veterans led by Latvian army chief of staff Juris Dalbinsh, the commander of the navy, and the vice-chairman of parliament, Andris Jurgens. The president of the country and the rest of the leadership refused to participate. This march has taken place for the past six years, under the patronage of the mayor of Riga, Maris Pulgailis. However, the furor raised in Latvia and in Western countries led the Latvian Security Council, which met in special session on April 3, 1998, headed by the president of Latvia, to dismiss the public figures, including the chief of staff, who had taken part in this march, which had been held without the official permission of the president or the government

The question of the punishment of war criminals was also part of the public debate of 1997. The Latvian chief prosecutor, after some delay, agreed in December 1997 to ask Australia for the extradition of two men, Karlis Ozols and Konrad Kalejs, in order to try them in Latvia for genocide. In contrast, the assistant state prosecutor, Nedis Strelis, in charge of research into "crimes of the totalitarian regimes in Latvia," determined, in December 1997, that Soviet Jewish collaborators should also be tried for their part in the mass expulsion of Latvians from the country under the Soviet occupation, 1940-41.

During this period, President Guntis Ulmanis used every opportunity, including his visit to Israel in February 1998, to declare that there was no disagreement between Latvia and Israel, or international Jewish organizations, on the necessity to fight neo-Nazis in his county. He and the Latvian ambassador to Israel also repeatedly expressed their sorrow at the thought of Latvians who were involved in the genocide of the Jews and the opinion that they should be subjected to the full force of the law.

LITHUANIA

Extremist Organizations and Anti-Semitic Activity

The ultra-nationalist organizations, the Populist Movement and Young Lithuania, remain on the fringe of society; their newspapers, Lithuanian Morning and The Republic, once very anti-Semitic, moderated their position. However, two new ultra-nationalist organizations were founded in 1997. The United National Socialist League (SNEL) led by Mindaugas Murza, was established in June in Siauliai with about 100 members, most of whom also serve in the 62nd brigade of the local civil guard. The Lithuanian Freedom League, founded in Kaunas in October and led by Vytautas Sustaukas, is small but militant and demands, among other things, that the government hold the Jews responsible for the genocide of Lithuanians during the Soviet occupation. These two organizations are illegal under Lithuanian law.

The following are among the anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in Lithuania in 1997. A memorial placed on the site of the ghetto of Vilnius by the Jews of Holland was toppled on July 27, a few days after it was erected. A memorial on the grave of the Gaon of Vilna was defaced on August 7. Anti-Semitic placards were placed in the main square of Vilnius and on homes of citizens and political leaders on September 21. The apartment of Haskel Zakas, beadle of the synagogue in Kaunas, was set alight on January 1, l998. When an Israeli soccer team from Beer Sheva played a local team on August 15, 1997 there were anti-Semitic catcalls and placards with anti-Semitic slogans. In each case the police investigated, but in none was a perpetrator discovered.

Attitudes toward the Holocaust and the Nazi Era

In 1997, the Lithuanian authorities reluctantly changed their attitude toward war criminals and those who collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation of the Baltic republics. During the period of Soviet occupation (1945-90), Lithuania had fully rehabilitated those who were tried for collaboration with the Germans. On April 9, 1992, the Lithuanians passed the Law of Responsibility for the Genocide of Baltic People, and pursuant to this law, in September 1997, the high court nullified the rehabilitation, posthumously, of six Nazi war criminals, while the cases of 19 others are still in the courts, but it is likely that they will also have their rehabilitation revoked.

Clearly, these trials got underway after June 1997, when Prime Minister Gedaminas Vagnorius called on Chief Justice Pranas Kuris, and on the public prosecutor, Kazis Kovarskas, to apply the above law (Section 6, para. 18 of the Lithuanian Criminal Code), and the international agreements on prosecuting war criminals to which Lithuania was a party (Treaty on Responsibility for Genocide, November 9, 1948, and Treaty on the Statute of Limitations on those Responsible for Genocide, November 28, 1968).

In addition, the public prosecutor of Lithuania decided, after a long delay, to bring to trial six Nazi criminals who were deported from Western countries and came to Lithuania in 1992, among them Aleksandras Lileikis, aged 90, who was head of the security service SAUGUMAS, under Nazi control, and who helped the Germans in the extermination of Jews. His trial was made possible after the parliament passed, in December 1997, some amendments to the law regarding punishment of war criminals, according to which chronically or seriously ill persons could be prosecuted for war crimes. The Lileikis trial began on March 4, 1998, but was postponed for procedural reasons.

It should be mentioned that the public prosecutor of Lithuania re-opened the criminal investigation of the mass murder of the Jews by local inhabitants in Kaunas in 1941. The investigation began in May 1994, but was suspended by the authorities.

In the course of 1997, President Algirdas Brazauskas repeated the position he had expressed many times since 1995, including at the ceremonies in memory of the Gaon of Vilna in September 1997, that war criminals must be brought to justice, and that as a matter of conscience an apology must be made to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel for the acts committed by Lithuanians who took part in genocide.

ESTONIA

There were two attacks on Jewish property in Estonia in 1997. The prayer house of the Jewish cemetery in Tartu was set alight on January 1, 1997, as was the synagogue in Tallinn, the capital, on January 7, 1997. In both cases police efforts to find those responsible were fruitless.