At the beginning of 2000, the Jewish population of the Baltic republics was about 24,500: 13,500 in Latvia, 8,000 in Lithuania and 3,000 in Estonia. The Jewish population decreased by about 2,100 in 1999: 600 emigrated to Israel, 900 to the West and the rest were lost to the negative birth rate.

About 40 Jewish organizations and religious communities function in the three Baltic republics, their leaders representing the Jewish population in dealing with the local authorities and with Jewish organizations in the West and with Israel. While Jewish organizations in the Baltic republics are generally independent of those in the other states which once made up the USSR, they enjoy growing cooperation with European and American Jewish organizations. Their principal concerns are Jewish education (they maintain 14 schools), preservation of Jewish traditions, commemoration of the Holocaust, combating anti-Semitism, which is still a significant factor in these states, and providing for the needy.

Relations of the native population with other national minority groups, such as the large Slavic or the tiny Jewish minority, continued to be a subject of public discourse in 1999 and the beginning of 2000. Tensions stemmed from the attempt to define a national identity after an extended period of foreign domination (1940-90). The problem of the ethnic Slavic population, particularly those who settled in the Baltic republics after World War II, is slowly being resolved, under pressure from the European Community, into which the Baltic republics aspire 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 perception of the Jews, the Holocaust and the participation of the native population in the extermination of the Jews who lived in their lands. Opinion, reflected mainly in newspaper articles, ranges from justifying the Holocaust, on the grounds that the Jews betrayed their homelands by cooperating with the Soviets in 1940-41 in the murder and exile of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, to denial of any part played by their countrymen in the extermination of the Jews under the Nazis from 1941 to 1945. Some minimize that part, others demand a re-examination of the past, while a small minority, including a few journalists, historians (especially of the younger generation) and Russian intellectuals, is ready to face up to historical facts, apologize and open a new page in interethnic relations, as other European countries have done. This latter group is suspected by their compatriots of being agents of a Russian or Israeli conspiracy to humiliate the Baltic states internationally. In part, the continued discussion of these questions results from a hesitant and ambiguous government policy regarding the veterans of Baltic SS divisions, especially in Latvia, as well as the trials of Nazi war criminals in Latvia and Lithuania. In spite of these attitudes, public, in contrast to political, anti-Semitism in the Baltic republics is on the wane. The number of organizations whose ideology is anti-Semitic has decreased, and relations between the Jewish community and the regime are correct.

LATVIA

The public discourse in Latvia during 1999 and into 2000 focused on three issues: the disposition of the Latvian government to try Latvian Nazi war criminals, the status of Latvian SS division veterans and the debate about Jewish activities during the years of Soviet conquest, 1940-41.

In the last several years ultra-nationalistic organizations in Latvia have gradually been decreasing in number and those left have been relegated to the political fringe or banned by law. Members of the extremist Perkonkrusts (Thundercross) were tried and sentenced, on 29 May 2000, to varying periods in jail for vandalizing Jewish and Soviet sites on Latvian soil (see below).

Members of the Russian extremist organization Russian National Unity (RNE), which has branches in seven Latvian cities and towns, held demonstrations and marches in Liepaja on 14 February 1999, and in Riga on 23 February 1999; on 17 July 1999 the Kolovrat (Swastika) movement was founded as a branch of the RNE. Members of these local branches of RNE are active among the Slavic population, distributing Nazi books, papers and magazines smuggled in from Russia and publishing original propaganda, with no intervention of the local authorities.

In contrast to past years, when several acts of violence and vandalism were registered, only two anti-Semitic incidents were reported in Latvia in 1999: the attempt to blow up a memorial to Jewish victims at Rumbula on 7 April 1999 and the desecration of a memorial site to Holocaust victims in Daugavpils on 25 October 1999. In both incidents the suspects, members of the Perkonkrusts and the RNE, were identified and tried.

Although the number of extremist organizations is decreasing, there is no change in the number of large circulation newspapers which regularly print clearly anti-Semitic material. They include Briva Latvija (Free Latvia), Latvietis Latvija (A Latvian in Latvia), Vakara Zinas (Evening News), Jauna Avize (The New Paper), Neatkariga Rita Avize (The Morning Independent).

Distribution of the book Baigais Gads (Year of Awe) continued in 1999. This collection of documents and pictures which chronicle the activity of the Soviet authorities after Latvia had been annexed to the USSR, from 1940 until the conquest by Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, was first published in Latvia in 1942. It is profoundly anti-Semitic and blames the Jews, as officers in the NKVD, for the murder of Latvians and for their exile by the Soviets, ignoring two facts: that thousands of Jews, including their leadership, Zionist activists and intellectuals, were among the victims of the Soviets; and that few Jews were actually part of the Soviet administration. New editions have been appearing in Latvia since 1997, brought out by the nationalist party For the Fatherland and Freedom, and by Leonards Inkins, publisher of Latvietis Latvija. Government officials, while distancing themselves from the anti-Semitic content of the book (the president and the foreign minister queried the attorney-general on whether the contents constituted ethnic hatred), have not banned it on the grounds of freedom of expression.

Some readiness on the part of the Latvian government to prosecute war criminals was expressed by senior government officials. On 20 January 2000, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga denounced Nazi war criminals, including Latvians, and seemed ready to try them, even disregarding the statute of limitations. However, there remained some hesitancy to act. Accusations against two former Latvians have not led to a trial: Konrads Kalejs 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. At the beginning of 2000 the attorney-general’s office initiated a criminal investigation of these two men, on the basis of Articles 71 and 74 of the Latvian criminal code dealing with genocide and war crimes, but on 11 May 2000 an attorney of that office, Rudite Abolina, announced that there was insufficient evidence to bring them to trial. It should be noted that there has been a well-mounted public campaign, led by the ultra-nationalist For the Fatherland and Freedom party against having these men stand trial and against the notion of trying war criminals in general.

Latvian veterans of the SS divisions held parades through Riga in 1999 and 2000. On 16 March they marched in memory of the battles between this division and the Red Army in 1944. The 15th and the 19th SS divisions were founded in February 1943 and 140 Latvians served in them. On 15 June 1998 the Latvian parliament declared 16 March “Latvian Fighters’ Day,” but on 13 January 2000 the official statof this day was rescinded, under heavy international pressure. The Latvian public and the parliament, however, have not dropped the issue, since a sizable proportion of the population regard the SS soldiers as national heroes who fought to free Latvia from the threat of Soviet conquest.

LITHUANIA

The beginning of 2000 marked a major achievement for the ultra-nationalist camp in Lithuania. Vytautas Sustauskas, head of the radical rightist and anti-Semitic Lithuanian Freedom League, a local party in Kaunas without branches elsewhere in the country, was elected mayor of Lithuania’s second largest city. On the other hand, nationalist leader Mindaugas Murza has tried, unsuccessfully, nine times in the past three years to have his party, the United National Socialist League (LNSVS) registered as a legal party by the Lithuanian Justice Department. He also failed to have the party registered under the name the League of Lithuanian Workers, in Siauliai, on 19 November 1999.

As in 1998, the number of anti-Semitic incidents continued to be low. Nazi flags were waved and anti-Semitic slogans were daubed in Vilnius and Kaunas on 20 April, Hitler’s birthday, in 1999 and again in 2000; and an ancient Jewish cemetery in Pasvalis, in the southern part of the country, was desecrated.

In Lithuania the prosecution of war criminals in 1999 and the beginning of 2000 was impeded by bureaucratic delays. The cases of Aleksandras Lileikis, commander of the security police, 1941-44, and his assistant Kazys Gimzauskas, both 92, have been before the Lithuanian courts for over two years. Both were deprived of their citizenship and deported from the US, 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 forbids trying a man who is not able to be present. On 15 February 2000 the parliament amended this law to permit those suspected of murder to be tried even when their health did not allow them to be in court, and the trial of both was 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 anti-Semitism. This was the position taken by President Valdas Adamkas on 23 September 1999, when he marked the memorial day to those killed in the Vilnius ghetto, and again, on 20 April 2000, in a speech to the Lithuanian parliament. The Lithuanian Catholic Church joined him in condemning anti-Semitism when, at a bishops’ conference on 13 March 2000, the participants expressed regret that during the Nazi period “a portion of the faithful failed to demonstrate charity to the persecuted Jews, did not grasp any opportunity to defend them and lacked the determination to influence those who aided the Nazis.”

ESTONIA

There were no violent anti-Semitic incidents reported in Estonia in 1999 and the beginning of 2000. A small group of neo-Nazis in Tartu marked Adolf Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1999, and in Tallinn in 2000. These groups were composed mostly of locals and a few Scandinavian tourists. Russian branches of the ultra-nationalist Russian National Unity (RNE) party 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 anti-Semitic propaganda smuggled into Estonia from Russia (see Russian Federation and The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Post-Soviet Russia, in this volume).

Under pressure of public opinion, the government moved the grave of the last commander of the 20th Estonian Waffen-SS, Alfons Rebane, from Germany to Tallinn in June 1999. However, except for the commander of the Estonian army, General Johannes Kert, no Estonian public figure attended the reburial. A public dispute arose after Estonian President Lennart Meri placed 19 citizens who had fought the Red Army during World War II, including veterans of the Estonian SS division, on the list of those to receive the Eagle Cross decoration on 8 February 2000.