The Estonians were also guilty of genocide

Peoples ' behavior as of individuals differ greatly depending on the circumstances . It is in the toughest times when you see the moral quality of those peoples or individuals .

 The Germans killed thousands , millions of women, elderly and children not alone , but with many accomplices , among the biggest enthusiasts and accomplices are the Baltics. Yes these are now trying to introduce themselves as a mini Nordic states . Even there was an Estonian SS battalion.

While the crimes of the Germans have been difficult to hide (though they have tried it and continue doing, exposing themselves as victims) the Baltics , as the Ukrainians had it easier because of its large emigration to English-speaking countries , especially Canada , USA and England. Who will think that the lovely older gentleman of mature age and  neighbor of ours who has escaped from communism is a serial murderer ?

 That is the main problem .To be anticommunist or have left communist countries (usually with exit permit , not running at night by the countryside, yes it was possible after 1945 for many people, the Iron Curtain had a lot of holes ) was a pass for everything.

And the only version of the history of those countries that reached the inhabitants of the Anglo-Saxon countries and most Western countries was narrated for them. As usual the Russians were devils and, of course, silenced all about their own crimes and those of the Germans.

Now it has a little more difficult, Russia is capitalist, but as they need an enemy to hide their past and current realities (Oppression of its citizens who speak Russian) and the enemy is...... Putin.

And above all, the sadest thing is that as in Germany the majority of the population agreed with these atrocities in an active or passive form , and that feeling has not gone away, the tributes to veteran Nazi murderers increase every year among other acts.

An example among many :

A number of Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia were held in the 1960s.The best-known trial was brought in 1961, by the local Soviet authorities against Estonian collaborators who had participated in the execution of the Holocaust during the Nazi German occupation (1941–1944). 

The accused were charged with murdering up to 5000 German and Czechoslovakian Jews and Gypsies near the Kalevi-Liiva concentration camp in 1942–1943. The public trial by the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR was held in the auditorium of the Navy Officers Club in Tallinn and attended by a mass audience. All three defendants were convicted and sentenced to death, two of them were executed shortly after. The third defendant, Ain-Ervin Mere was tried in absentia and was not available for execution.

Estonian camps and  killings sites

The crimes

While the accused may have been involved in other crimes against humanity during the German occupation of Estonia, the trial focused on the events of September 1942. According to testimony of the survivors, at least two transports with about 2,100–2,150 people, arrived at the railway station at Raasiku, one from Theresienstadt (Terezin) with Czechoslovakian Jews and one from Berlin with German citizens. Around 1,700–1,750 people, mainly Jews, not selected for work at the Jägala camp were taken to Kalevi-Liiva and shot

The accused

·                    Ain-Ervin Mere, February 22, 1903 – April 5, 1969 ,commander of the Estonian Security Police (Group B of the Sicherheitspolizei) under the Estonian Self-Administration, was tried in absentia. Before the trial he was an active member of the Estonian community in England, contributing to Estonian language publications.^[2] At the time of the trial he was however held in captivity, accused of murder. He was never deported and died as a free man in England in 1969.(!¡)

According to testimony by one of the accused, Gerretts, eight busloads of Estonian auxiliary police had arrived from Tallinn. A selection process was supervised by Ain-Ervin Mere, chief of Sicherheitspolizei in Estonia; those not selected for slave labor were sent by bus to an execution site near the camp. Later the police in teams of 6 to 8 men would execute the Jews by machine gun fire, on other hand, during later investigation some guards of camp denied participation of police and said that execution was done by camp personnel. On the first day a total of 900 people were murdered in this way. Gerrets told that he had fired a pistol at a victim who was still making noises in the pile of bodies

·                    Ralf Gerrets, the deputy commandant at the Jägala camp

Viiks and Gerrets in the Tallin Trial

On 5 September 1942 a train with approximately 1,500 Czechoslovak citizens arrived to the Raasiku railway station. Mere, Laak and Gerrets personally selected who of them should be executed and who should be moved to the Jägala death camp. More than 1,000 people, mostly children, the old, and the infirm, were translocated to a wasteland at Kalevi-Liiva where they were monstrously executed in a special pit. In mid-September the second troop train with 1,500 prisoners arrived to the railway station from Germany. Mere, Laak, and Gerrets selected another thousand victims that were condemned by them to extermination. This group of prisoners, which included nursing women and their new-born babies, were transported to Kalevi-Liiva where they were killed. In March 1943 the personnel of the Kalevi-Liiva camp executed about fifty Gypsies, half of which were under 5 years of age. Also were executed 60 Gypsy children of school age..."

·                    Jaan Viik, (Jan Wijk, Ian Viik), a guard at the Jägala labor camp was singled out for prosecution out of the hundreds of Estonian camp guards and police for his particular brutality. He was testified as throwing small children into the air and shooting them. He did not deny the charge.

Estonian auxiliary forces assisted the German Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) in the mass killing of Jews and others during World War II. Ralf Gerrets and Jaan Viik were both members of the Estonian security police during the German occupation. This footage shows them during their trial, on charges of war crimes, in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Estonian Supreme Court found both guilty and sentenced them to death in 1961.

A link to the Tallin trial ( Russian with subtitles in English ) 1min 40´´ :

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?MediaId=1970

A frightening example of how these Estonian murderers acted  is written in the book

Children during the Holocaust ( Patricia Heberer )

·                    A fourth accused, camp commandant, Aleksander Laak ( 1907 Pöide Parish, Estonia. Died 6 September 1960 Winnipeg. Canada ) was discovered in Canada but committed suicide .

  He was a lieutenant and the commander of the Jägala concentration camp during the German occupation of Estonia.

The estimates for the number of killed at Jägala concentration camp vary widely. The Soviet investigators reached the conclusion that 2,000–3,000 were killed in Jägala, but the number 5,000 (as determined by the Extraordinary State Commission in 1944) was written into the verdict.

He was also known to have arranged drunken orgies with girls inmates and after killed them.

Link to this new :

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FlUlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=L-UFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3362,1589804&dq=aleksander+laak