Given so many current events and the avalanche of information that the average public receives through social networks and other means of communication, together with the deterioration of general culture and history in most countries, issues of capital importance for the history of humanity and relatively recent ones are falling into oblivion if they have ever been given the importance they have had.
A writer has dedicated his life to the history of the Holocaust and the search for the truth and the just punishment of Nazi criminals, the vast majority of whom, contrary to what the majority of the public believes, escaped unscathed from their horrible crimes and To make matters worse, they were protected after the war by different countries, West Germany, the United States, Canada and the Baltics mainly.
 |
| Baltic countries and Kalinigrad |
In the Soviet sphere, the slogan of "not making differences between the victims" has not helped either, including many of the massacred Jews among the 27 million victims that the Soviet Union suffered in the Second World War.The historian Mr. Efraim Zuroff has dedicated his life to the study of the Holocaust and the clarification of the crimes committed by its perpetrators and their persecution. Contrary to what should have been in many cases, what he found are obstacles and not facilities for the investigation of him by current governments and entities, which indicates that the eradication of the mentality that gave rise to the Holocaust is far from be extinguished.
 |
Baltic countries
|
And as the Spanish philosopher Jorge Santayana said: "A people that forgets its history is obliged to repeat it."
We attach an article by Mr. Zuroff that indicates the complexities of the study of the Holocaust and the complicity of multiple collaborators in it, without whom the execution of this catastrophe would have been much less possible.
The Prosecution of Local Nazi Collaborators
in Post-Communist Eastern Europe:
A Squandered Opportunity to Confront Holocaust Crimes
Efraim Zuroff
Any attempt to assess the efforts to prosecute Holocaust
perpetrators in post-Communist
societies must begin by delineating three important historical phenomena
which had an extremely significant influence
on the attempts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice in Eastern Europe and on the perceptions of the Holocaust
in these countries.
The first phenomenon relates to the unique role played
by Eastern European Nazi collaborators in the implementation of the Final Solu-
tion. In all the countries occupied by, or allied with, the Third Reich, lo- cal collaborators assisted the Nazis in
implementing their anti-Jewish policies, but the role played by collaborators
in many Eastern European countries was particularly extensive and uniquely
lethal. Thus while the Nazis’ local helpers
in the rest of Europe
assisted them in implementing
all the preliminary stages of the Final Solution (definition, Aryanization,
concentration and deportation), those collaborators were never called upon to carry out the systematic
mass murder of the Jews, which was committed hundreds of kilometers away in
Eastern Europe, with the ac- tive
participation of numerous local collaborators.
The second important historical phenomenon, which
affected the issue of the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators in Eastern Europe, was the numerous trials of local
Nazi collaborators conducted by the Soviet
or Communist judicial authorities in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
In theory, such a large number of trials (whose exact number remains unknown to this day) should have clearly revealed
the significance and scope of the role played by local residents in the mass
murders. The Communists’ manipulation of postwar justice for propaganda purposes,
however, delegitimized the trials in the eyes of the local population. The most blatant flaws in the process were the exaggerated emphasis on the murder of Communists, the downplaying of Jew- ish victimhood and the preference given to prosecution for political crimes rather than for genuine war crimes.
Needless to say, these problematic practices were also
replicated when it came to erecting
monuments and writing historical accounts and textbooks. Thus under Communism,
World War II was primarily portrayed as an ideological struggle between
anti-fascists and bourgeois capitalist nationalists. Under such circumstances,
even those trials in which Holocaust
perpetrators were prosecuted for the killing
of Jews, did not necessarily convey an accurate
narrative of the events.
In addition, many of the major local Nazi war criminals responsible for the mass murder of Jews
escaped to Western democracies, out of Soviet reach, and their prosecution in
absentia and/or the accusations leveled against them in Soviet publications
were often perceived primarily as
part of the Soviet campaigns against the West, rather than the pursuit of
justice. Thus it becomes clear that during the postwar Communist domination of the region,
the peoples of Eastern Europe who
had participated in Holocaust crimes, never had a real opportunity to confront the active participation of their nationals
in these atrocities.
Under those circumstances, the third phenomenon, the discovery of large numbers
of Eastern European
Holocaust perpetrators living in
the United States and their successful prosecution for emigration and
naturalization violations, presented a golden opportunity to bring to trial
numerous Nazi collaborators and to help inform the public, especially in
Eastern Europe, of the important role played by local residents in the
implementation of the Final Solution.
The results achieved
to date by the U.S. Office of Special Investigations (“OSI”) (currently
the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the American Department of
Justice) have been extremely impressive. As of June 1, 2016, the Americans
have won cases against 108 Nazi war criminals, with eighty-six being stripped of their US citizenship and
sixty-seven successfully re- moved from the country, practically all of them of
Eastern European origin. The success
of the American prosecution effort had two positive effects. First of all, it helped
illuminate the highly
important role played by local Nazi collaborators in the
murder of Jews. Second, it helped convince Canada, Australia and Great Britain
to initiate government in- vestigations to determine whether they too had
admitted Nazi war criminals. Those inquiries ultimately led to the passage of
laws enabling the criminal prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators in Canada (1987),
Australia (1989), and Great Britain (1991).
There were, however,
three basic problems
with the attempts
to bring Nazi war criminals to justice in the United States. The first was that
it only began
in earnest in 1979 with the establishment of the OSI, by
which time several
of the most important killers
had already died. The second problem was that due to
the fact that the crimes had been committed
overseas and that the victims
were not Americans, the Unit- ed States
was forced to prosecute them on civil charges for immigration and/or
naturalization violations, rather than on criminal charges for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity,
or murder. Winning these cases was relatively easier
than in criminal prosecutions, and the punishments (denaturalization and
deportation) were relatively lighter, which lessened the impact of these convictions. This problem might have been overcome, if those convicted could have been extradited back to
their countries of origin to be prosecuted for their crimes,
but until the breakup of the
Soviet Union and the fall of Communism, this was totally out of the question,
with the exception of two cases, those of Ukrainian Treblinka guard Feodor
Federenko and Estonian Nazi collab- orator Karl Linnas. In that respect, the
fall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe had a double effect. It made it
possible for the newly- democratic countries to seek the extradition of their
nationals who had escaped overseas after World War II, and it created
opportunities for the criminal prosecution of these suspects
in their native countries.1
The breakup of the Soviet
Union and the transition to democracy did indeed have a major impact on the efforts
to prosecute local Nazi
war criminals, but any attempt to evaluate the results achieved must be viewed
within the broader context of the response of the newly- established governments of Central and Eastern Europe to six
practical Holocaust-related issues which they had to face shortly after the
fall of Communism. Only one relates directly
to the prosecution of perpetrators, but all ultimately proved
to be interconnected:
1.
Acknowledgment of complicity by the local population in the murder of the Jews and an apology
for those crimes
2. Commemoration of the victims
3. Prosecution of the perpetrators
4. Documentation of the crimes
5. Holocaust education
6. Restitution of communal
and individual property2
-----------------------------------------
1. Efraim Zuroff,
Operation Last Chance;
One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi
CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE 107 (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) [hereinafter OPERATION LAST CHANCE].
2. Efraim Zuroff, Eastern Europe: Anti-Semitism in the Wake of
Holocaust-Related Issues, 17 JEWISH POLITICAL STUD. REV., Spring 2005, at
63–79.
-------------------------------------------------------
From the outset, it is important to note that these
issues assumed particular significance for these governments due to the common
perception in post-Communist Europe that “the road to Brussels and Washington goes through Jerusalem,” or in more prosaic terms,
if they want- ed to achieve their primary foreign
policy objectives of NATO membership
and entry into the European Union, they would have to es- tablish good
relations with Israel and world Jewry. It was clear from the outset, however,
that dealing with these Holocaust-related issues would be an
absolute prerequisite to do so, a situation that also reflected the growing
importance of Holocaust commemoration and education in international
relations and its increasingly significant role in Jewish identity throughout the
Diaspora.3
What was obvious from the start, however, was that the
issue of prosecution was likely
to be one of the most difficult—both because of the fact
that it was the only issue which was time-limited and due to the extremely strong local opposition it encountered from the beginning. The latter was clearly
reflected by the fact that one of the first
steps taken by several of the new governments of Eastern Europe was a large
scale “rehabilitation” program, under which tens of thousands of con- victions
handed down by Soviet courts were cancelled and those convicted were granted monetary compensation
for the punishments they endured as well as special financial benefits. This
process, although ostensibly limited to those punished for political crimes,
in fact included numerous Holocaust perpetrators. When this phenomenon was
revealed, invariably by foreign Jewish groups or researchers, the demand that
the pardons granted to Nazi war criminals be rescinded became part and parcel of the campaigns in these
countries to bring unprosecuted Holocaust perpetrators to justice.4
The best way to illustrate these problems is to demonstrate their
practical implications in several different countries. The country
which prosecuted the largest number of local Nazi war criminals and in which this issue became particularly prominent
is undoubtedly Lithuania. The reasons that this question became so important
in that country are:
1.
The extensive scope of local complicity in the murder of
Jews, which encompassed all strata of Lithuanian society;
2.
The relatively large number
of unprosecuted suspects;
3. The prominent role played by several of these suspects;
4.
The fact that
numerous Lithuanian Nazi collaborators es- caped after the war to the United
States, where they were successfully prosecuted for concealing their wartime
activities; and
5.
The fact that
practically every Lithuanian deported from the United States returned to live
in Lithuania (which was willing to accept almost all of them), thereby
increasing the pressure to deal with the problem.5
--------------------------
3. On the importance of Holocaust-related issues for the new democracies of Eastern Eu- rope, see OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 100.
4. On the rehabilitations granted in Lithuania see OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 101–05.
-----------------------------------
Before presenting a summary of Lithuania’s efforts to prosecute
these perpetrators, it is important to attempt to understand the public
attitude toward the efforts to hold local
war criminals accountable. There is no question that during the period following
independence, there was little willingness to deal in any way with Lithuanian
complicity in Holocaust crimes, let alone with practical implications like
prosecution. Several examples
in this regard will suffice.
The first was the declara- tion issued by the Lithuanian Supreme
Council in May 1990 condemn- ing “the annihilation of the
Jewish people” which, although it was officially issued “on behalf of the Lithuanian people,”
attributed guilt for the
crimes to “Lithuanian citizens,” a category
clearly not limited
to ethnic Lithuanians, who were the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators, and which by a twist of perverted logic could even include
Jews.6 A second was the
reluctance to specifically acknowledge the participation of Lithuanians in the crimes committed at Ponar (Paneriai), the site of the mass murder of
the Jews of Vilna, in the inscriptions in Lithuanian and Russian on a new
monument built on the site in 1991.7 A third was the speech by Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius at the
dedication of that same monument, in which he claimed that the crimes against
Jews lasted three months instead of three years, and that the only Lithuanians
who participated were “a group of criminals,” even though local complicity in the murders
was widespread and encompassed all strata of Lithuanian society.8
In addition, it was relatively common to hear Lithuanian leaders and officials attempt to present false symmetries regarding
the history of World
War II such as, for example, that the number
of Lithuanians
-----------------------------------------
5. 5. 5. See generally RUTA VANAGAITE AND EFRAIM ZUROFF, MŪSIŠKIAI (Alma Littera 2016).
6.
Declaration
of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania Concerning the Geno- cide
of the Jewish nation in Lithuania During the Period of the Nazi Occupation, May
8, 1990, in SIMON
WIESENTHAL CENTER-ISRAEL
OFFICE ARCHIVES,
at Lithuania, file no. 2.
7.
OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 99.
8.
Adress [sic] by Gediminas
Vagnorius, Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania on 20 June 1991 at Dedication Ceremony of
Monument at Ponar, in SIMON
WIESENTHAL CENTER-
ISRAEL OFFICE ARCHIVES,
at Lithuania, file no. 3.
--------------------------------------------------
who assisted Jews during the Nazi occupation was equivalent or
greater than the number of those who participated in Holocaust crimes. Another
false symmetry equated crimes ostensibly committed by Jewish Communists during the initial
year of Soviet occupation (June 1940–June
1941) with those carried out by local Nazi war criminals during the Holocaust.
Given this mind-set, it is hardly surprising that there
was almost no support in Lithuania
to press charges
against local Nazi war criminals. In fact, one of the first
programs initiated by independent Lithuania was an extensive rehabilitation program for those
ostensibly falsely convict- ed by the Soviet courts. Tens of
thousands of Lithuanians were granted pardons, monetary compensation for time
in jail, and special financial benefits. Even though “those who had
participated in genocide” were officially ineligible for this program, at least
several dozen Nazi war criminals were rehabilitated. Only after extremely
strong protests by Is- rael, the United
States and Jewish
organizations, did the Lithuanians set up a joint Lithuanian-Israeli
commission of inquiry and begin canceling the
pardons granted illegally to the murderers of Jews.9
As far as the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators was
concerned, the Lithuanian government
could not possibly ignore this issue, for the numerous reasons cited above.
Thus on a practical level, the arrival in Vilnius in the nineties of
high-ranking Nazi collaborators such as Ale- ksandras Lileikis and Kazys
Gimzauskas, the commander and deputy commander of the Saugumas (Lithuanian Security Police) in the Vilnius district, both of whom were denaturalized and ordered deported
from the United States, as well as several officers from the infamous
Twelfth Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion, virtually forced the Lithuanian
judicial authorities to deal with this problem. Their response was to wait
until the key suspects, who had arrived in Lithuania in good health (Gimzauskas
in 1993 and Lileikis in 1996), became medically unfit to stand trial. At that point, the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) passed two special laws to allow
genocide suspects to be investigated and indicted regardless of their medical
condition.
Thus both former Saugumas
commanders were finally charged – Gimzauskas on November 20, 1997 and Lileikis on February 8, 1998 – but neither was ever arrested despite
the severity of the charges against them, nor was either ever forced to appear at a single session of their
trials. (Lileikis voluntarily appeared once for ten minutes and briefly
followed another session
by videotape.) Lileikis
died in the middle of
-------------------------------------
9. 9. OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 101–05.
----------------------------------------------------------
his trial on September 26, 2000, whereas by the time Gimzauskas was
convicted on January 14, 2001, he was unfit for punishment. Both trials
received minimal coverage in the local media, part of which was clearly
sympathetic to the defendants, who made every effort to emphasize
their advanced age and frailties. If anything, the anger of parts of the
Lithuanian public was directed primarily at those they deemed responsible for forcing the prosecution of these
Lithuanians, i.e. the international Jewish organizations pressing
the issue and the State of Israel.10
In fact, these cases, the campaign to rescind the
rehabilitations granted to Holocaust
perpetrators, and subsequent efforts to prosecute additional Lithuanian Nazi
war criminals, all became catalysts to rally
those elements of Lithuanian society who sought to prevent any discussion of the critical and extensive role played by local Nazi collaborators
in the Holocaust. Anti-Semitic responses abounded in local Internet fo- rums, and especially on the news portal www.delfi.lt. During this peri- od, there were also numerous
incidents of vandalization of Holocaust memorials and Jewish cemeteries, and
demonstrations were held in Vilnius and elsewhere. Thus, for example, in
response to the launching in Lithuania by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of its “Operation: Last Chance” project, which offers financial rewards
for information which will facilitate the prosecution and
punishment of Nazi war criminals, a member of the Taurage city council burned an Israeli
flag in the center of town and
drove around the city playing Nazi marches on a loud- speaker.11
In that respect, the efforts to bring these criminals to justice in Lithuania suffered primarily from the lack of any significant local
support to
emphasize the importance and necessity of this process. Unfor- tunately, the
local Jewish community, which in theory should have fulfilled that role,
chose to maintain a low profile due to fears of anti- Semitism. The fact that
with the exception of a few solitary intellectuals who supported the justice
process, there was no local
group of any size
or stature willing to lobby for the prosecution, apparently convinced the wider public
that it was dangerous to be outspoken
in this regard. The other potential constituency to advocate prosecution would have been anti-Nazi veterans and/or local
anti-fascists, but neither group existed as such in Lithuania which, unlike
most of Europe, never produced an anti- Nazi resistance movement. As far as the
Communists were concerned, forty-six years of Soviet occupation had totally discredited them, and most had become nationalists,
and as such could hardly publicly advo- cate the prosecution of Lithuanians
for Nazi crimes.
---------------------------------------
10. On the cases of Lileikis and Gimzauskas, see OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 107–10.
11. Taurageje surengta antisemitine akcija (trans. “An Anti-Semitic Incident Was Orga- nized in Taurage”), LIETUVOS RYTAS, July 29, 2002, at 2 (Lithuanian); Lithuanian Politician Burns Israeli Flag, Plays Nazi Songs, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 29, 2002. Among the Jew- ish sites vandalized during the period since Lithuania obtained its independence were several Holocaust memorial monuments, particularly in smaller communities. See, e.g., The Baltic States, in ANTISEMITISM WORLDWIDE 129 (Dina Porat ed., World Jewish Congress and Anti- Defamation League 1995).
--------------------------------------------------
Another reflection of the deep-seated opposition in Lithuania
to the efforts to hold local Holocaust perpetrators accountable was the
decision by the Lithuanian government to seek the extradition from Israel
of two Lithuanian Jews alleged to have committed crimes against Lithuanians
while serving in the KGB.12 And, in fact, nationalist elements invariably raised the cases
of Nachman Dushansky
and Shimon Berkov in response to demands by
international Jewish organizations and/or the State of Israel to Lithuania to expedite the prosecution of Lithuanian
Nazi war criminals.13 In this context,
it is important to note that in the Dushansky case, twenty-five Lithuanian
officers of higher or equivalent rank who served together with him were not
even investigated, let alone indicted. In response, Israel took the hitherto
unprecedented step of re- fusing a Lithuanian request for judicial
assistance, based on the suspicion that the charges against
Dushansky were motivated by anti- Semitism.14
It is hard to predict
what kind of impact the successful prosecution of a high-ranking and/or
particularly murderous local Holocaust perpetrator, conducted properly with
extensive and balanced media coverage, might
have had on Lithuanian public opinion and perceptions of the
Shoa. What is currently clear, after twenty-five years of efforts
to achieve that goal,
is that it has hitherto
not happened, nor is it likely to take place in the future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
12. Mel Huang, History Greets the New Year on the Baltic,
2 CENTRAL
EUROPE REVIEW, no. 1, 2000. The individuals in question
are Nachman Dushanski and Semyon Berkov.
13.
Vasiliauskas relates that following
a visit to Lithuania by this author who had submitted particularly damning
testimony regarding the participation of Lithuanians in the murder of Jews in the town of Rokiskis, obtained in the
framework of “Operation: Last Chance” (which featured special advertisements
calling on individuals to volunteer information regarding the identity of local
Nazi perpetrators), to the Lithuanian Special Prosecutor for genocide crimes,
the Lithuanian Center for the Study of Genocide and Resistance sponsored
special radio advertisements calling for people with information on Communist
crimes in the Rokiskis area during and after World War II to come forward.
Geoffrey Vasiliauskas, No One Rules,
LAISVAS LAIKRASTIS,
March 16, 2004, at 4.
14.
Letter of Irit Kahan, director of
the Department of International Affairs of the Israeli Ministry of Justice to
Lithuanian Prosecutor-General Kazys Pednycia, February 2, 2000, in ARCHIVES OF
THE ISRAEL OFFICE OF THE
SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER,
at Lithuania, file no. 28.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The record of the Lithuanian judiciary to date is as follows. It opened dozens of pretrial
investigations, only four of which resulted in indictments, two of which were
against medically-unfit defendants ultimately tried in Vilnius and a third,
which was the basis for a request to Scotland for the extradition of Antony
Gecas or Antanas Gecevičius, an officer of the infamous Twelfth
Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion
was rejected due to his ill health.
Thus only one trial was conducted
with a defendant physically present
in the docket, the March
2006 trial of Saugumas
operative Algimantas Dailide, who was among the numerous Lithuanians successfully prosecuted in the US by the Office
of Special Investigations. He was convicted on March 27, 2006 and sentenced
to five years’ imprisonment, but the judges refused to implement his sentence on the grounds
that he was elderly (eighty-five-years-old), did not
pose a danger to the public, and had to care for his ill wife. The mercy shown Dailide (who of course did
not show any to his victims), reflects the lack of will in Vilnius to hold
Lithuanian Nazi war criminals accountable, which is a direct outgrowth of the
strong opposition to dealing with the issue of Lithuanian complicity in Holocaust
crimes.15
It is entirely possible, although it would be extremely difficult toprove, that given the growing importance of Holocaust issues in the
international arena, Lithuania
attempted to compensate for its relative failure in prosecution by dealing in a more positive manner with some of the other, less
politically-charged, practical Holocaust–related issues listed above, such as commemoration, documentation, and education. It is important to note, however, that in
these issues as well, there is ample room for manipulation and/or distortion of the historical events regarding local
complicity.
The formidable obstacles to the successful prosecution
of local Holocaust perpetrators in post-Communist societies are not unique to
Lithuania, which at least can point to four indictments, two convictions, and one extradition request, as well as
the cancellation of at least 232 illegal rehabilitations.16 Other countries
that faced precisely the same situation, albeit on a smaller scale, have much less to show for their os- tensible efforts.
----------------------------------
15. OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 110.
16. According to the figures provided by the Lithuanian authorities to the Wiesenthal Cen- ter, during the period from April 25, 2005 until April 15, 2016, a total of 232 rehabilitations granted to individuals convicted by Soviet courts were cancelled by the Lithuanian Supreme Court. There are no exact figures on the number of cancellations in cases related to those who collaborated with the Nazis, but Rimvydas Valentukevicius, who served as the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Investigations Division which handled these cases, estimated that 95% of those whose rehabilitations were cancelled had collaborated with the Nazis. See Rimvydas Valen- tukevicius’ email to the author, April 25, 2005, in SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER-ISRAEL OFFICE ARCHIVES, at Annual Status Report 2005.
------------------------------------------
Thus, for example,
Latvia and Estonia
also came under international pressure to prosecute local Nazi war criminals and both were extremely reluctant
to proceed against
their former nationals. In Latvia, the case which attracted
the most attention
(and international pressure) was that of former Arajs
Kommando lieutenant Konrad Kalejs who, among other assignments, was responsible for
perimeter security at the Salaspils concentration camp near Riga. He had
initially escaped to Australia, from whence he moved to the United States in
the fifties. In 1994, he was ordered deported from America, in 1998 he was
deported from Canada and in 2000 he was expelled from Great Britain,
in each case returning to
Melbourne on his Australian passport. Efforts to convince the Latvian authorities to seek his extradition only bore fruit when an international conference
with representatives from the United States, Great Britain, Israel, Australia
and Germany was convened in Riga for this purpose. The Latvians finally
submitted their request to the Australians in 2000, but Kalejs died in the
middle of his appeal against the ex- tradition.17
Throughout the entire period in which the Kalejs case was underdiscussion in Latvia, those advocating his prosecution were the
object of intense criticism, often tinged with anti-Semitism. The themes used
by those opposed to the prosecution of local Nazi war criminals were simi-
lar to those expressed in Lithuania and often referred to crimes against
Latvians ostensibly committed by Jewish Communists. Jewish organizations seeking
to bring Latvian
Nazi war criminals
to trial were re-
buked for “ignoring Communist criminals,” among whom, they claimed,
the percentage of Jews was particularly high.18
Latvia, like Lithuania, carried out an extensive
rehabilitation pro- gram shortly after obtaining independence. Among those granted
par- dons were numerous
members of the Security Police who participated in the persecution and murder
of Jews, most notably members of the infamous Arajs Kommando which played a
central role in the mass murders in
and around Riga, in the provincial Latvian Jewish communities, and in Belarus. Unlike the situation in
Lithuania, where a joint Israeli- Lithuanian commission of inquiry was
established to investigate the issue,
a review of the pardons granted was
undertaken, and to date more than two hundred illegal
rehabilitations have already
been cancelled, there was little willingness in Riga to carry out a similar
process. Thus in Latvia there was never a comprehensive review of the rehabilitations and only two pardons granted to Latvian Holocaust perpetrators have thus far been cancelled.19
----------------------------------------------------------------
17. OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 64–67, 113–14.
18. Id. at 118–19.
19. Id. at 114–15.
------------------------------------------------
Perhaps the strongest indication of the widespread
reluctance to properly deal with the issue of Latvian complicity in the
Holocaust has been the absence of any
effort by Latvian officials to combat recurring efforts to rehabilitate and/or
glorify Herberts Cukurs, the famous pre- World
War II aviator who later
became the deputy commander of the
Arajs Kommando, and to cast
doubt on his culpability in the mass murder
of Jews and others during the Holocaust. Even respected main- stream historians, such as Andrew
Ezergailis, were sympathetic to the attempts to whitewash Cukurs. Thus, for
example, he commented that there was no evidence
that he had been at the pits at Rumbula,
the site of the mass murder
of approximately thirty
thousand Latvian Jews, and
in any event it had not been proven that he was “the most eager shooter of Jews in Latvia.”
The implication being that less zealous Latvian
killers should not be held accountable for their crimes and even
deserved rehabilitation.20
Even worse, when the Jewish community protested against
an exhibition on Cukurs entitled “Presumption of Innocence,” the chairman
of the Saiema’s Foreign Affairs
Committee Aleksanders Kirsteins warned the Jews of Latvia “not
to repeat their perfidious behavior of 1940.”
This charge posits that Latvian Jews welcomed the Soviet occupation in that
year, an accusation very popular in nationalist circles, and one often used to justify Latvian
participation in Holocaust crimes. To Latvia’s credit, Kirsteins was removed
from his post in the wake of this comment.21
In Estonia as well, there is no political will to
prosecute local Nazi war criminals.
In fact, to date, the Estonians have not initiated a single investigation of an
Estonian Holocaust perpetrator on their own, nor has legal action ever been
taken against any local Nazi collaborators. On the contrary, Evald Mikson, who
served in a prominent position in the notorious Political Police in Tallinn,
was defended by the Estonian Foreign Ministry, which issued a statement
proclaiming his innocence, after al- legations concerning his involvement in
the persecution and murder of Jews and Communists surfaced
in 1991.22
-------------------------------
20.
Gunita Nagle and Nora Drike, Nav tiesāts,
tomēr navari nevainigs, DIENA, May 17,
2005.
21.
OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 118–19.
22.
On Mikson’s crimes,
see the testimony of Hilka Mootse, June 12, 1961, criminal case
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other cases dragged on for years with no concrete results,
despite the existence
of abundant evidence proving the guilt of the
suspects. Thus expatriate multimillionaire and cultural
patron Harry Mannil
was spared prosecution for his role in
the Estonian Political Police, and Gestapo operative
Michael Gorschkow, who was involved in the murder of Jews in Slutzk,
Belarus, was never brought to justice in Estonia.23
Other allegations were dismissed without
any serious investigation. Thus, for example, in
July 2002, the Simon Wiesenthal Center submitted the names of 16 members of the
Thirty-Sixth Estonian Police Battalion, who were decorated in December 1942 for their
service with the Nazis,
to the Estonian Security Police
Board as possible
suspects in the murder of the
Jews of Nowogrudok, Belarus on 7 August 1942. The Security Police Board announced
approximately two weeks later that there was no evidence to link the
unit to the murder of the Jews of Nowogrudok, despite the fact that its
participation in this crime was established
by the Estonian “International Commission for Investigation of Crimes against
Humanity” and confirmed
by survivor witnesses.24
A clear-cut indication that the efforts
to prosecute Estonian
Nazi war criminals did not change local perceptions regarding the
Holocaust was the August 2002 public
opinion poll published in the daily Eesti
Paevaleht which asked Estonians whether they supported the establishment of a special
memorial day for the victims
of the Holocaust, which by
this time was a fairly common practice in Europe. Ninety-three per- cent of the respondents disapproved and only seven percent supported such an initiative.25
In both these Baltic countries, the efforts to
facilitate prosecution encountered formidable political
obstacles, which are clearly reflected by a comparison of the number of
Communist criminals prosecuted compared to the number of Holocaust perpetrators
brought to justice. Already a decade ago, ten Communist criminals had been put
on trial in Estonia, and seven in Latvia, compared to zero suspected Nazi war
criminals. (During the same time period, seventeen
persons were tried for
Communist crimes in Lithuania, and an additional nineteen were put on trial after 2006).26
--------------------------------------------
15-61, former KGB Archives, Tallinn, Estonia. She witnessed
him rape a Jewish mother and her daughter in the Vonnu rural district while he
led the local Omakaitse, a nationalist vigilante squad.
23.
On the Mannil case, see OPERATION
LAST CHANCE,
supra note 1, at 126–29; on the
Gorschkow case see Federal Court Revokes
U.S. Citizenship of Former Gestapo Interrogator Who Participated in Nazi Mass
Murder, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
July 31, 2002, https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2002/July/02_crm_446.htm.
24.
OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 128.
25.
Id. at 128.
-------------------------------------------
In each country, the demands by Jewish organizations to
prosecute Holocaust perpetrators encountered vociferous opposition which was
exacerbated by the local media, most of which actively opposed their
initiatives, in a manner which bordered on the anti-Semitic. Thus, for example,
Eesti Ekspress, the most popular
Estonian news weekly, published a caricature of an official of the Wiesenthal
Center (in fact, the author of this article),
who presented the evidence against
Harry Mannil to Estonian
Prime Minister Mart Laar, as a devil intent on collecting the blood of the suspect,
under the caption
“Unwanted guest.”27 Responses on the Internet to news stories
regarding these cases or interviews with the individuals involved, invariably elicited harsh
responses, often fo- cusing on the alleged crimes of Jewish Communists against
Balts, and even on occasion included
calls for violence against those Jews pressing
for the prosecution of local Nazi war criminals.
Besides Lithuania, Nazi war criminals were prosecuted in only twoother Eastern European post-Communist countries—Croatia and Hungary. The former conducted what can today
be described as the most successful trial of a Nazi collaborator in democratic Eastern
Europe and in fact the only
legal proceeding which resulted in the punishment of the defendant. The case in question was that of Jasenovac commander Dinko Šakić, who in 1999 was
convicted in Zagreb of responsibility for the murder of more than two thousand inmates and
sentenced to the maximum sentence of twenty years’ imprisonment.
In the wake of that conviction, several positive steps
were taken to combat attempts to whitewash Ustasha crimes by nationalist
right-wing elements. Thus, for example, a central square in Zagreb which after World War II had been named for the
“Victims of Fascism,” but whose name was changed when Croatia became
independent to “Heroes of Croatia,” had its original name restored. A street in the city of Split named after the breakup of
Yugoslavia in honor of Ustasha Education Minister Mile Budak was renamed in the wake of a protest campaign. An annual memorial mass held in
Zagreb to honor Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic was cancelled, and two monuments to
famous Ustasha heroes— Budak and Jure Francitec were destroyed by the government.28-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
27.
Aet Suvari and Pekka Erelt, Kutsumata kulaline, EESTI EKSPRESS, August 23, 2001, at
5.
28.
OPERATION LAST CHANCE, supra note 1, at 143–49.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The conviction of Šakić was not the only positive step taken by the Croatians. They also extradited Šakić’s
wife Nada who had served at
the Stara Gradiška women’s camp and issued an international arrest warrant
for escaped Požega (Croatia) police chief Milivoj
Ašner, who was responsible for
the deportations to concentration camps of several hundred innocent civilians.
These steps did not result in prosecutions, however, since Nada Šakić became
ill and the Austrians refused to ex- tradite Ašner to stand trial in Croatia.29
Hungary, like Croatia, conducted a trial of a Nazi
collaborator, and sought the extradition of at least one Nazi war criminal, but
it did not register any practical successes. Hungarian gendarmerie officer
Sandor Kepiro, who was accused of participation in the murder of Serbs, Jews, and Roma in and around
the city of Novi Sad in January 1942, was ac- quitted by a Budapest
court and died before the government’s appeal could be heard.30 A Hungarian request for the extradition
of Karoly (Charles) Zentai for the murder of eighteen-year-old Peter Babazs whom he
caught on a streetcar without the requisite yellow star, was rejected by the
Australian High Court.31
In attempting to assess the positive impact of the Šakić
trial as opposed to the ostensibly less impressive practical results achieved
by the efforts to prosecute
local Nazi war criminals in the Baltics,
one can point to several key
factors:
First, the prominence of the suspects
and their specific
crimes played an important role. As the last surviving unprosecuted
concentra- tion camp commander, who was in charge of the most notorious Ustasha
concentration camp, and an individual who had personally commit- ted murder, Šakić was a criminal whose crimes could not
be ignored. In contrast, while the role played by Saugumas commanders Lileikis
and Gimzauskas was unquestionably criminal and worthy of prosecution, the fact that they were essentially desk murderers made it
harder to convince public opinion,
in what was largely a political decision, that they had to be
held accountable for their crimes. Had there been unequivocal evidence,
including live witnesses, that they had personally committed murder—and the
same applies for all the other cases in the Baltics—it most probably would have been easier to convince these countries
to prosecute the suspects.
A second important factor in the relative success of the
Šakić trial was the existence of
strong local support for his prosecution by significant segments of Croatian society.
This was primarily
due to two reasons. The first was that unlike the situation in the Baltics, many Croatians had opposed, and even fought against, the Ustasha and thus there was an important part of society with a strong anti-fascist orientation. While they did not necessarily constitute a clear majority of the population, they were an element which could not be ignored and they openly expressed their support for the prosecution. There was no such equivalent in any of the Baltic countries, a factor which made it easy for the governments of these countries to ignore their legal responsibility. The other factor of importance relates to the identity of the victims. Whereas those murdered in the Baltics were overwhelmingly Jews, the victims at Jasenovac were primarily non-Jews, specifically Serbs, Gypsies, and anti-fascist Croatians. This fact most likely increased the number of local supporters of the prosecution.
-------------------------------------
29. For more on the Ašner case, see id. at
1–11.
30.
For more on the Kepiro
trial, see id. at
209–19.
31.
For more on the Zentai
Case, see id. at
173–82.
A third factor which helps explain the difference between
Croatia and the Baltics
is the attitude of the local media. As noted above, the
Baltic media reflected the widespread empathy for the defendants and viewed the
efforts to prosecute them as sinister and rooted in anti-Baltic prejudice.
Still preoccupied with their own suffering under Soviet occupation, most of the Lithuanian, Latvian,
and Estonian press felt obligated to defend their own nationals
from the attacks of foreign Jewish or- ganizations, Israel and the United States rather than admit the complicity of local Nazi collaborators in Holocaust crimes.
I believe that we will soon be able to assess the full
impact of the efforts to prosecute Nazi war criminals in post-Communist Central
and Eastern Europe. It is already clear, however, that the major obstacles to
successful prosecutions were not necessarily technical issues concerning
evidence and the advanced age of defendants and/or witnesses, but rather deep-rooted factors which will take many decades of education to overcome.
