The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944

The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944

Author: Andrew Ezergailis

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A history of the Holocaust in Latvia, focusing on the question of the involvement of Latvians in its implementation. Contends that extant historiography on the Holocaust in Latvia has been greatly influenced by Soviet publications, which tend to vilify the Baltic and Ukrainian peoples. Examination of documents and witnesses' accounts shows that there were no "spontaneous killing actions" on the part of Latvians during the occupation - the killing was initiated and basically perpetrated by the Nazis, mainly by Einsatzgruppe A. Before the war, traditional antisemitism was prevalent in Latvia, but not modern racist theories. The regime of Ulmanis (1934-40) was not antisemitic. The main antisemitic organization in prewar Latvia, Perkonkrusts, supplied mainly writers, not killers. Dwells on the Arajs commando, created by the Nazis in 1941, which killed tens of thousands of Jews in Latvia, Russia, and Belarus. The contribution of the Latvian auxiliary police to the Holocaust was smaller. Describes the extermination of Jews in Riga, Liepaja, Daugavpils, Rezekne, Ventspils, and other places (in some of which ghettos were established) and Nazi camps in Latvia - Kaiserwald, Salaspils, and others.


The Case for Latvia

The Case for Latvia

Author: Jukka Rislakki

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9042024240

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: "Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917", "Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family", "Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941", "Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia", "The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . ." True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.


The 'Final Solution' in Riga

The 'Final Solution' in Riga

Author: Andrej Angrick

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0857456016

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"With its ... over thousand] detailed and expansive footnotes drawing on twenty-four different archive collections in eight countries and three continents and an enormous secondary literature, this is one of the best researched regional studies of the Holocaust ever to appear. It is helped by the fact that the authors are also always so cognizant of what was happening elsewhere in Europe at the same time and thus frequently draw out the relationship between seemingly haphazard local decisions and trends across Europe...Indeed, the way in which the book 'makes sense' of complex institutional behavior is at times breathtaking...The precision in the detail and the scope of the contextualization make this one of the more important works to appear on the Holocaust in recent years." - English Historical Review "This very readable and well documented study fills an important gap in the Holocaust literature: it offers insight into the microcosm reflecting the entire terrifying and murderous scenario of the SS State." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung " This] excellent study of the Riga ghetto, informed by Eastern European sources and available now in English translation, provides a precise and ghastly description of what the liquidation] meant for the local Jews. With laudable thoroughness, they describe the organized shooting of Jews, the first form of industrial-scale mass murder." - The New York Review of Books Ghetto, forced labor camp, concentration camp: All of the elements of the National Socialists' policies of annihilation were to be found in Riga. This first analysis of the Riga ghetto and the nearby camps of Salaspils and Jungfernhof addresses all aspects of German occupation policy during the Second World War. Drawing upon a broad array of sources that includes previously inaccessible Soviet archives, postwar criminal investigations, and trial records of alleged perpetrators, and the records of the Society of Survivors of the Riga Ghetto, the authors have produced an in-depth study of the Riga ghetto that never loses sight of the Latvian capital's place within the overall design of Nazi policy and the all-of-Europe dimension of the Holocaust. Andrej Angrick, a native of Berlin, is a historian, consultant, and researcher affiliated with the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture. He has published numerous articles about the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and co-edited Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (1999) and Die Gestapo nach 1945: Karrieren, Konflikte, Konstruktionen (with Klaus-Michael Mallmann, 2009), as well as Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der s dlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943 (2003). Peter Klein, a Berlin-based historian, consultant, and researcher affiliated with the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture, has published widely on the Holocaust and German occupation in various parts of central and eastern Europe during the Second World War. Klein was the editor of Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/1942 (1997) and a co-editor of Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (1999). He is the author of "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" (2009). Ray Brandon is a freelance translator, historian, and researcher based in Berlin. A former editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, English Edition, he is co-editor, with Wendy Lower, of The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization.


The Case for Latvia

The Case for Latvia

Author: Jukka Rislakki

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 9042024232

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union – interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war – now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: “Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917”, “Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family”, “Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941”, “Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia”, “The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . .”True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.


Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust

Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust

Author: Edward Anders

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9984993183

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Edward Anders, son of Adolf Alperovitch (1897-1941) and Erika Sheftelovitch-Meiran (1895-1992), was born in 1926 in Libau, Latvia. He immigrated to the United States in 1949. He married Joan Fleming in 1955. They had two children.


The Case for Latvia. Disinformation Campaigns Against a Small Nation

The Case for Latvia. Disinformation Campaigns Against a Small Nation

Author: Jukka Rislakki

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2014-08-05

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9401211612

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“The best book written on Latvia by a foreigner: incisive, well-informed, and persuasive" Edward Lucas, The Economist What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union – interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war – now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: “Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin’s revolution in 1917”, “Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family”, “Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941”, “Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia”, “The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . .” True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.


Nazi Collaborators on Trial during the Cold War

Nazi Collaborators on Trial during the Cold War

Author: Richards Plavnieks

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-09-11

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 3319576720

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a study of the legal reckoning with the crimes of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police and its political dimensions in the Soviet Union, West and East Germany, and the United States in the context of the Cold War. Decades of work by prosecutors have established the facts of Latvian collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. No group made a deeper mark in the annals of atrocity than the men of the so-called 'Arajs Kommando' and their leader, Viktors Arājs, who killed tens of thousands of Jews on Latvian soil and participated in every aspect of the 'Holocaust by Bullets.' This study also has significance for coming to terms with Latvia’s encounter with Nazism – a process that was stunted and distorted by Latvia’s domination by the USSR until 1991. Examining the country’s most notorious killers, their fates on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and contemporary Latvians’ responses in different political contexts, this volume is a record of the earliest phases of this process, which must now continue and to which this book contributes.


Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945

Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945

Author: Anton Weiss-Wendt

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-04-01

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1496211324

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938–1945, international scholars examine the theories of race that informed the legal, political, and social policies aimed against ethnic minorities in Nazi-dominated Europe. The essays explicate how racial science, preexisting racist sentiments, and pseudoscientific theories of race that were preeminent in interwar Europe ultimately facilitated Nazi racial designs for a “New Europe.” The volume examines racial theories in a number of European nation-states in order to understand racial thinking at large, the origins of the Holocaust, and the history of ethnic discrimination in each of those countries. The essays, by uncovering neglected layers of complexity, diversity, and nuance, demonstrate how local discourse on race paralleled Nazi racial theory but had unique nationalist intellectual traditions of racial thought. Written by rising scholars who are new to English-language audiences, this work examines the scientific foundations that central, eastern, northern, and southern European countries laid for ethnic discrimination, the attempted annihilation of Jews, and the elimination of other so-called inferior peoples.


Alleged Nazi Collaborators in the United States after World War II

Alleged Nazi Collaborators in the United States after World War II

Author: Christoph Schiessl

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1498529410

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book follows the story of suspected Nazi war criminals in the United States and analyzes their supposed crimes during World War II, their entry into the United States as war refugees in the 1940s and 1950s, and their prosecution in the 1970s and beyond by the U.S. government, specifically by the Office of Special Investigation (OSI). In particular, this book explains why and how such individuals entered the United States, why it took so long to locate and apprehend them, how the OSI was founded, and how the OSI has tried to bring them to justice. This study constitutes a thorough account of 150 suspects and examines how the search for them connects to larger developments in postwar U.S. history. In this latter regard, one major theme includes the role Holocaust memory played in the aforementioned developments. This account adds significantly to the historiographical debate about when and how the Holocaust found its way into American Jewish and also general American consciousness. In general, these suspected Nazi war criminals could come to the United States largely undetected during the early Cold War. In this atmosphere, they morphed from Nazi collaborators to ardent anti-Communists and, outside of some big fish, not even within the Jewish community was their role in the Holocaust much discussed. Only with the Eichmann trial in the early 1960s did interest in other Holocaust perpetrators increase, culminating in the founding of the OSI in the late 1970s. The manuscript makes use, among other documents, of declassified sources from the CIA and FBI, little used trial accounts, and hard to locate OSI records.