Andrew
Ezergailis, the author of what remains the standard work in English on the Final
Solution in Latvia, gave his book the subtitle The Missing Center.[1] He
chose this subtitle to represent what he felt was a noticeable absence in the discussion
of collaboration by Latvians with Nazis. On the one hand, Ezergailis argued,
some scholars tried to argue that the Latvians were rabid collaborators who
couldn’t wait to lay their hands on their defenseless Jewish neighbors; on the
other hand, other scholars depicted the Latvians as selfless rescuers who, with
a very small number of exceptions, disagreed with Nazi Jewish policy and would
have resisted more had the choice to do so not been deadly. The truth,
Ezergailis wrote, lay somewhere in between.
Defenders
of Latvian honor rightly pointed to a significant history of tolerance of Jews
in Latvia, both during its period as a province of the Russian Empire and also
during its brief period of independence between 1918 and 1940. Despite this
relatively peaceful history in Latvia before the German invasion on June 22,
1941, the Jews of Latvia nevertheless suffered horribly during the Nazi
occupation, with more than 75% of the almost 100,000 Latvian Jews murdered
during the German occupation -- a percentage exceeded only in Lithuania and
Poland.[2]
The factors that contributed to this firestorm of extermination were multiple,
but central was the role played by Latvian auxiliaries, who were drawn from a
variety of sources, including the Perkonkrusts (Thunder Cross; PK)
ultra-right-wing militia. PK was a conscious choice of the Nazis as a
collaborator to assure the liquidation of the Jewish population, as shown by
the pre-war contacts between the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) intelligence
division of the SS and PK, the split in PK in the early days of the Nazi
occupation roughly along predominantly anti-communist and anti-Jewish lines,
and the percentage of the early death toll committed by members of the PK,
notably the renowned Latvian airman Herberts Cukurs.
Latvia
and Perkonkrusts Before June 1941
Perkonkrusts
had emerged during the period in which Latvia was an independent state. January
1932 saw the rise of the Ugunskrusts (Fire Cross) organization founded
by Gustavs Celmins,[3]
a veteran of the Latvian War of Independence, ultra-nationalist member of the
student fraternity Selonija, and sometime political attaché. The
organization encountered opposition from the government and was banned in April
1933, after which point it morphed into PK and operated for another year. The
organization, using the slogan "Latvia for Latvians," was virulently
anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic, as well as anti-German, given the historical
role of Baltic Germans in Latvia's ruling elites.[4]
With
the seizure of power by Prime Minister Karlis Ulmanis in an authoritarian coup
in May 1934, PK was also banned and many of its members arrested. Celmins fled
abroad.[5]
Latvia continued to be ruled by Ulmanis through the first year of the
Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, but he was forced to resign in July 1940, one
month following the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union. For nearly the
next year, the nation was subjected to severe repression under Soviet rule, the
height of which occurred on June 13-14, 1941, just one week before the German
invasion, when the NKVD ordered in a single night of terror the mass arrest and
deportation of approximately 15,000 Latvian citizens.
Unsurprisingly,
given this very recent experience with repression at the hand of the Soviets, a
German military campaign to push out the Soviets was by and large quite
welcome.[6]
Moreover, its tolerant history notwithstanding, Latvia following the experience
of Soviet rule had a not insignificant population who were now receptive to the
anti-Semitic trope of Judeobolschewismus. While a thorough discussion of
the history of this anti-Semitic archetype -- not to mention the history of
Bolshevism itself in Latvia, which was not insignificant[7] -- is beyond
the scope of this essay, it is nevertheless important to recognize that the
year of Soviet rule that Latvians experienced contributed significantly to increased
anti-Semitism in the country. While some found the Nazis’ use of the
Judeo-Bolshevik threat to be a ridiculous throwback to the Nazi past, others --
particularly PK members who had long argued such a connection – believed the
propaganda wholly.
The occupation of Latvia by
Germany, beginning in June 1941 as part of the larger Operation Barbarossa, had
included anti-Semitism within its larger context. In preparation for a coming
clash of ideologies, the Nazis sought to cultivate the cooperation of
anti-Soviet activists in the areas to be occupied long before the invasion
began, and Latvia was no exception. There was no shortage of populations from
which collaborators could be drawn. In addition to several leading figures of
the independent Latvian military, who had fled to Germany in the previous one
to two years, there was also a large Baltic German population that had only
recently be relocated to Reich territory under the Heim ins Reich
population transfer program of the SS. Finally, and most relevant because of
the pre-existence anti-Semitism of PK, Gustavs Celmins himself had relocated to
Germany in 1940 and was joined there by several high-ranking PK members.[8]
Perkonkrusts as a Pre- and Post-Invasion
Collaborator
To determine whether PK was a
conscious choice of the Nazis for collaborations requires first demonstrating
pre-invasion communication between the parties. The assumption of substantial
pre-invasion collaboration had always been assumed on the basis of Celmins's
arrival in the country one week after the invasion with the Wehrmacht as a Sonderführer.[9] However,
despite widespread claims of such collaboration in the secondary literature,
documentation of bona fide pre-invasion collaboration has been extraordinarily
scarce. Moreover, with PK having been banned by the Nazi occupation authorities
in August 1941, less than two months into the occupation, the window of
opportunity for collaboration seems to have been quite short.
One important piece of evidence
is that the Nazi party was aware of the existence of PK in Latvia in its
earlier heyday, as shown by mention of the group in a two-part article
published in late 1933 in the party newspaper Ostland, the organ of the Bund
Deutscher Osten in Berlin. In these articles, PK is referred to as a
possible ally of the Nazis, although its anti-German attitude is criticized and
attributed to “a mistaken perception of National Socialism as a danger to the
Latvian state.”[10]
Nevertheless, it is also presciently noted that, given French cooperation with
the Soviets, Latvia and PK would soon have to come to terms with Germany.[11] With PK
having been pushed underground the following year, how the organization
re-emerged has been difficult to determine.
Important
clarification was offered by Freds Launags, who joined PK at the beginning of
the Nazi occupation and collaborated with the SD before eventually joining the
anti-Nazi underground, spearheading resistance to the returning Soviets. Launags
ultimately emerged in Stockholm after the war, where he volunteered for anti-Soviet
intelligence work. He emigrated to the United States and was ultimately
cultivated as an operative for the CIA. At a debriefing in the 1950s, Launags
clarified the extent of pre-invasion collaboration.[12]
Launags
recounted how, while living under Soviet occupation in 1940, he helped to form
a secret anti-Soviet resistance group, posing as a communist in hopes of
infiltrating the government to moderate its policies. He went underground when
the NKVD cracked down on resistance in early 1941. He claimed to have been
recruited for more formal anti-Soviet espionage by a PK member named Feliks
Rikards in April 1941, after which point PK contacts with Germany began to arm
the underground with smuggled German arms. When the war with Germany broke out,
Launags began moving toward Riga, offering assistance in routing out communists
along the way. He arrived in Riga on July 4, at which point PK had already been
reconstituted and had established an operating office. Gustavs Celmins was at
that time in Berlin requesting the formation of a Latvian SS unit.[13]
Launags’s testimony,
while valuable, must be approached with caution. Certainly, were he directly
responsible for war crimes, he would have denied any involvement; situating
himself within a political, rather than armed, wing of the movement would have
sufficiently exculpated him from participating in the extermination of Latvia’s
Jews. Nevertheless, his testimony about the creation of subgroups within PK
corroborates quite closely and independently several other sources on the
topic, none of whom cite Launags.
Perkonkrusts Splits Into Factions
Launags recounted that PK was
being divided into subgroups when he arrived in Riga. One of the groups was
Sondergruppe R (for Rikards), to which Launags was attached and for which his chief
job was interrogating communists. Sondergruppe R eventually became known as the
Latvian Card Index, and it operated throughout the war as an
intelligence-gathering arm of the SD targeted against communists. The other,
more famous, subgroup was Sondergruppe A, commonly referred to the Arajs
Kommando (AK) and named for the Latvian policeman Viktors Arajs, which was
deployed against Latvia’s Jews.[14]
Thus, already by Launags’s
arrival in Riga, PK was being divided into wings targeting, respectively,
communists and Jews – both of which were traditional PK enemies. Although PK
would be banned outright in six weeks, the recruitment process for the AK would
indicate how important PK was to the persecution of the Jews. Arajs himself
seems to have appearance unsummoned at the police headquarters in Riga on July
1, where he met Walter Stahlecker, head of Einsatzgruppe A, which had
been attached to Heeresgruppe Nord with the invasion on June 22 to
execute political opposition, including male Jews between 15 and 50 years old.
Stahlecker authorized Arajs to form a commando, and three days later, the
following call was published in Tevija, a nationalist newspaper: “All
nationally-thinking Latvians -- members of Pērkonkrusts, students,
officers, Home Guards [“Aizsargi”], and others, who wish to take an active part
in the cleansing of our country from harmful elements, can register themselves
at the Headquarters of the Security Kommando at Valdemars Street 19, from 9-11
and from 17-19.”[15]
Several
mysteries surround the appearance of Arajs, as well as his specific mention of
PK in his call to arms when it had been banned seven years earlier; in
contrast, the Aizsargi had only been banned with the Soviet occupation a year
earlier. One possible explanation is offered by Ezergailis, who notes (albeit
in a footnote) that a document exists showing that Arajs himself had been a PK
member. Ezergailis writes, “Under Ulmanis [Arajs] had to deny this association
to keep his position as a policeman […] At the same time, however, we can not [sic]
completely eliminate the possibility that the Germans knew of Arajs' early
association with the Perkonkrusts and that he therefore was preselected for the
job.”[16]
It is also possible that, upon the Germans occupying Riga, Arajs simply
reported to the police station to determine the situation and volunteered for
duty with the Einsatzgruppe. Significantly, Roberts Stiglics, whom Stahlecker
appointed police chief in Riga, had like Celmins returned to Latvia with the
Germans. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Stiglics and Arajs
were acquainted via police work and that the former called upon the latter.[17]
Conversely,
Richards Plavnieks protests that Arajs could not have been a PK member. He
notes that, while the initial 1975 indictment against Arajs from his trial in
West Germany included the charge that Arajs was a PK member, the charge was
removed in the indictment’s final form.[18]
Moreover, Plavnieks asserts that the mistaken identification of Arajs with PK
is largely the result of mistaken testimony from Jewish eyewitnesses, who,
while well able to identify their persecutors on a personal level, would have
been less able to determine the specific taxonomy of the Latvian far right.[19] However,
Plavnieks does not engage the document that Ezergailis uses to substantiate the
possibility of Arajs’s membership. As a result, Plavnieks’s claim that, “[b]ecause
he belonged to the police force during the Kārlis Ulmanis dictatorship
under which Pērkonkrusts was a banned organization, Viktors Arājs
incontrovertibly could not have been a member, at least not as of 1934”[20] seems naïve,
if not almost quaint.
Because
PK had been divided into Sondergruppen R and A, the ban on the organization in
August 1941 had less of an effect than might otherwise be thought. Sondergruppe
R, per Launags’s testimony, was subsumed into the SD as the Latvian Card Index,
and this information is broadly corroborated by multiple sources. Sondergruppe
A, or the AK, would go on to participate broadly in crimes against humanity,
targeting mainly the Jews of Riga and the countryside of Latvia. Matthew Kott notes
that the Latvian Card Index itself split into wings led by Rikards, who formed
the clandestine resistance to the Nazis and subsequently to the Soviets, and
Celmins, who was ultimately arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and sent to a
concentration camp.[21]
Members
of Perkonkrusts Commit Mass Murder
Regardless
of whether he was a PK member or not, Arajs nevertheless recruited among PK
members, and while the testimony of Jewish survivors might be inaccurate for
the reasons noted, other sources substantiate their number among the AK. For
instance, Kott notes that PK members “exerted a disproportionate influence on
the course of the Holocaust in Latvia,”[22]
although he concedes that several sources have likely exaggerated the number.
In addition, Katrin Reichelt, while stating that it is “very difficult if not
impossible”[23]
to prove the number of PK members among participants in the Final Solution, refers
to the Operational and Situational Report of Einsatzgruppe A of August 1, 1941,
in which Stahlecker favorably describes the organization, calling them “a moral
elite, whose attitude is ready for battle thoroughly.”[24]
Among
the most prominent PK members who served in the AK was Herberts Cukurs, who
distinguished himself in the eyes of several survivors for his cruelty in the
ghetto-clearing operation of November 30, 1941 – the first of two dates on
which the majority of Jews in the Riga ghetto were shot at Rumbula. Although Cukurs’s
PK membership before the war has been a matter of some dispute, several sources
attest to his becoming a member in the days following the Nazi occupation. In
addition, although there has been some disagreement with regard to Cukurs’s
involvement in atrocities, it is unlikely that eyewitnesses would misidentify
someone as well known among Latvians as Cukurs. Moreover, even Ezergailis, who
has tended to defend Cukurs as condemned on the basis of very little evidence,
is forced to concede that, “Although Arajs’ men were not the only ones on the
ghetto end of this operation [Rumbula], to the degree that they participated in
the atrocities there the chief responsibility rests on Herberts Cukurs’
shoulders.”[25]
Finally, the mere association of Cukurs, Arajs, and AK in the two Aktionen
at Rumbula demonstrates the participation of PK in the mass murder of Latvia’s
Jews.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, PK was a conscious choice of the Nazi leadership generally and the
SD particularly in perpetrating the Final Solution in Latvia. Not only can mutual
and contacts between the Nazis and PK be substantiated from long before the German
invasion of Latvia, but the division of PK under the Nazi occupation along
anti-Soviet and anti-Jewish lines, a decision unlikely to have been taken without
German approval, indicates an attempt to channel anti-Semitic energies toward a
genocidal goal. Finally, although the focus on Herberts Cukurs here due to
issues of space precludes a more thorough discussion of PK collaboration, the actions
of the airman and his commander Viktors Arajs provide concrete evidence of participation
in genocide. Although Ezergailis considered PK to be part of the “missing
center” of his book’s title, the benefit of additional sources now indicates
just how much of that center PK occupied.
[1] Andrew
Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944: The Missing Center
(Riga, Latvia: Historical Institute of Latvia, 1996)
[2] United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jewish Population of Europe in 1933: Population
Data by Country,” https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005161,
accessed November 15, 2016; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European
Jews (Teaneck, N.J.: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 1220; Lucy Dawidowicz, The
War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Bantam, 1986), 403.
[3] Please note that
all diacritical markings of Latvian names and words have been removed.
[4] Matthew Kott, “Latvia's
Perkonkrusts: Anti-German National Socialism in a Fascistogenic Milieu,” Fascism:
Journal of Contemporary Fascist Studies, 4 (2015), 180-81.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Richards
Plavnieks, "Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War: The Cases
Against Viktors Arajs and the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police" (Ph.D.
diss., University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2013), 31-32.
[7] Among other
factors, the Latvian Rifles, a unit of the Red Army, played a decisive role in
the Bolshevik seizure of power, and Latvians were the single most over-represented
minority among the peoples of the Russian Empire in the Bolshevik Party, ahead
of both Jews and Ukrainians. See, e.g., Ezergailis, The Latvian Impact on
the Bolshevik Revolution: The First Phase: September 1917 to April 1918
(New York: East European Monographs, 1974).
[8] Kott 188.
[9] I.e., a “special
leader”; Ezergailis, ibid, 121-22.
[10] “Das
Parteiwesen in Lettland,” Ostland: Wochenschrift für den gesamten Osten
14, no. 44 (October 27, 1933): 471, translation mine.
[11] “Das
Parteiwesen in Lettland,” Ostland: Wochenschrift für den gesamten Osten
14, no. 46 (November 10, 1933): 495.
[12] "Biographic
Debriefing of Clevland [sic] O. Hahn" (Hahn Debriefing), LAUNAGS, FREDS,
Volume 1 (LAUNAGS, vol. 1), Second Release of Name Files Under the Nazi War
Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Acts, ca. 1981 - ca. 2002
(Second Release of Name Files), Record Group 263: Records of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), 1894 - 2002 (RG 263), National Archives at College
Park, MD (NACP), pp. 24-281.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Quoted in
Plavnieks, ibid, 35, translation his.
[16] Ezergailis 196.
[17] Ibid, 156.
[18] Plavnieks,
ibid, 159.
[19] Ibid, 157-58.
[21] Kott, ibid,
190-91.
[22] Ibid, 189.
[23]
Katrin Reichelt, “Between Collaboration and Resistance: The Role of the
Organization Perkonkrusts in the Holocaust in Latvia,” in The Issues
of the Holocaust Research in Latvia, edited by Andris Caune, Aivars
Stranga, and Margers Vestermanis (Riga, Latvia: Latvijas Vestures Instituta
Apgads, 2003), 285
[24] Quoted in ibid,
286, translation hers.
[25] Ezergailis,
ibid, 192.
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