History: Latvia, 1940, year of horror when bolsheviks struck

Apollonian

Guest Columnist
Latvia: Year of Horror, 1940 – The Year Assimilated Jews Turned on Their Neighbours

July 1, 2017 11 Comments

Link: https://historicaltribune.wordpress...-assimilated-jews-turned-on-their-neighbours/

Latvia: Year of Horror. is an highly illustrated, chronological eyewitness and documented account of the suffering the Latvian people endured at the hands of the Jewish-Bolshevik invaders and, the assimilated Latvian-Jews, who, in the summer of 1940, began a slaughterous oppression with the arrival of the Jewish Red Army.

It all started on the 15th of June 1940, at 2:30am, when the NKVD raided a Latvian Boarder Post, then with the Red Army invasion of the Latvian Territory and occupation of Riga, on the 17th of June, 1940. Latvia’s terror started at once with the mass arrests, murders and/or deportations of its leaders to far regents of Bolshevik Russia, as revolutionary criminals were released from Latvian prisons, to assist the Red Army and replace the slain and deported in their positions. It followed later with thousands of Latvians being arrested without warrant, loaded onto railway freight carriages and deported to the far east to join their leaders in frost-bitten death camps, or they were just outright murdered in their homeland. This left the blood-soaked nation leaderless, until the onset of the preemptive German mobilisation of Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet aggression toward the west, who arrived in Latvia on Sunday June 22, 1941 and, finally arrived at Riga on July 1, 1941. They were welcomed as Liberators by the Latvian people, who then turned their suffering into revenge against many of the Jewish occupiers… but they are now referred to as ‘Pro-Nazi Sympathisers and Collaborators’ by the victors.

The highly illustrated booklet, ‘Latvia: Year of Horror‘ is reproduced below with only formatting, spelling and minimal translation amendments for comprehension purposes, but has been kept as close as possible to the original 1942 translation and accuracy of detailed facts. The relevant video footage contained is an additional inclusion by Historical Tribune.

Latvia, Year of Horror - shadow
Edited by Paula Kovalevskis, Oskars Noritis and Mikelis Goppers. Published by Zelta Abele, 1942.

Latvia: Year of Horror, is a collection of photos and documents covering the communist rule in Latvia from June 17, 1940 to July 1, 1941. This book shows communism as it was in reality — cloaked in deception and lies, filled with inhuman cruelties, reveling in torture and blood, sadistic in its delight in the lamentations of sufferers, and infinite in revenge and destruction. An unfathomable darkness, a madness, a mockery of honour and a rejection of all virtue sought to annihilate nothing less than the soul of the Latvian nation, a people for more than 4,000 years.

“Latvia: Year of Horror, an historical, unexpurgated publication, not adhering to any political fashion or line, has the blessing of God. These are the plain facts. There are no grounds to consider it anti-Semitic literature.”
~ Reverend Karlis Zuika

Forward

The reprinting of Baigais Gads (Latvia: Year of Horror) is not only laudable and welcome, it is also necessary. This book deals with a turning point in Latvian history, which must not remain hidden.

Latvia: Year of Horror, was the first (1942) and, at this moment, the only full documentation of the horrible events of 1940. It offers a precise witness account of that time in Latvian history.

It is an historical documentation of the now, all-but-forgotten events in Latvia of that horrible summer of 1940. It is a period of time filled with tragedy. A manipulation of historical events to suit today’s needs is not allowable… These are the facts!

To read the later adapted Introduction to Latvia: Year of Horror, see here, pages 3 – 5.

The Beginning

On June 15/16, 1940, many Latvians had gathered to attend the song festival in Daugavpils. This was to be the last such festival for free Latvians for almost half a century. The attack by Stalin’s communists on the night of June 14, 1940 was the prelude to Latvia’s road of suffering. The orgy of bloodshed had begun. On this night, the “great Eastern neighbour” — the Soviet Union — after a silence of 23 years, took the first step in the dance of death on Latvian soil. Their invasion was their calling card and showed how the Bolsheviks betrayed their commitments undertaken in the Mutual Assistance Pact of 1939.

Latvia, Border Guard, article

◾Border Guard BodiesThey burned the quarters of Latvian border guards in the Maslenkis community in Augspils Township (above)

◾The half-burned body of border guard Macitis (top right).

◾The body of Hermine, wife of border guard Purins (middle right).

◾The body of border guard Beizaks. (bottom Right).
The son of border guard Purins died in hospital from fatal injuries. Border guard Cimosko died with Beizaks. Forty-three border guards and nearby residents who tried to save the burning quarters were seized by the invading communists and taken across the border as prisoners.

These events took place at the very time that the Bolshevik press proclaimed: “The Soviet Union has maintained and continues to maintain a policy that is beneficial and to the highest degree pro-Latvian.”
Arrival of Soviet troops
The arrival of the Bolsheviks in Riga, the Latvian capital, via the Iron Bridge.
View from the central market on the afternoon of June 17th, 1940.

The cynicism and bestiality shown by Soviet rule seemed unbelievable. The hypocrisy and falsification of truth were incomprehensible. Yet, they did happen. The official announcements by the Latvian Government protesting the invasion, had no effect. Moscow proceeded according to plan for the invasion and annexation of Latvia. These plans were thorough and far-reaching.

On the morning of June 17th, Latvia was overrun by the armed hordes of Communist Russia. Many of the invading troops were Asiatic units who could, thus, not speak to the victims.

Communist-instigated mob, incited disorder at Riga's Police Headquarters

Latvia article, communists riot at Riga

Communist-instigated mob, incited disorder at Riga’s Police Headquarters

Riga Post Office, day of invasion
View at the Main Post Office in Riga on the day of the communist invasion.
Jews attack police, soldiers and officers
Attacks on the Latvian Police, on the Soldiers and Officers of the Latvian Army took place in the Capital and throughout the Country. Rocks were thrown at the Police by the Communist-instigated mob.

…But from the underground, sensing ideological allies in the Bolsheviks, there arose “the oppressed masses” groups of hooligans, criminals, vagabonds, many Jews, “the Chosen People”, to welcome the invaders and to attack the police as they tried to maintain order in the streets packed with the invading Soviet soldiers.

The Red Army arrived “to assure the realisation of the USSR and Latvia’s mutual assistance pact,” who embraced and protected the pro-communist rioters. Thus, the Soviets demonstrated who deserved their “mutual assistance” and it was not the Latvian nation at large.

Grimly silent, Latvians on the sidewalks were watching a real life drama, about which no one at the time could sense the horrific outcome of the final act.

Railroad station
After the dispersal of the mob, the area of the railroad station and around police headquarters was littered with rocks hurled by the communist rioters.

Riot arrestsThe Latvian institutions, not yet familiar with the practices of the Bolshevik invaders, attempted to enforce the laws of the land, in the belief that those who had incited the riot should be charged and punished. This was a bitter delusion. The Soviet Embassy explained that it was satisfied with the manner in which the Red Army’s arrival in Riga had been welcomed! The names of the hooligans charged for rioting indicate their mostly Jewish origin; Genech Kreiness, David Goldberg, Heim Klackin, Grigory Varuskin, Abramy Gemjanov, etc.

Puppet PresidentAll these events were legitimised. A new government took power on orders from Moscow. The duly constituted Latvian Government was replaced. At left: Puppet President, Professor Kirchensteins addresses the crowd, with Peter Blaus and Julius Lacis. Demonstrators requested and got the legalisation of the Latvian Communist Party.

Jews in Power in Latvia - Copy
The sensitive ear of the Latvian Communist Party’s first Secretary, Kalnberzins-Zakis, who carefully noted the “just demands of the nation“, in reality, his orders were from Moscow.

Jewish Signs
What Nationality were they? The language and characters on the signs indicate, clearly – Jews!

Comrade VishinkiThe master of Ceremonies of all events planned by Moscow, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, of the Soviet Union, Comrade Vishinski (at left), greeted the “friendly” demonstrators and stated his belief that, in the future, the Soviet and Latvian flags would fly side by side. The future would reveal this to be a barefaced lie and would expose the cynical intentions behind this statement.

On June 21st, workers were forcibly driven out into the streets to participate in a “demonstration of joy” to hail, with many enthusiastic Jews, their own future murderers. The Soviet power, already having taken under its wing the crowd of hooligans, now released prisoners guilty of illegal political activities. Sadly, it did not occur to the new puppet government that the USSR would establish its “pro-Latvian policy” with the aid of Enemies of the State! This coerced demonstration in Riga, was a forerunner of future manufactured “support” for the planned implementation of Soviet power.

Jewish crowd awaits the release of prisoners
Mostly Jewish crowd awaits the release of political prisoners from Central Prison in Riga.

Newly Released Prisoners Parade

Jewish Prisoners article
Prisoners, accompanied by largely Jewish crowd and the coerced crowd of demonstrators, enter the street. A Prisoner addresses the crowd. His face clearly contorted with hate and a desire to destroy.

Jewish crowd at soviet embassyThe prisoners and crowd of Jews were of one mind: the Soviets in power were their real friends. The Soviet Embassy on Anthony Street, was the den where the local hirelings fulfilled Moscow’s plans.

The masses had no notion of their contents. Many even opined – as did many gullible people in the West – that, in its 23 years of existence, communism had changed for the better.

The largely Jewish crowd cheered the speaker addressing the crowd. Their “roaring cheers for the liberators” became understandable only later.


Deported or escaped anti-government Bolsheviks returned from Sweden. It is not necessary to note that most of them were Jews. [centre] The former Spanish Civil War Red Front volunteers, are greeted by Jewish functionaries.
Simultaneously, Red Army soldiers staged performances in the city’s parks and gardens, displaying their “culture” and diverting attention from the destruction planned for the Latvian nation. Everything proceeded according to plan.

All interested in the destruction of the state of Latvia, of the Latvian nation and the ruin of its values, had now met and joined arms. The team of destroyers were now in place.

With forces unified, the destruction of the existing system, order and values could begin. A fearless hand stabbed in the back, the nation’s greatest and best organised guard and support: the Latvian Army was to be Bolshevised! This task was entrusted to largely Jewish hands.

Abraham GenkinsPictured left and below on the left, is one of the new power brokers, Abraham Genkins, a Jew. He had been a soldier in the Latvian Army in the Courland Division, Labour – that is, a punishment or military prisoner – Commando in Liepaja. He had been arrested for subversive activities. With the arrival of the Bolsheviks, this criminal was promoted to the rank of “Politruk” (Political Commissar) in the Artillery Division. He is seen wearing the uniform of a Latvian Army officer (below left).

Politruks

Latvian Army training for criminalsInto the Latvian Army, “Politruks” – Political Commissars – with no military training and often without even grade school education – were introduced. Frequently, they had criminal pasts and were promoted at once, to the ranks of Captain or Colonel. The first and essential condition of their appointment was that the army must not be a-political. [image right] “Political Indoctrination” session during training in one Latvian Army unit. On the left, a “Politruk.”

The work of destruction continued feverishly. It was necessary to falsify the wishes of the nation in order to ratonalise actions, to which no one with common sense would agree. On July 15/16, in elections for the Saeima, the Parliament, the people were compelled to vote for only one existing slate and were forcibly driven to the polls. Afterwards, holders of passports that did not have a stamp indicating they had participated in the voting, were considered to be traitors! Propaganda signs in Russian and such coercive methods, left no doubt about the purpose, persistence and relentlessness of Bolshevik intentions.

Forced Marches to vote
One of the forced marches from work to voting stations where there was only one choice on the ballot.

Latvian SSR Founded
The fateful “newly elected” session of the Saeima opened on July 21, 1940. There, the destiny of Latvia was to be decided and the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was founded.

To Moscow!
Prof. Kirchensteins
Professor Kirchensteins and the Soviet Ambassador at the Riga railroad station, leaving for Moscow.

Official statistics show that, in spite of coercion of the voting process, a significant number of voters abstained. Therefore, the new Soviet rulers announced that participation in the election had been nearly 100% of the electorate. The new members of the Saeina, elected as they were in forced and staged elections, now took the next step of high treason and resolved to approve the annexation of Latvia to the Soviet Union.

Professor Kirchensteins, the new President-in-waiting, undertook the task of begging Moscow for mercy to realize this goal. This was done. All obstacles to Bolshevik plans had been removed.

Jew Crowd
The real meaning of these events was best expressed in the rejoicing of so many Jews. For the Latvian nation, the hardest moments of awareness and a crucial test of its very existence, had arrived.

In Moscow, the long planned sequence of events reached its conclusion. The Latvian nation had been dragged to a threshold, the crossing of which was designed to erase it from the registry of nations forever!

Ecstatic JewsIt was no secret what the result of Professor Kirchensteins’ trip would be. This was to be the last act in a masterfully directed drama. It was to prove to the world that the Latvian nation “ardently wishes to join the family of other nations in the Soviet Union.”

The request to incorporate Latvia into the Soviet Union was in the hands of the press on the day of Kirchenstein’s arrival in Moscow. However, Moscow already knew what it wanted and what was to be done.

Everything proceeded as planned. On August 5th, 1940, the fate of Latvia was sealed.

Most Jews were ecstatic. The demonstrations on August 5th, turned into Jewish National celebrations.

Jews request the annexation of Latvia
With the Communist Revolutionary fist salute, Jews request the annexation of the State of Latvia to the Soviet Union.

The State of Latvia Ceases to Exist on August 5th

Like a mockery of truth, the Soviet newspaper, Izvestia, reported on August 6th: “Yesterday, the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet separately voting by chambers unanimously agreed to accept the request of Latvia’s Saeima to include the Latvian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic) into the U.S.S.R.’s fraternal family of nations.”

Soviet Paper Aug 6th, 1940
Jews Rejoice
The Jews rejoiced most.

The following day, large numbers of Jews in Latvia again rejoiced, and their joy was unrestrained. However, Latvians driven into the streets to join in “gratitude” demonstrations were grim-faced. As of this moment, they had lost their free will and their destiny was completely in Moscow’s hands. There was only one road left open to the Latvian nation – to close ranks and with heads proudly raised, inspired by love and loyalty for the land of their fathers, to resist and meet the fate of martyrs.

Acting President
Acting President and Prime Minister, Prof. Kirchensteins

This man, Professor Kirchensteins, to make believable the grossly falsified will of the Latvian people, hypocritically lied:

“The workers of Latvia suffered from unemployment and lived in hunger… Every attempt to gain human subsistence and rights and to determine their own future, they paid for with suffering and torment, with incarceration of their best sons and daughters in prison and forced labour camps… Only the inclusion into the U.S.S.R. assures real independence, development of industry, agriculture, the blossoming of real national culture, brilliant and powerful rise of material and cultural well being…”

[As George Orwell would write in his novel, 1984, the Communist world peace is war and freedom is slavery.]

Loyal GuardsThe new communist power was established. Loyal guards and support had to be provided. Already operational was the Institute of Police Assistance Service “P.D.” With few exceptions, this was comprised of the dregs of society: thieves, burglars, cheats. This institution eventually became the People’s Militia. Many Jews and hardened criminals were entrusted with the organisation and supervision of these institutions.

Organiser of Militia, Isak Jewsinskis
Organiser of the Workers’ Guard & People’s Militia, a man with a long criminal record; a Jew, Izak Bucinskis

The duties of the police were assumed by the newly founded People’s Militia, although their primary task was not to fight crime. This concept lost its meaning when criminals were released from prisons and the leadership of security establishments were handed over to them. The militiamen had mastered shooting, in the event they had to face their own countrymen. Hardly able to read or write, they controlled identity documents in search of enemies of the new regime. These were considered to be anyone decently attired or intelligent looking.

Workers received arms and founded Workers’ Guards. Among them were women, there on the understanding they would not flinch when executing their duties.

Militia target practice
People’s Militia at Target Practice

Militiamen check papers

Women Guard

National Guard

Militiamen check identity papers of pedestrians in Riga. [centre] The Workers’ Guard in formation in honour of the delegation from Moscow. The women of the Workers’ Guard.
To allay suspicions, many workers joined the Guard, even though they had no connections with the Bolsheviks. To justify the existence of this armed guard, the Bolsheviks invented horror stories about sabotage. The guards were guarding the factories against imaginary ghosts.

Bolshevik Cynicism

Bolshevik CynicismIn those few weeks was hidden the most horrible villainy of Bolshevik cynicism. From the very first days of the occupation rule, word spread like wildfire of the first wave of arrests. The prisons, emptied of recidivists, criminals, Bolshevik agents, subversives, spies and illegals, quickly filled with Latvian patriots. Former Latvian policemen were arrested for attempts to maintain order during the largely Jewish-incited riots in city streets. Every other Latvian who wore a uniform was arrested – soldiers, border guards, home guards – or those who were in a supervisory position in the former government offices, as well as judges who ruled in accordance with the prevailing law, and finally, those who openly and proudly announced their affiliation to the Latvian nation. Ironically, at the same time, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the equality and brotherhood of nations.

Unrest and agitation among the people grew. The nation, confused and shaken by events arranged by cynical and coldblooded minds, was facing an uncertain future and sensed the presence of danger. The occupation power was fighting the distrust and hatred of the nation. There would be no reprisals, the puppet regime promised! That had to be repeated again and again, not because this power attempted to establish and secure authority and regain the lost trust, but rather it exploited the existing and freshly and deliberately provoked antagonisms to arrive at its real goal: To Destroy “Harmful elements“. These elements were the whole independence-minded Latvian nation.

Street Signs
Streets were crowded with a variety of signs and displays on which much money was spent.

“There shall be no reprisals.” These words encompass the oldest Bolshevik lie, their most horrible deeds perpetrated during the year of their rule. Words seemingly expressing trust and forgiveness hid the real intent of the Bolsheviks – the destruction of the Latvian nation.

When a year later, the ground opened up and the corpses disclosed the truth, it was more horrible than anything anyone had imagined or feared.

On the 26th International Bolshevik Youth Day, Latvians were again coerced. Students were ordered out into the streets. The Bolsheviks had to prove to the world that the nation and especially the youth understood and loved the new era and that they “freely and without coercion rejoiced in the establishment of Soviet power.” Compulsory demonstrations were the best method to create this falsified effect.

Loudest Screamers
Again, the loudest screamers and the most ardent participants were Jews, the Chosen People, and the only real voluntary demonstrators.

Land Distribution Committee at Work
The Land Distribution Committee at work.

“Farmland, livestock and inventory will be left intact.” Although new slogans and ever louder promises issued forth, nobody believed them anymore. Not one farmer believed that Latvian agriculture would be saved from the fate of the collectivised farms in the Soviet Union. The farmers gave up. They sensed the future. So, the Bolsheviks had to lie to mask their plans as much as possible. The Minister of Agriculture lied gladly.

Latvian farmers’ suspicions proved correct: farms were subdivided to give farm workers 10 hectares of land each, and minimal livestock to ensure that the new farmers would not thrive. This was the transition period to kolkhoz (collective) farms. Thus, 10,140 farmers were robbed of their land and livestock.

Quickly and deliberately, according to plans from Moscow, the poison of Bolshevism was fed into the flesh of the nation. More and more the spirit of the nation’s life and vitality was threatened. Next to the screaming agitation which paralysed people in demonstrations, the Bolsheviks used widespread and colourful signs and newspaper articles to feed their ideas into schools and places of higher education, even the University of Latvia. Youth everywhere, the healthiest and most positive resource of a nation, were subjected to these pernicious ideas. New “sciences” hitherto unknown on Latvia, were created – a Chair of Marxism-Leninism. The faculties of theology and philosophy were closed, the staff fired and arrested.

As new replacements were hired, their only qualifications were diplomas from the ‘Red Professorship Institute’. This institution prepared special instructors for the dissemination of Bolshevik ideas.. Often these so-called “professors” had problems with written material, but qualifications were based on the length of membership in the Communist Party and on the number of years spent in prisons. These men were chosen to be the new educators and leaders of Latvian youth.

Apart from the foregoing innovations, the Latvian Communist Youth Alliance was created with the task to Bolshevise the Latvian youth. To be successful, it had to mar the spirit of youth from childhood — by having them join the ‘Pioneer‘ organisation.

The wave of contradictions, lies and exploitation also swept over factory and office workers. Now they were to work according to impractical plans, goals, and targets, that could never be achieved. The Stakhanov movement created an artificial fever for raising production quotas, competitions between factories and firms to improve efficiency. This was a method to falsely mirror the wishes of the workers, compelling them often to work double time, instead of eight hours. This cruel shock movement drained and totally exploited the energy of the workers.

Simultaneously, to spiritually destroy the people, the Bolsheviks undermined the support of the nation’s economic and material life.. Depositors lost their life’s savings in banks and credit unions.. This most of all hurt the small and thrifty working man. To add to the misery, houses were repossessed, industry and transportation was nationalised, the farmers’ land was taken for the collectives, and tradesmen’s tools, equipment and apartment furnishings, were also nationalised.

Ironically, this entire program was called, “a fight for a better future, a fight for the ideals of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.”

The tentacles of Bolsehvism had the flesh of the nation firmly in their grip. Only one result was foreseeable – spiritual helplessness and dullness, physical weakness and overexertion, preconditions firstly for slavery and then an animal-like existence.

Out on the Streets! Out on the Streets! Out on the Streets!
Demonstrations! Demonstrations! Demonstrations!

Such was the characteristic trademark of the Bolshevik era: shouted slogans, marches of communist supporters, locals and fifth columnists brought in from Soviet Russia, the tread of thousands of feet had to proclaim how to commemorate the day when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was born, a day that promised paradise on earth.

Protest 1

Protest 2

In reality, these marches, slogan shouting and parades, had to try to drown out the noise of a life collapsing in ruins from Bolshevik poison and lies. The reality was an indictment of the Soviet occupation that had transformed life on earth in Latvia into a hell.

Job Seekers
Job Seekers at the Labour Exchange in Riga | Ads for job openings

Come wintertime, everybody was surprised by the new agitation method:

Labour Exchange

Ads in newspapers invited people to a Labour Exchange to fill innumerable vacancies and new jobs positions available. When long lines of the unemployed formed at the Exchange, the staff there knew nothing of these openings.

Elections!

Persuasion at Home!

January 12, 1941, was a day when Latvians were compelled to do what they did not want to – to vote for the deputies of the U.S.S.R. Higher Council (the Soviet “parliament” where, of course, there would be only one name, a communist, on the ballot). In addition to existing methods of driving out the voters, the Bolsheviks invented a new one, so-called “persuasion at home.“

Meeting of USSR Higher Council

Bolshevik agents visited individual flats and apartments, then ordered in all residents to assemble in order to convince and explain to them the significance of the elections. It is not necessary to note that among the keenest visitors to these meetings were pro-communist Latvian Jews. When this method was not suitable, it was replaced by meetings in factories and at work, where the only visitors often were housewives and children.

Vote RegisterElections generally, under communism, one of the most underhanded and falsified methods of gauging the people’s will and conviction, on this occasion were engineered especially carefully. Everyone had to verify in advance that his name was on the register of the electorate. It was obligatory to vote. If one lacked the stamp on one’s identity documents, indicating that one had voted, one was liable to the risk of being classified as a “saboteur”. As always in this terrible time, Jews assumed key leadership roles.

Volunteers Vote
A “Volunteer” votes.

On January 8th, 1941, the newspaper Cima wrote:
“Who wishes the Latvian nation (!) the fortune of peaceful life, the joy of labour and new creation, the conviction of safety for self and family, and welfare for the nation, shall vote for the Bolshevik Party, for the candidate of the communistic and independent bloc.”

But there were no other candidates! It was not possible to abstain. The inevitable results were clear!

What was not clear, was to what extent this farce would ensure the safety of the Latvian nation and its families.

A few months passed and the mask of hypocrisy began to drop. The malignant, bloodthirsty cynical face of Bolshevism was revealed. There was no longer any need to hide. All the harm that could be inflicted on the live flesh of the nation had been done. The nation was disarmed, morally degraded and blindly subjugated. Now could begin the preparations for annihilation. The will of the nation was again falsified. The workers “demanded death” for the so-called “murderers”, those police officers, who, while on duty during the Soviet invasion of June 17, 1940, had attempted to maintain order in the streets against the Bolshevik mobs.

‘Workers Resolution’ meeting.

These “workers’ resolutions” occurred in the following manner. When workers announced that their desire to do certain assignments at the rate of “shock tempo” or when they “unanimously demanded the highest degree of punishment for the bloodthirsty [police] hounds”, the procedure was always the same. A representative from the Party or the Union arrived at the factory with a prepared resolution, read it aloud at a meeting of workers and asked if anyone opposed it. People who had seen relatives and friends arrested on the slimmest of suspicion, grimly stayed silent. This meant the resolution was “passed unanimously!”

It is tyrannical to murder, but worse is it to press a knife in the hand of one nation against its will for the purpose of killing its own countrymen. That was how the Bolsheviks acted. Their sadism took a form and there is not one more despicable: their method of falsifying a nation’s will, revealed a degree of callousness that few will want to forgive or forget.

IT WAS CLEAR TO THE NATION WHAT OTHERS ARRESTED HAD TO EXPECT

Published call for murder
“No grace for murderers of workers: Masses of workers
demand highest punishment for 17th June executioners.”

We Stand For Peace!

Subjected to Bolshevism by force, the Latvians were coerced to take upon themselves “the fulfillment of proud duty to the motherland – the Soviet Union.” Latvian youth were doomed to be recruited into the Red Army.

A sign at the registration office proclaimed: “We stand for peace, but we are able to respond to the blows of warmongers.“

Red Army Registration Office
“We Stand for Peace”

At a colourfully decorated Red Army recruitment office Communist agents lectured recruits on how dangerous to the Soviet Union was the “capitalist siege”. [below] At one time, even the Baltic States [with a combined population of fewer than 5-million!] “threatened” the borders of the USSR. It was no secret that the Soviet Union, while professing peace, was secretly preparing for war. The Baltic States offered a favourable base for an attack on Germany, and now – in an irony of fate – it came the turn of the Baltic youth to hand over their lives to the hated Bolshevik occupiers.

Political Lecture Red Army Recruits
Political Instruction Lecture to Red Army Recruits

Special attention was paid to Latvian youth. They had to become “True Bolsheviks.” Pioneer – young communist – units were formed. MOPRA, a Red assistance organisation was legalised. The Komsomol (Young Communist League) was organised, with the goal of preparing future candidates for the Communist Party.

Tensions existed in classrooms. If any of the the pupils did not join the Pioneers, the communist educators considered their parents to be enemies of the socialist state. To be an “Enemy of the State” was to put oneself in grave danger.

With clenched teeth, many parents suppressed their opinions and silently observed their children joining the bearers of the “New Culture.“

CHEKA Prison CorrodorThe historical Riga Castle was renamed the Pioneer Castle. While children in their innocent naivete enjoyed their youthful pleasures, their fathers disappeared from their homes, from their places of employment, often without a trace. For silent were the corridors of the CHEKA (the NKVD or Soviet Security Police). There was silence behind the closed doors of the prison cells. Silent were the employees of the CHEKA and the guards and silent too, were the few who, by a miracle, were able to return from the CHEKA prisons to civilian life.
A corridor at the CHEKA prison.

Commi Fan-FareWhile the Latvian fathers continued to silently disappear, the communists continued to focus all the skill and ability of their propaganda machine, on unending demonstrations, complete with blaring signs and chanted slogans. The motley colours, exaggerated sizes of signs and, the artificial, blaring volume and noise on the one hand, sought to drown out the deep indignation, anger, despair and hatred hidden yet smouldering in the nation’ and, on the other hand, sought to cover the misdeeds and outrages flowing from the commands and orders of the new conquerors… In this respect, the May Day celebrations in Riga reached a pinnacle.

May Day Rabble, 1941
1941, May Day rabble in Riga

Youth worn out from endless marches

People, tired from endless marches, grew indifferent. Worn out from continual social competitions and long working hours, people grew indifferent to the outside world. The communists sought to demoralise the spirit of the Latvian nation and strangle it.

BANNERS! BANNERS! BANNERS!

Placards Placards Placards!

Communist Placards of Tyrants
A typical communist demonstration with signs featuring portraits of the tyrants and slogans.

The Soviet people were reduced to the level of animals and were forced to see the image of their ruler and judge, Stalin, constantly before their eyes. This people-control concept was now imposed on Latvia.
The intentions of largely Jewish agitators, shown below left, sought to subject the masses to delusions and falsehoods. To this end, the propaganda plumbed new depths of wild exaggeration. Demonstrators were led by dancers and commandos to energize the spectacle.

Dancing Protests

Dance 2

Neither farmers nor townspeople were spared these endless demonstrations, they were sought out even in the most remote areas… [more “Home Persuasion”]

Rural Demonstrations

Bus and Freedom Decorations
Election Bus
and Decorations on “Freedom” Blvd at Riga
.

Riga Latvian Association Building
The formerly attractive front of the Riga Latvian Association (then the Red Army) building, disfigured with signs

Bored WorkersCommunist operatives and their spies infiltrated every group of people and traveled to the farthest corners of the land.
Apart from ordinary meetings for the general public, meetings were called in factories and businesses so that Bolshevik agitators could preach to the workers the “Just cause of Marx-Engel-Lenin-Stalin.” The workers’ response is evident from their grim faces…

Ski Commandos
In some places, special Ski Commandos were organised to enlighten those “still remaining in fascistic darkness”

Djoo Radio
Jews used Radio contacts with Moscow

These were calculated to impress people with the might of Bolshevik technology and their “concern and limitless possibilities for improving the welfare of the workers.” Yet, at the same time, the people were coerced and egged on with inflammatory words to sign agreements to compete and raise productivity levels. Quantity not quality mattered. Even if the product was useless, the goal must be met!

Workers Contest

Graphs and Plans

Workers at one factory sign on for a socialist production contest.
The manager, a Jew, explains to Latvian workers “the great significance” of graphs and plans.

Red Corner
The ‘Red Corner’ in one company at Riga

The walls of factories and businesses were covered with graphs and plans, not understood by many. The Latvian worker did his job. A Jewish director monitored him to see that he filled his quota. When, after work, the stressed and exhausted worker was, according to propaganda instructions, beckoned to the Red Corner, naturally he didn’t want to attend. This corner of devotion for Stalin and the Party, became the object of sarcastic remarks and the butt of innumerable jokes.

As well there were “bulletin board newspapers”, the assembly of which required much time and effort. They were read only by the Jewish censors… The purpose of the bulletin board was the creation of discord and betrayal, which are the primary supports for communist and Jewish power. The bulletin board papers openly and sharply criticised “undesirable occurrences and persons” in the factory, business or institution. There were people who took advantage of this opportunity to settle old scores or to try to get ahead by denouncing others.

------------------[END OF PART ONE; SEE BELOW FOR PART 2]-------------
 
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----------------------------[HERE'S PART 2 TO ABOVE]--------------------------


Bulletin Board
Typical Bulletin Board newspaper, with Stalin and Lenin as the stars

Starting with the first day of the invasion, the communists sought to promote the “heights of culture” and said that it would be brought to Latvia, a “culturally retarded” land. The new Russian cultural forms quickly swamped Latvia.

Russian Culture brought Latvia
The public performances of the Red Army in Riga’s gardens.
The serious deportment of soldiers in any other army would preclude such “cultural” clowning

Jewish Leaders of Latvian Literature

To pledge friendship to Soviet nations, the designated heavyweights of Latvian literature – Andrejs Upitis, Vilis Lacis, and Janis Niedra – donned Tajikistan morning gowns. This took place when thousands of Latvian sons and daughters were being deported on trains for slave labour.

Chairman of School BoardThe leaders of this new “culture” were mostly Jews, of course; for example, the Chairman of the School Board Bergmanis and his predecessor Grasmanis…

How deeply Judaism controlled all areas of Latvian life, is demonstrated by the fact that even managers of sports activities were almost all Jews [below].

Jewish sportsmen at one meeting during the Bolshevik era.

The report of one patriotic school director asked: “Where did communism lead our youth? Is it the only hope for the future of Latvian youth?” [handwritten letter below, with image of Communist star on a Christian church steeple]

School Director Report

Skulptor

Communists drag broken cross

[above left] Observe the real sign of communist culture: the Liberation Monument of Latgale (the sculptor K. Jansons) in Rezenkne at its unveiling and, now in ruins (photo not available) after the arrival of the communists… [above right] Crowd incited by communists, drags a cross they’d broken through Painis Cemetery in Riga.

Kosher meat line
They lined up for their kosher meat. They worship the cruel Jewish God who demands that animals be slaughtered slowly and tortured according to religious ritual.

“Do not believe in God. Do not believe in yourself. Do not believe in good or evil! Rise against everything and yourself, for then shall you leave the fortune of equality. For then shall you be easily dominated and enslaved… Therefore, will you become like animals for your spirit shall be broken.” This was the hidden intent of the mostly Jewish manipulators.

While Latvians had to endure the communist cynicism forced upon them, while people were set against one another, while churchgoers were persecuted and gravestones desecrated in the name of communism’s proclaimed “religious freedom”, the Jews continued to practice undisturbed their religion and traditions, for this particular “freedom” did not apply to them.

Anti-religious display“The most democratic constitution in the world”, Stalin’s constitution, said it allowed unlimited freedom of religion. However, the communists organised anti-religious displays and museums. Soon after the arrival of the communists, all the methods tried and tested in the Soviet Union were introduced in Latvia, albeit unsuccessfully: The churches remained crowded!
View of anti-religious display.

Peoples CourtAt the same time, the judicial conscience of the nation suffered a heavy blow, when, with the creation of “People’s Courts”, men with no education in the law and often with no education at all, became judges. Caretakers, servants, cab drivers – of what quality could their judgments be? How many innocents did they condemn under the pressure of blind power and their own ignorance?
One sitting of a “People’s Court”

The whole nightmarish year (1940-1941) was saturated and sealed with absurdities and ridiculousness. On some occasions, these absurdities surpassed all limits of reason.

Jewish Farming Instructor

Plough

The Jews in a demonstration were the first to demand land for farm workers. Jews never did any farming in Latvia. Jews also, when confiscating farm machinery, were the ones to instruct the new owners in its use. This was a burning insult hurled into the farmers’ faces. The results of such instructions by the inexperienced Jews, were as absurd and disastrous as anything in the Bolshevik system. The fields were harrowed before ploughing! The farm machinery broke and fell useless. [above left] A Jewish Instructor advises a Latvian Farmer.

On July 19, 1940, newspapers reported that “six Hebrew citizens” wished to organise a piece of land on which to build a collective farm. Unrest among the farmers was calmed by an announcement in the press by a bigwig named Spure, that collective farms (kolkhozi) were not in the plans – “There shall be no kolkhozi!”

What a consolation to the suspicious independent farmer, so that he would not hide seed and would not hesitate to plant his fields. However, the farmers did not believe the assurances and they were not mistaken in their skepticism.
Forgetting all their promises, in the spring of 1941, the Soviet power, with no hesitation, assembled the first collective farm. State-run farms (sovhozi) already existed. No effort was spared to degrade Latvian agriculture down to the level where Soviet agriculture was after 23 years of existence.

collective farming 1

collective farming

The most intense attempt to impoverish the land had begun. What remained was the physical destruction of the nation. The oppressive invaders made careful preparations.

What the Latvians Thought and Felt

The sequence of events could not be changed. Latvians rejected communism, closed ranks and united against oppression.

Latvian soldiers ordered by political instructors to march against their will, did so with military bearing, proudly and with dignity, in controlled disgust. With a nationalistic conscience, they kept aloof from everything communist.

Latvian Soldiers march

Latvian Youth March

[above left] One unit of Latvian soldiers marching at the International Youth Day demonstration, display faces that are deeply serious or sharply ironic. They convey something other than joy under Soviet power. [above right] Most painfully the nation’s misfortune and suffering was felt by Latvian youth. With grimly determined faces and with obvious reluctance, the youth marched, driven by the fanfares of May Day, deeply conscious of the nation’s misery.

Pioneers March
Pioneers at a demonstration. Their faces show feelings of being trapped and frightened

Pioneer ReportHerded into the strange Pioneer organisation, in a manner repugnant to the child’s soul, the little Latvians sullenly performed their assigned tasks. Communism was searching in that exact place – among the youngest – for suitable subjects. The poison of betrayal was injected into the hearts of the smallest.

The betrayal by way of a denunciation of his classmates contained in a report by one Pioneer
.

Latvian Soldiers Protest

[above left] A unit of Latvian soldiers marching to elections is ordered to pose for press photographers. The officers deliberately turned their backs to the cameras… Dissatisfaction and the spirit of resistance were manifested everywhere… [above right] Soldiers in one regiment expressed their resistance to communist absurdities and deliberate depravity in a daring sign: “We have no place to rest our heads.” This regiment had no permanent billets and was constantly moved from one place to another.

Voting ProtestThe people found thousands of ways to show their feelings. This was seen in election ballots covered with remarks or mutilated and in reports of committees being stuck to deal with damage to election ballots for the June 12, 1941 election. Disregarding the damage, these ballots were later used to round up the percentage of voters taking part. Everybody knew how difficult it was to express such, albeit, small protests.

The Latvian spirit remained unbroken throughout all the tribulations – the most horrible known to mankind – starting with the CHEKA and ending with the martyrs in exile or dead.

General K. Goppers
General K. Goppers in the prime of his life and then beyond the gates of human existence – in CHEKA prison.

THE LATVIAN SPIRIT MUST BE BROKEN!

This task was pursued most diligently from the very first days by the communist invaders. Those known opponents not arrested by the CHEKA were often deported.

The order of acting Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Vilis Lacis, to deport the Minister of Defense, General Janis Balodis, was of priority.

SILENT WITNESSES

Deportation receiptHere is the receipt for “loading” O. Zakis and family, into a cattle car for deportation. The receipt shows, written as a numeral, that the family consists of “2” people, but the register shows three. This “order” indicates that the official of the Latvian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic) State Security Commissariat Operative Group chief, Comrade E. Saulitis, could hardly read, write or add! (Order issued to Saulitis).

On the Night of June 14, 1941
Latvian Family Home
Room from which a Latvian family was dragged and taken on an untraceable route of torture.

On this night, Latvians discovered fully the fate assigned to them. On this night, they recognised the real face of communism. Women, children, the aged – none was spared. On this night, the Soviets arrested the cream of Latvian families, delivered them to railroad stations and, in cross-barred cattle cars, shipped them to the Soviet Union. Thus, on this night alone, 14,693 of Latvia’s best sons and daughters were torn from the heart of the nation. With these horrible deportations, Latvians entered the worst stage of their tribulations and sufferings.

In an archive left by the Bolsheviks is a map showing plans for collection and loading (!) locations for Latvian deportees. The designations are a circle for a collection location and the triangle for a loading location. Cattle cars were provided for transport.

Bolshevik Deportation Map

Few photographs were taken to show the conditions during the deportations of Latvian’s. [below] Railway cars at Ogre Station.

Latvians Loaded onto Cattle-CarsRelatives of the unfortunate deportees, crowd the doors of one of the cars. CHEKISTS forbade relatives to give the deportees food, drinking water or warm clothing. The unfortunate people arrested had to endure many days and nights without food and water, over a journey of thousands of kilometers.
[below] The door is closed!

Latvians locked in Cattle-Cars

The unfortunate deportees for the last few moments, gaze at a country many will never see again. The armed CHEKA guards take care of security. How could women, children and old people put up any resistance? What threat did the communists see in Latvian men, armed only with a nationalistic spirit and a determination to endure?

May Latvia Live Forever
Found by the rail-side, dropped out of a window, is a deportee’s description of their fate, handwritten in a printed book. Carved into an aluminum drinking cup is a deportee’s last wish:

“MAY LATVIA LIVE FOREVER!“

To the Serbian Tundra

Resekne Bound for USSR
A long line of rail cars at Rezekne station en route to the Soviet Union

Destination MapDocuments left behind by the Bolsheviks reveal the destinations of the deported Latvians. The map on the right shows districts of intended locations. Numbers for each location are specified as numbers of railway cars, not people! A few, who at the last moment discovered the terrifying communist plans, escaped and went into hiding.

Latvian Home Guard and his Wife - before and after
An officer of the Home Guard with his wife
. After three weeks of hiding in the forests, they were scarcely recognisable.


LATVIANS, DO NOT FORGET!

CHEKA Prison DoorEveryone who went through this door of the CHEKA, lived through the most terrible fear and the worst torture and suffering. For many Latvians unable to escape, who did not know how to hide from the Bolsheviks’ bloody clutches, life ended behind these doors.

“The most democratic constitution in the world”, the constitution of Stalin, “the Father of Nations and of Working People”, guaranteed that, “Latvia’s future would be happy and sunny.” Thousands of Latvians endured a bloody and pain-filled night, where death was the only deliverance.

HOW THE CHEKA WORKED

Clara VeissIf the CHEKA intended to destroy anyone, it requested that material for that purpose be found; that is, fabricated. An order addressed to the NKVD Third Special Branch, to provide complete proven and compromising material on Clara Veiss. Deliberate malice on this occasion is especially conspicuous: Clara Veiss had departed from Latvia a year before, as shown in an NKVD document.

The Soviets could rely on their mercenaries. Special reports were ordered for the gathering of incriminating information on people under suspicion. The CHEKA kept a special file on each one of them. If one institution did not have the needed material, they were borrowed from another.
The report [below left] of writer Janis Niedra, to the State Security Commissar, Comrade S. Sustin. [below right] Order from Latvian Interior Commissariat for the gathering of incriminating material.

Reports and Orders

THE LATVIANS WERE PERSECUTED FROM THE FIRST DAYS OF THE COMMUNIST RULE

arrest and search reportParticulars and directions on persons to be watched, searched or arrested, were delivered to the CHEKA by a carefully organised network of informers, spies and agents. However, the most valuable service came from trustworthy men, planted in offices and working places.
The witnesses of the methods of the communist rule. Statements of arrests and searches. A note identifies the searchers.

A few of these, responsible for the suffering of Latvians. [below left] One is a Jew, Cipe Gutmanis, a thief and a robber, who served 3.5 years in prison for his crimes. He was the Bolshevik officer in the Dwelling Allocation Office. Another was Ernests Rozkalns, [below right], a specialist in break-and-enter and theft. He had 16 convictions. He was the manager of commercial establishments during the communists’ rule.

Mug Shots

The Cheka

Cheka Cells

Cheka cells
Corridor and Cells in Cheka Prison.
Solitary cell used for torture. In this solitary confinement cell, it is not possible to stretch or lie down. It was used to exhaust prisoners and to reduce endurance and resistance during interrogations.

[below left] One of the CHEKA’s cells. At night time suddenly shouts were heard: “Get up!” CHEKISTS called out the names of prisoners. They were ordered to follow along endless corridors to a special room. [below right] The yard of the CHEKA prison, where prisoners sometimes were taken for walks.

Cheka Beds

Cheka Execution Room This was the Execution Room

Here everything was provided for the killers: wooden padding on the walls to protect the walls from bullets. The door was covered with soft material to deaden the sound of the gunshots. The floor was concrete to facilitate the rinsing away of the victims’ blood.

Those unfortunates who entered this room left as corpses.

Execution Chamber - internal
View into the Execution Chamber

Execution DrainThe walls were covered with special coverings to prevent them being splattered with the blood of the victims. The corner of the cell had a drain for blood. After each execution, the cell was hosed down in preparation for the next killing. In one groove near the drain, 240 bullets were found. How many had been washed down the drain?
Drain in the corner of the Execution Cells.

The Killers and Their Victims

Victims 1

[below] The Killers: Sustins, Noviks, and Citrons – all three Jews.

Killer Jews
Jewess Torturer

[above left] Interior NKVD, later, State Security Commissar, S. Sustins.
[above center] Interior Commissar, A. Noviks, Sustins’ successor.
[above right] Moses Citrons, CHEKA Director in Daugavpils. His salary was 900 rubles per month – three times the going rate for doctors. Whom did he cure?

Jewess hired by the CHEKA as a torturer.

Victim vivisection
One of the victims of the communists, murdered with a Jewish “Schechert” or butcher’s cut to the throat

Their Blood Cries From Heaven

Blood Tarps 1

[above left] Padding removed from the walls of the CHEKA prison was covered with the blood of the tortured victims. During the night, the corpses of those shot were taken outside Riga for secret burial. [above right] In the CHEKA prison courtyard, they found blood soaked tarpaulins used to wrap the victims on their final journey.

Student - Bruno Rungainis

Student, Bruno Rungainis, one of the few who managed to escape the CHEKA death grip. What tales could the innumerable victims tell who are now silenced for eternity?

The statement of Bruno Rungainis regarding torture at the hands of the CHEKA.

Confession - Ginsburg
The hideous testimony of the illiterate Jew Ginsburg regarding nail-pulling torture in Daugavpils Prison.

The Ground Opened Up!

Baltezers Cottage

A silent cottage in Baltezers. There, in locked trucks, armed CHEKISTS transported dozens of Latvian patriots. Beyond the fence of this cottage, their journey of agony ended! Not far from the cottage among trees full of the sap of life was the freshly dug ground.

Latvians Welcome their German LiberatorsFreed from the bloody yoke, in July, 1941, when the German armies drove out the Soviet communists, the Latvian ground began to reveal its dreadful secrets… It revealed much of what the communists had tried to hide behind barred windows, barbed wire fences, in prison basements and in their own secretive brains. Cris-crossed, thrown into a mass grave in the garden of Baltezers cottage lay some of the prisoners who had been shot. The pit yielded more corpses, one after another. [Right: Latvians welcome the German Army as Liberators and celebrated with refreshments]

Video footage [0:38] Wehrmacht enters Riga and Latvians rejoice
and march, flying both Latvian and German flags together.

Graves

THE EARTH REVEALED LATVIA’S YEAR OF HORROR!

Victims Found in Baltezers

Hands TiedGreat care was needed to bury, with appropriate honours, the martyrs who had died for their country. Many had been robbed before their deaths, their shoes removed. Many had been stripped of their clothing. However, even more had had their human appearance removed. Many were scarcely recognisable. They had been disfigured by blows. Their faces were contorted and transformed by indignities after death.

Hands Tied 1
The hands of many victims were tied behind their backs. Who could be threatened by these unfortunate, tortured, exhausted people?

Undressing corpses

The corpses were undressed

In 23 years, since their bloody start in 1917, the communists had not changed! The scene of the opened mass grave was similar to those uncovered in 1919, after the first Bolshevik invasion of Latvia.

Rows of Bodies

[above left] The rows of those found murdered at Baltezers. [above right] Murdered Latvians found in Krustpils airport after the communist withdrawal.

Bodies found at Riga and Dreiliui

At the time when the walls of basements muffled the screams of martyrs, when shots in the night extinguished many lives, again and again, new grave-sites gave up their victims. [above left] Victims unearthed in Riga at Cross Church. [above right] Rows of the remains of Latvians shot to death discovered after inspection in Dreiliui.

Soviet Supreme Council of Latvia

Business as usual while the muffled screams went unheard.

The big wigs saw no evil. From left, members of the Supreme Council… V. Lacis and Party Secretary, Z. Spure, with the President of the Soviets’ puppet government, Professor Kirchensteins – take part in the Bolshevik celebrations.

In the vicinity of Riga, numerous grave-sites of shooting victims were found. Each contained 10-30 corpses, sometimes more. Such sites were found in Bikermieki, Preilini and other places.

How many such graves of those cruelly murdered were and still are hidden beneath Latvian soil? The names of many of those buried in these graves are not known and the fates of innumerable people who just disappeared cannot be traced, even today.

Bikenieki
Identification of corpses found at Bikenieki

Bodies at Balvi
At the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik terror intensified, reaching the level of open slaughter. The most horrible fate befell Latvian soldiers. The ones deemed politically “unreliable” were, dismissed from the service. As they departed from the station, they were lured into a trap and summarily shot.

In the community of Balvi, on June 29, 1941, three soldiers were murdered: Vilis Lapius, Peter Krauja and an unidentified soldier
.

[below left] The rows of dead victims in Dreilini.

Bodies at Dreilini and Litena
[above right] Near the Army camp at Litena were found these soldiers shot to death:

From left… E. Vilkajs, J. Piuka, V. Leja, V. Tumasevics and A. Tumasevics.

Death CertificateThis copy of his death sentence was found on murdered student, Gedimins Frankevics; “For offences committed by Frankevics, Gedimins, son of Sigismunds, due to their severity, and according to USSR Penal Code, paragraph 18.58.9 application – the highest degree of punishment. He is sentenced to be shot with the confiscation of all personal property.” This short text signalled the extinction of the life of a young man and cut another branch from the Latvian nation’s tree of life.
[below] The corpse of Gedimins Frankevics. The contusions to his head are mute witnesses to the torture he endured before the deliverance of death.

Corpse of Gedimins Frankovic

See – There They Are!

Corpses at Central prisonThe start of the war drove the bloodthirsty oppressors off Latvian soil. Not having had enough time to destroy the Latvian nation and sensing the end of their rule approaching, the Bolsheviks brutally settled accounts with their victims – the prisoners in the Central Prison, helpless, unfortunate, unable to resist.

Only a couple of feet of earth covered the corpses of prisoners shot and carelessly thrown into the pit.
Unearthing the corpses in the yard of the Central Prison.

IN A COMMON GRAVE

Many of those who had disappeared were relentlessly, but futilely sought by their relatives, only to be found in these graves, silenced forever.

Common Grave 1

BUT THEIR BLOOD SPEAKS

Central Prison Corpses 1And it can relate more powerfully than any words. The unearthed victims, after they were disrobed and washed, were identified by close examination.

All that remains of many lives and lifetimes dedicated to the country.

New victims were found again and again. A row of corpses in the yard of the Central Prison.

Central Prison Orderlies
Medical orderlies remove the victims from the common grave.

Central Prison Rows of CorpsesRows of corpses are lined up in the yard of the Central Prison. This is how the Jewish Bolsheviks took revenge on imprisoned enemies during the last hours of their rule on July 28, 1941.

The relatives of those shot and lost without a trace are searching for their kin among the corpses in the yard of the Central Prison [left & below].

Central Prison Relatives Seek

Receipt for 62 PrisonersOn the right is as document of the Bolsheviks’ sordid cynicism. It is receipt by an officer of the CHEKA to the prison administration, stating that 62 prisoners condemned to death had been received. “I received the 62 arrested persons.” Apparently, now the names did not matter, only the number. The numbers received equaled the numbers shot.

Sustins Resolution

The real scope of the Bolshevik murderers is evidenced by the Commissar of Internal Security; Sustins’ resolution written in red ink, appropriately enough, on the register of those arrested: “Bearing in mind the social dangerousness, all are to be shot!”

This death sentence erased the lives of 78 people, who, as noted in the register above, were arrested for “counter-revolutionary activities.” Noted among the counter revolutionary offences meriting punishment by death, were:

◾“Sang Latvian folk songs.”

◾“On May 1st, abstained from singing ‘The Internationale.'”

◾“Came from a family of rich farmers.”

◾“Exploited other working people.”

◾“Was hiding in the forest.”

◾“During air raid, he stayed in cemetery.”

◾“Was a member of a student organisation.”

◾“Was a member of Mazpulks (youth organisation).”

◾“Was a policeman.”

◾“Was decorated with Lacplesis Order (a military order).”

◾“While in the Latvian Army, he fought against Bolshevism.”

◾“Was of anti-Bolshevik disposition.”

◾“Ignored Red Army soldiers.”

◾“Criticised Communist Party.”

◾“Was adjutant to President.”

◾“Incited hate against other nations.”

Too Many to be Counted

Tailor Valdemars 1

[above] From left to right: Tailor Valdemars Janelis – in private life; Tailor Valdemars Janelis – prisoner of the CHEKA (note: gun barrel to the back of his head); Tailor Valdemars Janelis – victim of the CHEKA.
Whoever knew him alive would not recognise him after death. The CHEKA took care of that!

ALL THAT IS LEFT OF THEM

Stanislavs Belkovcis

WHAT WAS THEIR OFFENCE?
THEIR POSITIONS.
THEIR GREATEST TRANSGRESSION?
SERVING THEIR COUNTRY.

ROW BY ROW, HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS EMERGED.

Stanislavs Belkovics

Bolsevisma 1

Mutilated

5 of5 mutilated

When common mass graves were opened, it was noted that among those executed there was…
NOT ONE SINGLE JEW!

ONLY A FEW VERY LUCKY ONES WERE ABLE TO SAVE THEMSELVES
FROM THE FATE OF THE REST

Silvestrs BrokansOne of those able to avoid the fate of the rest, was Silvestrs Brokans
. Brokans was arrested just prior to the German advance into Riga. The reason given for his arrest, Brokans said: “The Germans had downed 400 Bolshevik planes and will be here in two weeks.” He received a death sentence on June 26, 1941. A few days passed and Riga was liberated by the German Army. Only a miracle saved him.

Silvestrs Death Sentence 2
“Passport” of one of those arrested — his cell I.D. card
| The text of the Death Sentence


As the German forces neared Riga, the Bolshevik terror became indescribable. Street announcements carried messages announcing arrests.

AnnouncementANNOUNCEMENT –

“Yesterday and today for counter-revolutionary activity – acts of subversion, terror, signalling the enemy, etc., several persons were arrested. Among them were Lukins Miervaldis, son of Janis; Rainics Nikolajs, son of George; Kagans Jazeps, son of Abrams; Cuibe Arnolds, son of Janis, and others… All those arrested received the death sentence and were shot. Anybody discovered supporting the enemy and betraying the motherland will receive like treatment.”

“I appeal to the working people of Riga to be helpful in detection of hostile elements.”

~ The Commander of the Riga Garrison, Lieutenant General Safranov, June 27th, 1941.

Basement Militia HeadquartersWhen retreating from Liepaja, even while in a hurry, the Bolsheviks dealt with their prisoners.

Left; a view of the basement in Piepajas militia headquarters. The three persons shot to death were all members of one family. Their “offence” was that in front of their apartment, a white piece of cloth had been found. The motivation for sentencing them to death: the cloth was alleged to be a signal to German planes.

Basement Hand Grenade 1

[above] The pile of corpses in the basement of the Liepaja Militia. A hand grenade was thrown into the room and anyone still alive was shot dead.

Daugavpils victims
Victims in Daugavpils

1 Valmiera
Those who suffered a similar fate elsewhere – The row of persons shot in Valmiera.

THE MURDEROUS LUNACY OF THE BOLSHEVIKS RAGED THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY

The murdered residents of Jelgava. Before being shot, they were tortured and afterwards thrown onto a pile a manure.

1 Jelgava
The murdered workers of Jelgava

SO ENDED THE ERA OF THE RULE OF THE BOLSHEVIK SUBHUMANS

Empty Bottles CHEKA bBuilding

While retreating from Riga before the attacking German Army, the Bolsheviks left empty bottles in the CHEKA building and a burning city which they themselves had set on fire.

Riga Burns
Riga Burns and the Church steeple in flames

Riga Inner City
The inner city of Riga at the departure of the Bolsheviks

Jews murdered Woman on Latvian streets as they fled
They murdered even when fleeing. A woman murdered by the Jewish Bolsheviks lay in the street on the day Riga was liberated by Germany.

Jews tried to evadeThose who did not feel safe as they were troubled by a guilty conscience, joined the Bolsheviks fleeing East.

However, military operations were faster. Many Jewish refugees and Bolshevik supporters were apprehended.

A crowd of refugees after their return to Riga.

SUCH WAS THE BEGINNING… AND THE END

TALLY SHEET FOR THE YEAR OF HORROR

Tally Sheet for the Latvian Year of Horror

All that the Latvians received from Bolshevik rule, besides promises of
“freedom, brotherhood and equality”
of a happy life and a sunny future, was;

34,250 people

ARRESTED … DEPORTED … KILLED … DISAPPEARED

Video Footage [8:28] Official German Newsreel of the Wehrmacht’s arrival in Latvia

Documentary: “MY LATVIA” [18:27] as told by Latvian refugee then living in the United States, Albert Jekste, is a documented account of the brutal occupation of the Bolsheviks during 1940-1941. As a US propaganda film at the height of the Cold War, it is careful to be politically correct when referring to Germany and making no mention of Jewish involvement. Nonetheless, it is an accurate representation of the political machinations, revolutionary fifth column elements, military occupation and the freelance slaughter of the Latvian people.

Video [4:24] RT News:

Today, the Latvian patriots who joined forces with Germany to fight against Bolshevism as the Legionaires in defence of Latvia, are condemned as promoting so-called “Nazism”, the “Far-right” to the youth of Latvia and inciting “anti-Semitism” and “Xenophobia”, as they march annually for ‘Legionaires Day’ to commemorate Latvia’s Waffen SS.

Counter-protests always pursue, with the sad song of “Jewish Persecution” forever echoing in the background… however, while warnings against the purported dangers of nationalistic ideals are presented, not one of the reporters acknowledge the bestial slaughter the Latvian people were subjected to, prior to the German Liberation in 1941.
 
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Communist Terror Coming for You

October 4, 2020

Link: https://www.henrymakow.com/2020/10/communist-terror-coming-for-you.html

the-jewish-cheka1.jpg
Within a year of seizing power in Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks, Lenin established the Cheka, the "political police" of the new communist government. The Cheka was in charge of administering The Red Terror--the unbelievably brutal policy of state-sanctioned murder--terror as a policy goal--by which tens of millions of innocent Russians lost their lives. Here are a baker's dozen verifiable facts to give you an idea of what it was like in Russia while the Bolsheviks held power:

Source: Bolshevism: Kill or Be Killed

A dozen facts about the Bolsheviks everyone should know, but no one does

1. Under Bolshevik law, anyone caught putting up a flyer was executed on the spot.

2. One of the Bolsheviks' first laws made anti-Semitism a capital offense.

3. The Bolsheviks were explicitly dysgenic, selecting entire professions--the ones deemed to comprise the most intelligent Russians--for liquidation. Russian engineers, Russian university professors, Russian college students, Russian writers, Russian artists, Russian engineers, Russian doctors, Russian lawyers, and, especially, the Christian clergy, were all targeted.

Their children were executed, too. Sometimes, the Bolsheviks executed the children in front of the parents before executing the parents, and sometimes the parents in front of the children before executing the children.

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4. Thousands of churches were razed, thousands more turned into workshops or livestock enclosures. Synagogues, however, were left alone and even began receiving state funding under the Bolsheviks for Yiddish language schools.

5. The Bolsheviks relied on non-Russians to commit their genocide on the Russian people. Chinese, Koreans, and Latvian Jews carried out the mass executions, administered intra-military punishments, provided the personal security for top-level Bolsheviks, and staffed the Cheka's torture and execution chambers.

6. When the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, the Number 2 Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky, was living in New York and writing for a Yiddish-language newspaper on the Lower East Side. Upon news of the revolution, he immediately booked passage on a ship bound for Russia. With him were hundreds of Lower East Side revolutionaries. When they arrived in Russia, they immediately took the levers of the state as mid- to upper-level government functionaries in positions that had already been decided.

7. Ethnically, the Russian nobility was heavily Germanic and Gentiles comprised the Russian bourgeoisie.

Ethnically, the Bolsheviks were heavily Jewish and Jews comprised the Bolshevik power center

8. The nobility and bourgeoisie were targeted explicitly for extermination. The media, which was completely controlled by the Bolsheviks, called for "rivers of blood", advocating the immediate extermination of these "enemies of the people" wherever they could be found.

9. All the land and property of the executed victims became the property of the state, and during the 1920s, street peddlers hawking the wedding rings of Russian housewives were a common sight on the Lower East Side. Armand Hammer, the famous Jewish oil tycoon named for the arm and hammer symbol of the American Communist Party, carried confiscated royal treasures from Russia to the United States.

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10. In the wee hours of July 17, 1918, in the basement of a farmhouse and on the orders of a young Jew named Yakov Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Jewish assassins murdered the entire royal family--emperor, empress, four young daughters, and a ten-year-old boy--ending three centuries of Romanov Dynasty. Written on the wall in the blood of the emperor were taunting words referencing the regicide story of the "handwriting on the wall" from the Old Testament book of Daniel.

11. During the 1920s, the Bolsheviks were aggressively fomenting a Bolshevik revolution in Germany. While a young Hitler campaigned against "Jewish communism," his Brown Shirts fought in the streets against the Bolshevik allies, Antifa. By the time Hitler became chancellor in 1933, the Bolshevik terror in next-door Russia had already been raging for fifteen years.

12. In the United States, the history of the Bolsheviks and their horrific crimes has always been suppressed and would have remained hidden if the Internet had never happened. There is now a vigorous effort to reign in the free-wheeling, anti-censorship nature with which the inventors of the Internet originally imbued it. Thus, the window of opportunity is fast closing during which people can learn the truth about the Bolsheviks. It should be self-evident why the Bolshevik history must be exposed.

It is up to you to make this information known and to fight political censorship always.

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COVID is Communism in sheep's dress.

"The goyim are a flock of sheep, and we are their wolves.

And you know what happens when the wolves get hold of the flock?"

Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 11

Related- James Perloff- Red Terror: Why Demonrats Want Your Guns

------------Makow- Lockdowns Motivated by Occult Doctrine (Creative Destruction)

------------The Red Terror in Russia

----------- A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia

-------------------Leather-Jacketed Coke-Snorting Jews in the Soviet Secret Police (Cheka) Torturing, Raping and Killing Gentiles: The Evidence
 
Soviet Russia's Persecution of Latvia

Link: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p-25_Berkis.html

By Alexander V. Berkis


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Dr. Alexander Berkis

The focus of this paper is the oppression and persecution which the rulers of the Soviet Union have inflicted on the Baltic nation of Latvia, from its declaration of independence in 1918 to the present day [1987]. The Red Army has invaded and occupied Latvia three times in the past seventy years; its most recent aggression, in 1944, has resulted in the continuing, illegal Soviet occupation of Latvia Each Soviet incursion has been accompanied by mass killings and deportations of Latvians, and Soviet authorities have sought to destroy Latvian nationhood by the illegal annexation of Latvia to the USSR and through measures aimed at eradicating the Latvians' historical, cultural, and religious traditions. Nevertheless, the Latvian people, in their homeland and in exile, have fought to defend their nationhood with all the means at their disposal.

Latvia Under Foreign Rule, 1290-1918​

Since the Communist regime in Russia has built upon and intensified earlier oppression under the tsars, a brief overview of Latvia's history under foreign rule is necessary. By 1290 all of Latvia had been conquered by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. From 1290 to 1561 Latvia belonged to the Confederation of Livonia, which included also Estonia. The fall of the Confederation of Livonia was brought about by the invasion of Russia under the rule of John (Ivan) IV, the Terrible. Since the Confederation was unable to defend itself, it asked for the help of Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and Denmark. As a result of the long Livonian War (1558-1582), northern Livonia, including southern Estonia, became a Polish province (1561-1629). After the Swedish-Polish succession war western Livonia, including its capital Riga, and all of Estonia became a Swedish province (1629-1721). Eastern Livonia remained a Polish province until 1772; after the First Partition of Poland- Lithuania in that year it was annexed by Russia.

The last Master of the Livonian Order, Gotthard Kettler, founded the Duchy of Courland, which endured as an almost independent state under Polish suzerainty for over two centuries (1561-1795). It is no exaggeration to say that the history of the Duchy of Courland has been almost forgotten since 1795, although Duke James (1639-1682) and his achievements were well known in the seventeenth century. The duke owned two crown colonies, the island of Tobago in the West Indies and Gambia in West Africa, as well as mining territories in Norway, which, like his colonies in Tobago and Gambia, were colonized by his Courlanders.

Courland was also a naval power. Only the Netherlands, England, Spain and Portugal had stronger navies than Courland at the time of Duke James. The envious Dutch called Duke James the "Skipper Duke," for Courland's flourishing prosperity during the age of mercantilism made the Courlanders the rivals of the Dutch. James was likewise called "the merchant on the ducal throne."

After the Third Partition of Poland-Lithuania (1795), the Duchy of Courland and Lithuania were annexed by Russia. It should be emphasized that during the Livonian War and the Great Northern War (1700-1721), the Russians committed atrocities on a large scale in Latvia. During the Great Northern War, these Russian measures brought about a pestilence which killed two-thirds of the population of Latvia.

Systematic persecution of Latvians by Russians commenced when all of Latvia became the Russian provinces of Livonia and Courland. Not content with suppressing Latvian calls for self-determination, Russian authorities pursued an intensifying program of russifying Latvia throughout the nineteenth century. From 1883 on Russian was the only language of instruction in Latvian schools. Pupils were punished for speaking Latvian among themselves. Educated Latvians could not obtain work in their professions in their homeland; at the same time they were welcomed, for their skill and dependability, in Russia proper.

During the National Awakening (or Romantic Nationalism) which blossomed in nineteenth-century Latvia, the movements leaders, Krisjanis Voldemars (1825-1891) and Krisjanis Barons (1835-1923), were the targets of Russian suppression. Considered politically dangerous, they were forced to live in Russia for three decades of exile from Latvia. Nevertheless, some Latvian historians reproach them for neglecting Latvia's political independence. Voldemars and Barons did not go beyond urging their countrymen to cultivate their language and national traditions, although they favored increasing Latvia's economic independence through the accumulation of wealth.

When Russia was rocked by revolution in 1905, Latvian nationalists called for political autonomy for Latvia. The tsarist authorities responded with mass killings and deportations to Siberia.

Representative of the fates of the more fortunate Latvian nationalist leaders of that time was the experience of Karlis Ulmanis, Latvia's future president. He was jailed for several months in consequence of his activities in 1905. Upon his release from prison, tsarist authorities sought to rearrest him. With that Ulmanis went into exile in America, where he lived from 1906 to 1913.

In 1913 the Russian Duma passed an amnesty act to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. Ulmanis and other Latvian leaders in exile returned in time to experience the outbreak of the First World War, which led to the overthrow of Nicholas II and his dynasty, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the independence of the Baltic nations.

Latvian Independence and First Soviet Occupation​

It is impossible to treat the independence of Latvia (1918-1940) and the three occupations under the Soviet rule without discussing briefly the life of President Ulmanis of Latvia (1877-1942?). Foreign observers, including historians, have called Ulmanis Latvia and Latvia Ulmanis. Indeed the two names are inseparable. The writer of this paper knows no other example in history in which one person dominated so completely the history and life of a country as did Ulmanis, both as leader and as legend in Latvia.

Karlis Ulmanis was born on September 4, 1877, in Zemgale, in southern Latvia, on the territory of the former Duchy of Courland. He obtained a degree in agronomy from the Institute of Agronomy in Leipzig, Germany in 1905, and a B.S. in agriculture at the University of Nebraska in 1909 during his American exile. In 1916, returned to Latvia, Ulmanis founded the Farmers' Union, or Party, and became its leader, a position he would retain until the fall of independent Latvia in 1940. During the next few years Ulmanis organized the leading Latvian politicians, and with them formed the People's Council.

On November 18, 1918, the People's Council proclaimed the independence of Latvia. Looking to Ulmanis as the only candidate willing, able, resourceful, and courageous enough to lead Latvia, the council elected him prime minister (or minister president) of the provisional government. Political conditions in Latvia were at that time very complicated, because by 1918 its entire territory was occupied by the German army. Latvia had suffered even more devastation in the war than had Belgium. After Germany signed the November 11th armistice, the discipline of the German soldiers collapsed, and the Soviet army gradually pushed into defenseless Latvia. By February 1919 all of Latvia except the western part, which constituted less than one-eighth of its territory, had been occupied by the Soviets. /1

In occupied Latvia the Soviet authorities passed decrees nationalizing property, without compensation to the former owners. All landed property was nationalized; compulsory labor was decreed. The Communists requisitioned clothing and footwear. They imposed confiscatory taxes; even the workers had to pay higher taxes. All these decrees grossly violated international law. Since the Soviet measures could not be carried out without terror, thousands of Latvians were murdered, tortured or died of hunger. The prisons were crammed.

By early 1919 power was largely in the hands of local councils, or "soviets." These authorities mainly concerned themselves with searching for supposed counter-revolutionaries. At night those in power met and decided whom to arrest; it was also by night that the victims were arrested. Farmers, artisans, workers and intellectuals alike were arrested; nobody could feel safe. Revolutionary tribunals were busy constantly, and pronounced numerous death sentences. The "law" that the "judges" applied was "revolutionary consciousness." Toward dawn special units would take charge of the condemned Latvians, order them to take off their clothes, and then shoot them.

The crimes committed by the Soviets against the cream of the Latvian nation verged on genocide, and caused a large-scale guerrilla war against the Russian troops. Gradually the Ulmanis government, with the help of German soldiers, reconquered occupied Latvia. By the beginning of February 1920, all of Latvia had been liberated. The Soviet Union, hard-pressed in the civil war against the White Russian generals, concluded a peace treaty with Latvia on August 11, 1920. /2

During the War of Latvian Liberation, Ulmanis formed three governments. At the beginning of May 1920, the Constituent Assembly convened, and authorized Ulmanis to form his fourth government. This government was able to obtain de jure recognition of Latvia by Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Belgium on January 26, 1921. A few months later the Constituent Assembly forced Ulmanis to resign, for a majority of the delegates had grown tired and envious of his strongman leadership. /3

The Interwar Years​

Ulmanis' influence, however, remained powerful. In 1925 he became prime minister of his fifth government, which resigned in 1926. Ulmanis formed his sixth government during the economic crisis of 1931, which was comparatively mild in agrarian Latvia. There was no unemployment; indeed, foreign farmhands were imported. Nevertheless, many Latvians blamed the parliamentary system for economic woes. It became almost proverbial to say that when Latvia had hard times Ulmanis always appeared to solve the problems. Foreign observers remarked that parliaments and their members were elected and defeated, but Ulmanis remained. In fact coalition governments could seldom be formed without Ulmanis' agreement, even at times when other members of the Farmers' Union were chosen prime minister due to the other parties' envy of Ulmanis.

In March 1934 Ulmanis became the seventh and last prime minister under the parliamentary system. The Latvian people had at last tired of the corrupt rule of the nation's many parties. On May 15, 1934, Ulmanis carried out a bloodless coup and dissolved the parliament and all parties. /4 He was hailed by a flood of letters and telegrams thanking him for restoring the unity of Latvia. The third president of Latvia, Alberts Kviesis, who also belonged to the Farmers' Union, invited Ulmanis and the ministers of the eighth and last of his governments to the presidential castle. President Kviesis announced that because the overwhelming majority of Latvians was behind the Ulmanis government, he considered Ulmanis' coup to have the force of a plebiscite. Kviesis thus gave his approval and blessing to the new government of national unity. This government remained in power for more than six years, until the Soviet Union invaded Latvia. The gratitude of the Latvian people was always behind the heroic and magic prime minister of the Latvian War of Liberation -- Karlis Ulmanis.

Yet the personality of Ulmanis cannot be overlooked in connection with the tragic fall of independent Latvia. After the outbreak of World War II, Latvia and the other Baltic States were isolated. Under such conditions the Soviet Union forced Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to sign mutual assistance pacts and established Russian naval, air, and infantry bases in these virtually defenseless countries. /5

The Second Soviet Occupation​

Ulmanis hoped to gain time by signing the pact. In fact, he gained time up to June 17, 1940. The collapse of France spurred the Soviet Union to demand the total occupation of the Baltic countries and the formation of pro-Soviet governments there. Ulmanis accepted the ultimatum and refused to go into exile. He remained technically the President of Latvia up to July 22, 1940, without any power and influence. On the twenty-second of July he was deported to the Soviet Union. The place, date and circumstances of Ulmanis' death are unknown, although some sources say he died in 1942.

Thus began the second Soviet occupation of Latvia It proved to be far more disastrous than the first one. In the first weeks following the Red Army's invasion, Latvia's political leaders, including the very popular former vice president and minister of war, General Janis Balodis, were arrested and deported.

The mass arrests took place months later, after foreign diplomatic and consular representatives had departed Latvia, and could not report to their governments on the crimes committed by the Soviets. The NKVD, the Soviet secret police, issued a detailed basic order on deportations of anti-Soviet elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (Order No. 001223). It was issued while the Baltic States were still independent countries. /6 Needless to say this grossly violated the basic principles of international law. The lists of so-called anti-Soviet elements had long ago been drawn up by local Communists and well-paid traitors.

Fully aware of the disaffection of Latvians, the Soviet government deemed it necessary to engineer the voluntary "approval" of its occupation of Latvia. Therefore, the Soviet authorities ordered a parliamentary election. In the staged elections of July 14 and 15, 1940, a single list of candidates, approved by Andrei Vishinsky, was permitted. The unanimously "elected" parliament declared Latvia to be transformed into a Soviet Republic and requested the Soviet "parliament" to admit Latvia to the Soviet Union. The constitution of Latvia of 1922 had stipulated that any question touching the independence of Latvia had to be decided by a plebiscite. The Soviet government dared not carry one out; therefore Latvia was never legally incorporated into the Soviet Union. Besides, according to international law, no election conducted under occupation by foreign troops can be legally valid.

Latvia's minister in Washington, Dr. Alfred Bilmanis, who had been invested with emergency powers by the legitimate government, and the Latvian minister in London, Karlis Zarins, accordingly declared the elections null and void. Their emergency powers had been issued by the government of Latvia as late as May 18, 1940, with Dr. Bilmanis appointed as Zarins' substitute, in case of the death of the Latvian minister in London. The holder of the emergency powers of state was authorized to appoint delegates to international conferences and to appoint and transfer the staff of the Latvian legations and consulates. In fact Zarins was assigned the functions of the president and the government of Latvia. The Latvian puppet government declared both men traitors and deprived them of Latvian citizenship.

The sovietization of Latvia proceeded rapidly. By the end of September 1940, all "large" private fortunes, private industry, commerce, banks, transportation, land and its natural resources, and rental property had been nationalized without compensation to the owners. On the contrary, they were slandered and libeled as exploiters and enemies of the toiling masses. The funds in the possession of the nationalized and disorganized banks were converted to worthless paper, and equally worthless Soviet paper rubles flooded the country. High prices in rubles were then fixed for all wares. Red Army soldiers and Soviet functionaries promptly cleared out the stores.

During the first major stage of the mass deportation program at least 35,828 persons were deported or murdered. American and other foreign sources estimate the number of persons from all walks of life deported or murdered at 60,000. After the outbreak of the German-Russian war, Latvian soldiers, included against the principles of international law in the Red Army, were withdrawn to Russia or murdered. Many civilians were carried off by the retreating Soviet authorities as well. Marked especially for extermination were Latvian government officials, members of the intelligentsia, and retired army officers.

It should be noted that intellectuals suffered most from the persecution, because during the Latvian War of Liberation almost the entire student body of the University of Latvia volunteered to fight against the Red Army. Therefore the Soviets called the University of Latvia a citadel of arch-reactionaries. Neither among the intellectuals nor the capitalists, however, did the Soviets find their most outspoken enemies. These were the farmers, because in Latvia 62 per cent of the inhabitants were farmers and their families. In fact they were their own bosses. From the Soviet point of view the backbone of the stable middle classes had to be broken by any and all means. The outbreak of the German- Russian War prevented the Soviet regime from forcing the collectivization of agriculture. /7

The Soviet terror was met by an uprising of officers and enlisted men from the former Latvian Home Guard, a well-trained reserve army, and other Latvian nationalists. They seized control of most of Latvia after the outbreak of the German-Russian War. The German army conquered only the major cities -- Riga, Liepaja (Libau), Ventspils (Windau), Jelgava (Mitau) and Daugavpils (Dünaburg). During the first days of July 1941, all of Latvia was occupied by the German army. The war swept across Latvia like a hurricane. Despite the German liberation, Latvians were soon disappointed as it became obvious that Hitler's government had no intention of restoring Latvia's independence.

Beginning in the middle of July 1944, the German troops gradually retreated from Latvia after heavy fighting. The superiority of the Red Army was in no small part due to its support with weapons and all kinds of material by the U.S. and the British Empire. On May 8, 1945, the German troops laid down their arms in accordance with the terms of Germany's unconditional surrender on both the Western and Eastern fronts.

Realizing that with Latvia's third occupation by the Red Army at hand, the Soviet terror was again imminent, many Latvian activists saw exile as their only hope for the future. Experience had taught them that nothing is worse than Communism. According to information provided by the Latvian Red Cross, by 1947 there were 134,000 Latvian political refugees, the overwhelming majority of them in West Germany. This must be regarded as a minimum estimate.

Defeat and Reoccupation​

Those Latvians who remained in Latvia had no illusions as to their fate. Within a few days the Red Army was followed by the NKVD. The Red secret police immediately interrogated the population by means of mandatory questionnaires. The Soviets declared that all who had not retreated with Soviet forces before the advance of the German Army were enemies of the Soviet Union and deserved exemplary punishment. The questions each Latvian was forced to answer included the following: "Why did you not retreat with the Soviet Army in 1941?" What employment did you pursue during the German occupation?" What anti-German sabotage did you carry out?" "Name three collaborators of the Germans." Men were issued red tickets for military service, green for compulsory labor, and white for deportation. People's courts, meeting in the absence of the accused, condemned Latvian patriots to long prison terms or deportation to the Gulag, while their families were picked up, separated at the entrainment points and dragged off to unknown parts of the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1948 collectivization was imposed on most Latvian farms. The University of Latvia was thoroughly russified and sovietized. An even more serious result of the Red Army's third occupation was the introduction of large numbers of ethnic Russians and natives of the U.S.S.R's Asiatic republics into the country to replace the deported Latvians. /8

Latvian Guerrilla Resistance​

These Soviet measures caused a very bloody large-scale guerrilla war, not only in Latvia but in Estonia and Lithuania as well, where similar policies were imposed. From 1944 to 1952, and on a smaller scale even up to 1956, fierce fighting still raged in the countryside. Only after the failure of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 did the Baltic peoples realize that the Western democracies were unable and unwilling to support them.

The guerrilla war was waged on the largest scale in Lithuania. According to Lithuanian sources, the Lithuanians lost 30,000 men; Soviet losses are put at no fewer than 80,000 soldiers and NKVD men. These estimates have been reinforced by testimony obtained from Soviet officials, who had previously participated in suppressing the Lithuanian freedom fighters, after they themselves went into exile. /9

Soviet authorities spoke very frankly about the extent of the guerrilla war. They estimated that there were around 9,000 Latvian national partisans, whom they resentfully referred to as "fascist bandits." The Communist regime branded the Latvians a counter- revolutionary and anti-Soviet people. It is indeed a great compliment to be called such names by the Soviets. This is, furthermore, something new, because it has consistently been standard Soviet practice to feign friendship with all peoples and to differentiate between "exploiters," the "enemies of the people," and the population as a whole.

It should be noted that Latvian sources make roughly the same estimation of the number of the Latvian national partisans. On the average, the partisans survived the fighting only for two or three years, and then were replaced by other men with military training. Up until 1949 the national partisans controlled many parts of Latvia, especially the peninsula of Courland. Their successes can be explained by the fact that about 43 per cent of Latvia is covered by forests, lakes and swamps. This terrain was exploited by seasoned fighters from the two divisions of the Latvian Legion mobilized by the Germans. At the time of the German capitulation they had taken to the forests. These Latvian troops took their weapons with them, obtaining additional arms and ammunition from the German army depots in the fortress of Courland, the last-ditch redoubt of Hitler's Army Group North. Later on they used captured Russian weapons. Above all, they enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of Latvians.

After the collectivization of agriculture, the Soviet authorities carried out their largest deportation, involving mainly the farm population, in 1949. This measure considerably deprived the national partisans of food supplies, civilian support, and a source of new recruits. Nevertheless, so resourceful were the partisans that they captured food and money from the collective farms and state- owned stores.

The collectivization and mass deportations, however, spelled the beginning of the end of the large-scale guerrilla war. Gradually the partisans were demobilized. They were provided with forged or purchased identification documents in the black markets to enable them to filter back into the civilian population.

The question of the fate of the former partisans is still open. Those who criticize the guerrilla war assert that it was a lost cause from the very beginning. In fact, however, the national partisans, by executing many Soviet functionaries, made many of the others fear for their lives. In many cases Soviet officials intentionally overlooked the surviving partisans, especially when they moved far away from their former homes or to the metropolis of Riga, with its 700,000 inhabitants. Communists fear retaliation; this is the only argument that they understand. Nor should the fact be overlooked that the national partisans created a legend for the future. The only peoples who deserve independent states are those willing to fight for them!

The writer of this paper has the sad duty of pointing out that the noble aspiration and hope of President Ulmanis -- to save the Latvian people from extermination by accepting the ultimatum of the Soviet Union without offering military resistance -- proved mistaken. The mass deportations carried out by the government of the Soviet Union, the mobilization of over 150,000 Latvians by the Germans, and the very bloody guerrilla war, caused such losses to the population that they cannot be correctly estimated at this time. These painful facts cannot diminish President Ulmanis' outstanding achievements and his glorious rule.

Donald Day, correspondent of the Chicago Tribune in Eastern Europe for 22 years, in his book Onward Christian Soldiers devotes more pages to Ulmanis than to any other statesman, including Poland's Marshal Pilsudski. According to Day, Ulmanis believed that the Latvians' best hope for a future national existence was to raise their living standard and culture to such a high level that the people, no matter what the immediate future might bring, would always treasure these memories in their hearts. In Day's opinion Ulmanis was the greatest man Latvia has ever produced. /10 Karlis Ulmanis was the great president of a small country. After the Hitler-Stalin pact and the outbreak of World War II, only God could save Latvia.

One misunderstanding should be corrected. There is still a widespread belief in the Western democracies that Communism is a lesser evil than National Socialism. The former Marxist Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, with great reluctance, recognized that National Socialism was a lesser evil than Communism. Indeed, it should be emphasized that even William L. Shirer, whose strong anti-German bias concerning all periods of German history is well known, when writing about Latvia and the other Baltic States in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, stated that Stalin, in dealing with small countries, could be as crude and as ruthless as Hitler, and even more cynical. /11

Latvian Resistance, Soviet Oppression​

After the end of the guerrilla war, the Latvians resorted to passive resistance. In spite of the well-known Latvian individualism, which has caused keen foreign observers to say that Latvians are strong as individuals and weak in cooperation, Soviet rule has fostered a strong Latvian national unity. Now, in Soviet-occupied Latvia, Latvians help their fellow Latvians in any way they can. There are no longer any parties in Latvia: all Latvians constitute one community of suffering.

In general Latvians do their best to maintain their language, culture and national traditions. Above alL they have done and continue to do everything possible to achieve the best education for their children. In this regard they have succeeded, because the Latvians, together with the Estonians, are the best educated among the captive peoples, and by far more educated than the Russians.

In spite of all the Latvians' efforts to survive as a people, the outlook grows more bleak with each passing year. To be sure, after the major deportation of 1949, no new mass deportations have occurred. On the contrary, an amnesty for certain categories of political prisoners was proclaimed after Stalin's death in 1953. Several thousand Latvians returned to their native land, most of them as invalids, broken in body and spirit. But deportations from Latvia still continue, as young people are inveigled into volunteering for the cultivation of virgin lands or for mining in Central Asia and Siberia.

The Russian eight years' war in Afghanistan provided the government of the Soviet Union with a new opportunity to deport Latvian youth. Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians and other subject peoples are sent as soldiers to Afghanistan to eliminate the Afghans and at the same time to spare, as much as possible, the pro-Soviet Russians. Losses among Latvian soldiers are very high because the Soviet authorities deliberately engage them in the riskiest military operations. The Latvian organizations in exile have to some extent succeeded in reaching agreements with the fighting Afghans to spare Latvian prisoners of war. But these measures can only be of a limited scope, because the various Afghan tribes lack both a united military command and common organization abroad which could function as a government-in-exile.

The Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, caused by the gross negligence of the Soviet authorities, presented the Soviets with yet another pretext to deport Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and other subject peoples. Those drafted to clean up the Chernobyl mess were told that they would have to work for only three months at the site. Yet those who survived the nuclear clean-up, under the most miserable conditions, were not allowed to return to their homes. The cheapest thing in the Soviet Union is human life.

The Soviet authorities in occupied Latvia have engaged in the systematic destruction of graves, entire cemeteries, churches and many other historical monuments. For instance, the graves of resident Karlis Ulmanis's family were destroyed by the Russian barbarians. The monument and memorial museum of the first Latvian commander-in-chief, Oskars Kalpaks, were likewise destroyed by the Soviets. Destruction of church property has been extensive. The historic Lutheran “Dome” of Riga – the cathedral of the archbishop – has been turned into a concert hall, the historic St. Peter's Church into a museum, and the Greek Catholic Cathedral into a planetarium Numerous other churches have been transformed into warehouses, cinemas, clubs, or meeting halls, or have been burned down. Many Latvians known for their outspoken anti-Communism have been killed in “accidents,” not only in Soviet-ruled Latvia, but also in the United States, Canada and West Germany. Latvians are not safe from Russian persecution, even in exile.

The Fight Goes on Abroad​

The Baltic exiles have not, however, allowed themselves to be intimidated. The diplomatic and consular representatives of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, in conjunction with the worldwide organizations of the Baltic peoples, function as governments in exile. A new generation of Baltic young people, provided by their parents with educations in the finest universities of America, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, has moved into the leadership of the exile organizations. More important, they have succeeded in bringing their fight for justice and the liberation of their fatherlands into international forums.

As a result of their endless activity and effort, on January 13, 1983, the Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg passed a resolution that strongly condemned the occupation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union. The resolution calls the Soviet Union the last colonial empire, and demands that the issue of the Baltic States be brought before the United Nations. The European resolution is firmly based on numerous treaties, including those concluded and subsequently violated by the Soviet Union. The language of the resolution stresses that the three Baltic peoples waged a large-scale guerrilla war against the Russian troops for eight years (1944-1952) and that about 665,000 Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians have been deported by the Soviet authorities to forced labor camps since 1940.

Encouraged by this success, on July 25 and 26, 1985, the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian exile organizations held an international tribunal against the government of the Soviet Union, charging it with genocide and other crimes against humanity in the three Baltic states. A panel of internationally known authorities in the field of human rights issued its verdict, the Copenhagen Manifesto, which found the Soviet government guilty as charged. /12 Meanwhile a Baltic ship, symbolizing the ideal of peace based upon freedom, sailed along the coasts of Denmark Sweden and Finland. Impressive demonstrations against the Soviet Union took place in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki. West European TV networks and major newspapers gave these events good coverage. It is regrettable that only The Wall Street Journal, among major American papers, gave these stories any notice at all.

'Useful Idiots' Against Baltic Freedom: The OSI​

As might have been expected, the Soviet Union answered these initiatives by organizing so-called war crimes trials. Unfortunately, the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) entered into collaboration with the Soviet secret police. Karl Linnas, an Estonian-born resident of Long Island who was stripped of his citizenship by a federal court for participating in alleged war crimes committed by Hitler during World War II, was implicated by “evidence” compiled by the Soviet KGB. Their evidence was forged, fabricated and fraudulent As a result, Linnas was deported by the U.S. government to illegally occupied Estonia, where he had been already condemned to death by Soviet courts. On his arrival the Soviet prosecutor informed him that the Soviet Union had no case against him due to statutory limitation. Soon afterward, the Soviets announced his death.

The Linnas case was an outrageous violation of the U.S. Constitution. Linnas and other U.S. citizens of Eastern European origin in the so-called war criminal cases have been treated as third- class citizens, deprived of due process, a trial by jury, and protection from the application of ex post facto laws. The statutory basis for these outrages is a special law passed by Congress during the Carter administration. The writer of this paper believes that this is a bill of attainder, and thus forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. Congress has likewise grossly violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers of the three branches of government.

To do justice to President Reagan, it should be noted that he fired Allan A. Ryan, Jr., who was not covered by the civil service laws. Ryan's answer to the President was a book, Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1984). In this book Ryan shows great zeal to justify the activities of the nefarious OSI. Characterizing Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians in general as collaborators with the Germans, he engages in character assassination of the three peoples as a whole. He seems irritated that the U.S. government does not recognize the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic countries. Since colonialism has come to an end in Africa and Asia, Ryan and his Soviet accomplices are no longer in the mainstream of twentieth- century ideas. His book amply demonstrates that he and the OSI owe their allegiance to the Soviet Union, as evidenced by their instigation of ethnic and sectarian hatred and their attempts to intimidate outspoken anti-Communists.

Even in this regard, they have miserably failed. They are blind to the fact that young Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians are well educated, resourceful, and courageous. Baltic young people will only increase their struggle against the Soviet Union and its leftist fifth column in the U.S. The Baltic youth of today cannot and will not allow itself to be legally or morally burdened with war crimes committed before their births. They do not hate Ryan, they despise him. Only a misfit like Ryan fails to see this. Lenin called such persons "useful idiots."

The pro-Soviet elements in the U.S., including the OSI, suffered a great setback in September 1986, when the superpowers met in a conference at Jurmala, Latvia. There, on the eighteenth of September, White House adviser and ambassador Jack Matlock told the conference, in the Latvian language, that the U.S. has never recognized and will not recognize the legitimacy of the forcible incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union. This declaration was twice carried on local television and has spread throughout Riga the capital of Latvia. Mattock immediately became a national hero in Latvia, and Latvians consider President Reagan the best friend of Latvia. This was one declaration that the American news media could not suppress.

Prospects for an Independent Latvia​

During the decade beginning in 1965, both houses of Congress passed sense-of-Congress resolutions condemning the genocidal measures of the government of the Soviet Union in the Baltic States, and asking for the restoration of these nations' independence. Congress has also passed annual resolutions declaring June 14 to be Baltic States' Day and condemning the mass deportations carried out by the Soviets in the Baltic nations. President Reagan has each year signed strong Captive Nations proclamations, and the Baltic States' Day resolutions calling the Soviet Union an aggressor and demanding the restoration of independence of Latvian Lithuania, and Estonia. Again, it is unfortunate that those resolutions and proclamations are almost never mentioned by our major news media.

Today [1987] there is a strong underground movement in the Baltic States. The underground organizations have frequently sent memoranda to the governments of the Western democracies asking for the restoration of the rights of self-determination and independence for the Baltic peoples. These communiques are also ignored by our news media.

It should be noted that a falsified history taught in Western academic institutions stresses alleged German imperialism, ignoring the fact that after 1254 (the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty), Germany became and remained largely a geographic concept up to the unification of Germany by Otto von Bismarck in 1870.

Students in most American schools and universities are studiously deprived of the knowledge that for several centuries the Russians have engaged in large-scale colonial plundering and exploitation of quite advanced non-Russian and non-Slavic peoples, and that todays Soviet Russia is a prison of peoples.

It is a lack of intellectual integrity that prevents academics from informing American students that the Russians have consistent plans to achieve global domination by any and all means. A good example of this kind of misinformation is provided by the whole galaxy of U.S. and West European TV networks and newspapers, assisted by spurious pollsters, which have pictured Gorbachev as a leader with constructive ideas of how to achieve peace, contrary to the negative attitude of President Reagan. They deliberately ignore the fact that during the short totalitarian dictatorship of Gorbachev the mass murders in Afghanistan, including those of women and children, have reached a climax, resulting in the deaths or exile of a third of the population. Thus, behind his facade of moderation, Gorbachev has demonstrated his true barbarian mentality. It should be stated that only pro-Soviet Western capitalists, such as the Rockefellers, can postpone the disintegration of the Soviet empire due to its highly unstable and precarious economy, the explosive, growing nationalism of the captive peoples, and the conflicting interests of Soviet Russia and Red China.

Latvian youth, in Latvia and in exile, is using the slogan of President Ulmanis: "Latvia for Latvians and Latvians for Latvia." Before his deportation to Russia, Ulmanis declared to his closest coworkers: "We can be oppressed, we can be partly exterminated, but, as long as a single Latvian is alive, the struggle will continue for the right to live in a free and independent Latvia."

The author of this study believes that he will see an independent Latvia once more, a Latvia which is now in the process of formation, a new Latvia, Latvia restored.

Notes​

Soviet Russia's Persecution of Latvia
  1. Žanis Unāms (ed.), Es vin̦u pazistu: latviešu biografiska vārdnica (Riga: 1939), pp. 501-505.
  2. Dr. Arnolds Spekke, History of Latvia (Stockholm: 1951) pp. 347-348. Dr. Spekke was the Minister of Latvia in Washington, D.C. (1954-1970).
  3. Edgars Dunsdorfs, Karla Ulmana Dzive (Stockholm: 1978) pp. 193-209.
  4. Z. Unams (ed.), Es vin̦u pazistu, pp. 501-504.
  5. Dr. Alfreds Bilmanis, History of Latvia (Princeton University Press: 1951) pp. 394-407. The late Bilmanis was the Minister of Latvia to the U.S. (1935-1948) and a prominent Latvian historian.
  6. Joseph Pajaujis-Javis, Soviet Genocide in Lithuania. (New York: 1980), appendix No. 4, pp. 224-229.
  7. Alfreds Zeichners, Latvijas Bolsevizacija, 1940-1941. (The author's edition, Riga 1944) p.458; Bilmanis, History of Latvia, p. 406.
  8. Clarence A. Manning, The Forgotten Republics (New York 1952), pp. 232-235.
  9. J. Pajaujis-Javis, Soviet Genocide in Lithuania, pp. 91-117.
  10. Donald Day, Onward Christian Soldiers (The Noontide Press, 1982), p.33.
  11. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Vols I-II, (Harper and Row Publishers, New York), I, p. 145. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: 1962), p.1041.
  12. Baltic Tribunal Against the Soviet Union July 25 and 26, 1985, Copenhagen (published by the World Federation of Free Latvians), pp. 1-195.

This paper was presented at the Eighth Conference of the Institute for Historical Review, October 1987, in Irvine, southern California. It was published in the IHR's Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1988 (Vol. 8, No. 1), pages 25-40.

About the Author

Alexander V. Berkis was born in Latvia in 1916. He held a law degree from the University of Latvia, and a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin. For years he served as a professor of European history at Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia, until his retirement at the age of 65. He was a chairman of the Latvian Republican Committee, and a member of several academic associations. He also served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review. He died in 2003 at the age of 87. He was survived by his wife of 57 years, as well as a daughter and two grandsons.
 
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