THE POLICY OF OCCUPATION POWERS
IN LATVIA 1940-1945
The Soviet policy in the Baltic States expressed itself during 1940-41 in endeavors to erect both an iron curtain and a facade toward the West. According to the facade policy Latvian nationals who were either of Communistic inclinations or hoping to round out a career, or just intimidated, were entrusted with the most prominent state offices. Behind this representative facade the occupation authorities strove to create pliant power machinery out of fit local elements besides those introduced from the Soviet Union. This machinery was to be greatly expanded and to embrace not only state administration but also economic life and society in general. The diminutive Communist Party, which had formerly never yielded any influence, was reinforced and exalted. As the overwhelming majority of Latvians remained faithful to the idea of an independent Latvian state, rejecting Bolshevism and hating the occupants, it was subjected to systematically increasing reprisals. Behind the facade, that power was invisibly expanded and began to function which being the real foundation of the Soviet state dictates and controls the actions of the individual in the Communist system the political police, main instrument of Soviet domestic policy. Its designation has been repeatedly changed since the Soviet Union carne into existence. Initially it was called the “Extraordinary Commission" the first letters constituting in Russian (Chrezvchainaja Komissija) that notorious name "Cheka". The Extraordinary Commission grew to the General Political Administration (Glavnoje Politicheskoje Upravlenije) whose initials G.P.U. also acquired general notoriety. From the administration a complete department developed the N.K.V.D. (Narodnyj Komissariat vnutrennich djel) or State Commissariat of the Interior. In the beginning of 1941 one more department the People's Commissariat for Stag: Security (Narodnyj Komissariat gosudarstvennoj bezopastnostji) or in short N.K.G.B. was added to it. 'Though the designations changed, the authority remained one and the same only growing mightier, wider and more experienced: Since the peoples commissariats became ministries, the terror organization also proudly calls itself, a ministry (M.G.B., M.V.P.)
In the Soviet system the political police is free to dispose of a person's soul and flesh according to its own judgment and motives without resorting to courts or warrants It is not responsible for its actions to other state organs. No judicial control of the police exists on the contrary, all the officials tremble before its might. The N.K.V.D. is responsible only to itself to its own supreme instances. Only the all Union chief of can control these than political police who in turn has to give account only to dictator Stalin locally the authority of the Soviet political police is quite sovereign and autocratic. The methods of this powerful organization have been developed during its twenty years of experience. Set for the same tasks as in the Soviet Union the N.K.V.D. began to function in Latvia, in the way first days after the occupation. Its affairs were conducted under the cover of secrecy and veiled by skillful Soviet propaganda moves.
Latvia being invaded by the Red Army in 1940, Latvians recollected the first Soviet occupation. In 1919 during the fight for Latvia's liberation the bestial mass murders and deportation had been, current. The Red Tribunals openly proclaimed their death sentences, filling whole newspaper columns with theme Men belonging to the educated or prosperous classes had; been tortured, horribly mutilated and killed without any reason: the memories of these nightmares, had not yet faded. The Latvian public suddenly remembered the terrors accompanying the name of the big the big Cheka in the first years of Soviet history. The irrational nearly mystical dread emanating from the great political trials in the Soviet Union was recalled, where prominent Communist leaders and theorists had accused themselves of the most ignoble crimes demanding capital punishment .and had accordingly been adjudged and executed. The hero of these trials the present Minister of Foreign Affairs Vishinsky took up residence in the Soviet Embassy in Riga and from there directed the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union. . On the other hand was spread by the new rulers the rumor that much had changed for the better in the Soviet Union during the past two decades. The period of militant Communism had been succeeded by constructive Socialism. Even if it appeared alien and disagreeable to the Latvians it did not seem to be so utterly oppressing in the event that there was no alternative. The propaganda mechanism began to run with the first occupation days. The daily press, new editions, a deluge of pamphlets, a number of very fine movies, broadcasts, placards, and slogans all praised the Soviet Union. The main arguments could not be missed completely by the unaware Latvian public, which up to now had seen nothing of the Soviet Union but the iron curtain. Propaganda painted the U.S.S.R. in all her spaciousness, immense natural resources and beautiful scenery. Against this background was displayed the gigantic, planned industrial construction. It was asserted that. its aim was to exploit nature's riches to the benefit of the people. All allegedly belonged to the workers, all belonged to the state, but the workers were masters of this state. Men conquered formerly unexplored regions, rendering them accessible for more civilized forms of life. Over narrow confines, over ancient prejudices, the human mind, enlightened by science was building a genuine earthly home with the help of powerful technical innovations. The rich ethnographic picture presenting a variety of peoples supplemented this geographic grandeur and dynamic technique. Theory had it that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics consisted of 16 sovereign socialist republics besides autonomous republics, autonomous districts and autonomous counties for less cultural or less numerous national groups. Each of the federated republics had its own government organs, own constitution, own official language, and own insignia. To accentuate this sovereignty Russian was used where necessary in the official texts of the federated republics as a second language only, although the Russians comprised a considerable majority of the Soviet population. Czarist Russia had tried to Russianize all her peoples by sheer force. The contrast appeared to be a striking one. It seemed that the Soviet Union was really an authentic federation of nations great and small on an equal footing. The national existence apparently was not threatened, only the socialist system had to be gulped down. This was also pointed out by the slogan: "National in form, socialist in content." The Latvian Marxian old timers who had learned to regard with scorn everything national were astounded to see the reverence displayed toward national dresses and other national characteristics. National features were played up as though to compose a glorious panorama of the united republics' national peculiarities. The slogan "friendship of peoples" allegedly proclaimed a new epoch in national relations. The maze of the various sovereign and autonomous republics, and autonomous districts and counties within the Union of Republics looked like a happy solution to the problems arising from national differences and hatreds. The Union of Republics appeared paralleling the U.S.A. in its size and federative principle but surpass sing the latter by the colorful mosaic of its peoples. It was also greater. It gas stressed that the U.S.S.R. constituted one sixth of earth's surface. The member of the smallest nation was s aid to be able to feel like a citizen of the world's mightiest empire. Thus the extent, beauty, and wealth of the country, the industrial development and magnificence of peoples' friendship were the main themes of the Bolshevik propaganda. It surprised and confused . An unknown and original idea of a new world was discovered. The history of the Communist Party was portrayed as a story of exalted heroism and unbending resoluteness. Lenin appeared a wise scientist and inspired public leader, but the "mountain eagle of the revolution" genius Stalin approached everyone in the mask of an artless and benevolent gentleman, "father, friend, and teacher." Though the frightening memories of 1919 still lingered, the Latvians found certain solace when looking at this colorful facade, at these images conjured by propaganda. The truth dawned upon them gradually and in full extent only in the second part of the Bolshevik "year of terror."
The terror of N.K.V.D, contrary to that existing during the war, was secret, carefully concealed and a veil of propaganda was thrown over it. The methods of terrorizing and its results were only completely discovered after the expulsion of the Bolsheviks. The inspection of the N.K.V.D. offices, concentration camps and prisons, slaughtering implements, mass graves, the remains of N.K.V.D. documents and the interviewing of the prisoners set free, revealed the naked truth of the cruel activity performed by the soviets. After the one year secret preparations, the occupation power dared to terrorize publicly by mass deportations. The aim of the propaganda was to lull to sleep, and that of the terror, to exterminate the occupied nation.
The first signs of a N.K.V.D. initiative were evident when the composition of the Cabinet of Ministers organized by occupation authorities was made public. The Deputy Minister of the Interior had been officially designed "Chief of the Secret Police". The political police appeared to be curiously elevated to an all important state function compared with the former Latvian system of subordinating both the political and criminal police to the Department of Security Police among other civilian offices of the Ministry of the Interior. No necessity had been felt to favor the political police.
Soviet Latvia's Department of Interior became the camouflage of the N.K.V.D. The Latvian S.S.R. People's Commissariat of the Interior succeeded the Minister of the Interior, once Latvia was incorporated in U.S.S.R. Departments formerly belonging to this ministry were separated and all the former employees including clerks and technical personnel dismissed. N.K.V.D. henchmen replaced them. The People's Commissariat took over the building of the Ministry of the Interior in the very heart of the city of Riga. This house was a 6 story structure with an enclosed yard in the middle. N.K.V.D. sentries were stationed in the formerly unguarded entrances. The building could be entered only with special passes bearing the time of entering and departing, and specifying the one room to be visited. On the side streets tenants were cleaned out of several houses situated nearby to create space for billeting the N.K.V.D. guard units. Thus to N.K.V.D. headquarters were surrounded by troops on all sides. More 5 story houses were sequestered in the adjacent streets for the use of the N.K.V.D. personnel. The inhabitants were moved within twenty-four hours and were put on the street in the morning of St. John's Day. Thus the N.K.V.D. key men took quarters all together in extra guarded houses. The headquarters were changed into a real fortress prison. The cellar was closed by brick walls; the court was secured by big iron gates; a barbed wire intersection separated the roof of the building from the adjoining houses and the windows opening to streets were barred on all six floors by unostentatious white metal rails to avoid any semblance of bars. Previously it had happened that human bodies thumping on the pavement, which had caused considerable agitation, had surprised passers by. But at that time these falls did not resound in the free world audibly as the jump of Kosenkina after the Second World War. After the Bolsheviks withdrew, 44 cells of different size and nearly 200 sleeping places, were found in the cellars. A whole wing on the second floor was occupied by a special telephone exchange for direct calls to Moscow and to N.K.V.D. headquarters in the other Baltic states, as well as for listening in to the public telephone system. The building also contained a station of accumulators storing electric energy. It had been established to render the N.K.V.D. headquarters independent of the town current in the case of an uprising, The N.K.V.D. did not work during daytime like other offices but preferred night for its main activities. All the windows opening to the streets were covered with impenetrable curtains. After the Bolshevik retreat, the greatest attention, was paid to the death and torture chambers found in the building. Nearly all the cabinets of the house were connected by telephones; an intricate signaling and alarm system had been established and a machinegun position commanding the yard had been built. A second yard used for prisoners' walking was separated from the nearby houses by a newly built wall reaching the height of three stories. All these devices had turned the popular and serene offices of the former Latvian Ministry of the Interior into a military stronghold and obscure murderer's den. During the Bolshevik occupation people observed this building only from the outside, but gruesome accounts of things happening inside spread rapidly. Pedestrians gladly took a detour to avoid the house.
The N.K.V.D. soon made itself felt. Men disappeared and a feeling of dejection and danger arose. No official. comment, however, was offered by the N.K.V.D. No notices of arrests being ordered were published, no trials tools place, no death sentence was announced. The extent of the detentions could not be estimated, nor did anybody really know what happened to those arrested. This procedure was very different from the described Bolshevik methods of 1919. At present the wish prevailed to conceal from the world the terror in the Baltic states. After the occupation of the Baltic: states, and the subsequent retreat of the Bolsheviks from these states and from wide regions of Russia proper, the N.K.V.D. activities have been fixed by the evidence found in the N.K.V.D, headquarters, by documents, prison establishments, and unearthed tombs of martyrs. What happened in Latvia and the other two Baltic countries should serve as a warning to the rest of the world. It was once thought the specific Russian conditions and revolutionary events had combined in causing a short lived burst of crimes against humanity. Now it became abundantly clear that this was the general method of the Communist regime. In the Baltic states this method was for the first time applied outside the Soviet Union, Now after the close of the Second World War it has been. introduced in all the territories occupied by the Red Army and in the Soviet satellite states. Therefore the occurrences in the Baltic states are not the concern of just the Balts, but of the mankind as a whole.
Let us examine the activities of the N.K.V.D. in detail.
According to Soviet constitutional theories Latvian People's Commissariats or Ministries were the executive organs of the Latvian S.S.R. government. As Latvian had remained the official language under the Soviet regime (Russian being used only as a secondary language where necessary in correspondence with all Union authorities) the Commissariats of the Interior and State Security should have used Latvian as their official language. The Soviets asserted that the Red Army had only overthrown or "assisted. in overthrowing" the Latvian "Fascist regime" and the oppressed people had seized power under the Communist leadership. This assertion implied that the Latvian Soviet executive powers should rest with the Latvian Communists. A couple of key positions occupied by Communists from the Soviet Union, in order to establish. closer contact with the central authorities or to provide they specialists which Latvia, lacked clue to her divergent structure, would cause no consternation. The reality was diametrically opposed to these Soviet theories. The state machinery was overflowing with emissaries from the Soviet Union. Both the departments of the inner security _ the People's Commissariats of the Interior and State Security were exclusively composed of newly arrived Bolsheviks. The first chief of the political police in the Bolshevik cabinet was, however, Latkovskis, a Russianized Latvian from the district of Latgale. The Soviet commissariats, being established after Latvia ,"entered" the Soviet Union, the Department of the Interior was taken over by Alfonss Noviks ,an educated degenerate hailing from the Latvian eastern border. His deputy, became Simon Shustin from the Soviet Union. After the Peoples Commissariat for State Security was established Shustin was appointed its chief. In both departments of inner security this administrators , the chiefs of divisions, branches, sections,, the senior inspectors, the superintendents, and the office Personnel consisted mostly of Soviet Union Bolsheviks, as can be seen from the documents and nominal rolls discovered. They used Russian for the official language. Though part oaf the N.K.V.D. and N.K.G.B. forms were ,printed in big type Latvian paralleled by smaller Russian letters, the entries were always made in, Russian. The Latvian language was used very seldom. Some of the forms were already printed in Russian only. All the internal activity, statements, reports, secret messages, observations, and inside correspondence of froth N.K.V.D. and N.K.G.B. had been conducted in Russian. The reproduced Photostat copies of documents show that these departments were totally Russianized. This clearly shows that the Soviet power in Latvia, although reinforced from abroad and sustained dictatorially by a Communist minority was not a revolutionary power but just an imperialistic Soviet occupation. It treated Latvia as a conquered country, aiming to extinguish, with the help of terror, Latvian patriotism and love of independence, assimilating Latvia in the Red empire.
The N.K.V.D. information concerning the Latvian public was based on data that had been carefully gathered and systematized years before the occupation of Latvia. A particular Latvian "Who's who" containing the names of persons to be persecuted had been printed for the use of the Cheka that naturally kept it ,strictly secret. New information flowed from an extraordinary wide network of agents. The N.K.V.D. took care that every office, enterprise, professional organization and school had at least one informer among its members. Under the Soviet regime the political police was busy spying on all the citizens and also ran its own staff. The regular agents had to sign special pledges binding them to secrecy and providing, in. case of offence "for" absolute responsibility (capital punishment) outside of court." These informers 'had to fill out personal questionnaires of many pages asking for minute details not only about the agent himself but also about his family members, about; his own and his relatives' social relations and foreign travels. That information was used to attain full power over men and nobody was excused. The duties of an agent and the informers belonged to the category of persons to be persecuted. Even the most trivial reports of the informers were, carefully evaluated and documented in special forms designating the agents as a "source" and referring to hire by pseudonym. A single staff member usually maintained the contact with a certain, group of agents. Cut of materials and. documents obtained from Latvian government organs, official questionnaires and informers` reports a mammoth file was created containing "compromising data" on, nearly 'all the a population of Latvia. Service in Latvian government organs, army, police, student and youth organizations, Latvian political parties, and the amount of wealth were regarded as incriminatory. These data were completed by agent’s reports on private conversations, accounts of passive or active resistance, and incoming denunciations dictated by personal enmity. More material was derived from tapped telephone lines. In the exchange, which occupied a whole wing and was carefully isolated by soundproof doors and windows of opaque glass, a file of telephone subscribers was at hand, the names of persons to be systematically overheard, being marked. The citizens' correspondence was opened and checked in secret rooms established in the main post office. All the data gathered from archives, informers` reports and the communication system were compiled in the central file and entered into personal data forms. This apparatus for civilian mass spying was something unheard of, something surprising and unprecedented. The population, though not aware to what extent it was being spied upon, was frightened by the Cheka activities.. The telephones were kept covered and a general phobia of microphones ensued. The N.K.V.D. endeavored to make use of the youth, urging them to submit information concerning their fellow students, teachers, and parents to the Communist youth organizer of the school; who in turn forwarded it to the Cheka. Men's political past or anxiety for themselves or their families was used to, compel them to information work. Thus the Latvian society was penetrated and undermined morally by the N.K.V.D. The specter of treason and fear haunted men, leaving permanent scars in their tortured souls.
As we saw the N.K.V.D. bureaucracy was supported by its own military and. intelligence agencies. Its subordinates were to a certain extent all other Soviet administrative institutions. The regular police, called "militia," was directly subjected to the N.K.V.D. The Communist Party, Communist "youth Organization and the Union of Professional Organizations were its indirect auxiliaries. Besides, it was the duty of ail Soviet government organs to give information available to the N.K.V.D. Besides, all Soviet government organs and every citizen was obliged to give information available to the N.K.V.D. The bolshevist youth literature praised, for instance, a son who denounced his father at the Cheka. In such a way, the spying apparatus included the whole society. In offices and organizations there were secret sections with sworn in communists and N.K.V.D. collaborators.
Based on the intelligence of this giant spying enterprise, systematic apprehensions of the "anti-Soviet element" took place. Latvian citizens were arrested for their past activities against the Soviet Union and communist intrigues, for fighting against the Soviet Union with the Latvian Army twenty years ago; for having been employed by the Latvian government and for membership in Latvian national organizations during the period of Latvia's independence. Men were arrested for making critical remarks on the regime in private conversations. Pupils were imprisoned for displaying national colors on their lapels; for visiting the Soldier's Cemetery on national holidays; for not singing the International during Communist festivities, for parodying the Bolshevik songs or telling anecdotes; or simply for asking unpleasant questions in the lessons of "political education". Very often the reasons for detention were not disclosed. The number of prisoners increased so rapidly that new jails had to be installed. Thus the number of prisons under the Bolshevik regime was soon thrice as great as that of independent Latvia. The cells were so crowded that the prisoners had to sleep side by side on the floor. It can easily be imagined what the sanitary conditions and air were like. Often the windows were covered from outside by wooden shields, which obstructed the flow of fresh air. These shields were nicknamed "Stalin's sun" by the prisoners. In the course of one year i.e. from June 17, 1940, to the begin of the mass deportation on June 1941, , the Bolsheviks had imprisoned 6041 Latvian citizens; among them 348 women and 17 juveniles under the age of sixteen, as "political delinquents".
During the period of Latvian independence prisons were placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice and managed by the department of prisons. Its wardens were organized along military lines but the officials were civilians. After the Bolshevik regime was established, all prisons were taken over by the N.K.V.D. and guarded by N.K.V.D. troops. The prisoners were held completely isolated from their relatives and had no communication with the outside world. The prison discipline was rendered absolutely intolerable. From all the places of detention the Central Prison of Riga, a whole block built under the Czarist rule, was the most important one. In the special chambers for cross‑examination characteristically all the furniture, including the stool where the prisoner used to sit, was tightly screwed to the floor for the sake of safety.
The arrests occurred mostly during the early morning hours. From the moment of detention a Soviet citizen practically lost all his rights and means of defense; only in rare instances could his relatives gain information concerning him. The N.K.V.D. headquarters did indeed accept various appeals from the family. Even a special mailbox was established for this purpose, actually serving for the secret messages sent by the informers who thus avoided suspicion of maintaining a liaison with the Cheka. The prisoners only occasionally received clothing and other items sent in. Mothers and wives stood in long queues with tearful and dejected faces holding food parcels in their trembling hands. The N.K.V.D. men and the prison guards profited from these parcels. The imprisoned had no possibility of choosing a defense counsel; he had no opportunity of getting acquainted with the charge sheet; nor he could make any applications to the courts. The imprisoned was under the unrestricted power of the N.K.V.D. without having any contact with the outside world. The arrests were usually carried out with the utmost brutality. The home of the victim was jumbled, books, documents, and photographs were mercilessly trampled upon. The arresting officials often appropriated money and valuables. Naturally nobody dared to protest, although the protocol of arrest ironically advised to address all complaints to the same N.K.V.D. The public prosecutor and courts of justice had nothing to say in the matter. They were only auxiliary organs of the N.K.V.D.: the prosecutor formulated the charge, the court pronounced the sentence. As evidence served the most trifling items picked up in the victim's residence Latvian national colors, patriotic books printed during Latvian independence, diplomas, service certificates, visiting cards, medals. The Bolshevik having filed, heaps of such materials, including many medal boxes, were found in the N.K.V.D. building. The fugitive inquisitors had left behind photographs made of their victims in prison. The faces of Latvian ministers, officers, state employees, social workers, students and laborers look at us bearded and in utter hopelessness. As the last turn in this gallery we can add the photographs of their corpses with bloated, transformed and disfigured countenances.
The greatest part of the prisoners was gradually moved from all parts of the country to the so called inner prison of the N.K.V.D., in the cellars of the building which once housed the Ministry of the Interior. This prison was designed to ripen the suspects, morally and physically for the interrogation to follow. An man, whose only crime was his patriotism, torn out from his busy everyday life felt already oppressed when hauled in the nighttime to the dreadful, mysterious house of which he had heard such bizarre rumors. The prisoner was first brought to the reception room where he had to fill out hurriedly and in excitement a quantity of questionnaires asking for minute details of his person and past life. He had to take off his clothes and was forced to face the wall, seeing his tormentors approaching, brandishing knives, he already imagined the worst. The buttons and hooks of his clothes were cut off, the seams ripped open. Then the prisoner was placed in a closet measuring 3 ft. X 3 ft. (floor measurements) and held there for four, five, and even up to seventy two hours. The closet was painted in glaring white. A bright bulb burned continuously overhead. The heat was great; the sense of time was soon lost. Through a peephole in the door, the N.K.V.D. guard looked in every few minutes. The victim, fresh from his home and freedom, accustomed to self respect and human dignity, was however mentally and physically unbroken. He was still master of himself, he had command of his thoughts and utterances. The waiting period, the nakedness, the confinement in a narrow box served primarily for intimidation. The effect was heightened by the derisive laughter of the N.K.V.D. men, by curses, blows, and kicks. The prolonged sitting in the glaring light, the mounting tension without a possibility to move one’s limbs, the dreadful moaning sounds, overpowered and wore out the victim. In spite of the terrible ordeal, patriotic inscriptions were found on the closet walls: " Latvia was and shall be;" "All for Latvia;" initials of resistance organizations, and other patriotic phrases.
From the closet, the prisoners were moved to cells, which were mostly in cellars. Part of the cells were the size of just two beds. There was no daylight in the cells, but powerful bulbs burned day and night. The walls again were painted in a dazzling white. These rooms were excessively warm in all seasons; even in June much fuel was consumed to heat them. Heat was one of the means the N.K.V.D. used to crush the mental and physical resistance of the prisoners. The constant light and heat dried up the body, caused nervousness and apathy. It was forbidden to cover the head while sleeping. The bulbs were protected from being smashed by a wire net. The sensation of heat was heightened by lack of fresh air. The prisoners took turns in sleeping on the floor near the door. A vessel constantly kept in the cell served as toilet. The passages were lined with carpets on which the guards moved silently, constantly looking through the peepholes. The prisoners were thus kept in a state of un abating tension and could not indulge in the smallest liberty without being punished by blows and solitary confinement. No complicated torture racks were found in the cells, except for their extreme narrowness and lack of daylight. The twenty years of N.K.V.D. experience had developed unobtrusive but very effective torture methods aiming to exhaust body and soul, to wear out resistance and then gain the information desired by cross examination, combined with intimidation and torture. The enervation came gradually but inevitably. Physical torture has its limits. Loss of consciousness or death ensue. Refined psychic inquisition is the major invention of the N.K.V.D. Trotsky said: "Maybe there is a number of heroes in the world capable of enduring any physical and psychic torture and allowing their wives and children to bear the same I do not know From my personal observations I know that the endurance of human nerves has its limits. It should be remembered that suicide generally was an unattainable luxury in the G.P.U. prisons."
The prison routine had been decreed along these lines. It was forbidden to sleep in the daytime; interrogations took place during the night. The prisoners, tired and exhausted during the day, were unable to recover in sleep. Doors were slammed, prisoners called by names. Their fellow victims nervously awaited their return for these cross examinations were usually accompanied by mental ordeal and physical pain. The interviewed prisoner often returned overpowered and battered, but could not tell the others a word of his experiences for this was punished with death. After nights like these, sleepless days followed. The narrow space, the heat, the light, the constant watching, the fear of lapsing, the physical pain, a subtle but extremely successful system of torture, enervated by fear, tired by lack of sleep, parched by heat, the prisoner was dragged in the night from his bed and conducted to the upper floors for examination. From the drab and crowded underground cell he suddenly arrived in the luxurious N.K.V.D. cabinets furnished with carpets, upholstery, and paintings. The will to survive, to regain liberty, rose in the victim's heart. But the N.K.V.D. had taken care that the resolute ones could not commit suicide and take their knowledge with them. The winding staircase connecting the cells with the upper floors and cabinets was furnished with a net prohibiting dives in the shaft.
The N.K.V.D. prison cells were adjoined by the thus termed walking space (17 ft. X 37 ft.). It was enclosed by the N.K.V.D. building on three sides and separated from the adjacent houses on the fourth by a 3 story high wall topped by a barbed wire fence and supporting a slanting roof that concealed the sky. The prisoners were brought into the yard once every ten days and then for ten minutes only. In winter snow was removed from the yard, which was sprayed with gasoline to prevent the formation of ice, wherein signs could be carved. The prisoners were always driven out for walking in underwear even in subzero temperatures. They had to walk in a strict order with heads bent and hands crossed behind their backs, moving in a prescribed circle.
In order to obtain all the information it wanted the N.K.V.D. by no means, regarded itself bound to the described methods but resorted also to terrible physical tortures. Hitting with a bare fist or special instruments, knocking out the teeth, stabbing the body, strangulation of limbs, torturing by electric current, blinding light, cold, heat, starvation and thirst are all "elementary" appliances well known to, those who managed to save themselves by accidents or the outbreak of the war. Beside the direct needs of the N.K.V.D., the lowest instincts of men could express themselves uncontrolled. Inferiority complex compensation drives, sadism and other psychic diseases can be inferred from the photographs the N.K.V.D. abandoned when fleeing.
But there were also cases when the N.K.V.D. had not to deal with imaginary enemies, innocent and harmless persons harboring patriotic sentiments, on whom it only wanted to revenge for their work for the independent Latvia or public manifestations of their patriotism. Sometimes men were apprehended by the N.K.V.D. who, being former Latvian government officials, either had knowledge of military or diplomatic secrets or were able to give political information deemed important by the N.K.V.D. Members of the resistance movement were tracked down from whom the N.K.V.D. hoped to extort intelligence, leading to further arrests. Such persons were subjected to the most horrible physical torture until they lost their mental balance or were physical mutilated. These high‑degree tortures were carefully concealed by the N.K.V.D. After the fall of the Soviet regime special death chambers were found in the N.K.V.D. headquarters. They had been established in a corner of the building quite distant from the offices but alongside the N.K.V.D. garage. The chambers consisted of three rooms. One was a sort of dressing room where bloody and torn clothes, including women and pupils` apparel, had been piled on the floor. The other two chambers were isolated most painfully by massive double doors, which were lined by thick felt so as to cover even the keyholes. The first of these rooms had served for "cross examination"; various inexplicable implements and vials were found in it. From here doors led into the next room used for wholesale slaughter. Its walls were covered with several layers of thick boards pierced with bullets. Great bloodstained rubber sheets reaching up to a man's height were hung along the walls. Flagstone floors, a drain for blood at the opposite wall, a water hose and ventilator bear witness as to the use of this room. Doors joined the slaughter house with the N.K.V.D. garage. The day Riga fell the rooms described and the garage were spattered with human blood up to the ceiling, the floor was littered with empty pistol shells, and bloodstained handcuffs. A truck with one side lowered and splotched with blood, stood in the garage. The dead were dragged from the shooting room into the garage with special hooks. When the motors were running in the garage no sound could penetrate the walls of these infernal chambers. In the examination room the unfortunate victims from whom the N.K.V.D. hoped to gain the necessary information were subjected to all conceivable tortures and means of mutilation a human being could undergo. For the sake of secrecy they maimed victim could return to his cell no more. No matter' whether he had remained steadfast or had broken down and told what was expected of him, he was dragged into the death chamber, where the ghastly walls, illuminated by a feeble electric light, breathed a sickening stench of blood and gunpowder in his face. What fiendish tortures, what inhuman agony were suffered here by Latvian patriots is beyond description. And in the same time only a few yards away their families, wives and mothers repeatedly called in their despair on the office of the N.K.V.D., trying to obtain information concerning the fate of their dear ones. Along these hidden apartments of inquisition and murder, the main street of the city stretched where a stream of people moved busily to and fro unaware that their countrymen were being tortured in the twentieth century by middle age methods and were moaning just behind the wall. The N.K.V.D. was conscious that it acted outside of the Soviet territory, on the borders of Western Europe and therefore tried industriously to hide its misdeeds from the local and the world public opinion. Trucks laden with corpses of the victims left the N.K.V.D. building only during the night or early morning hours, and the dead were buried in the sandy pine forests surrounding Riga.
The second major torture and slaughter establishment was located outside of the N.K.V.D. headquarters in the resort of Baltezers in the vicinity of Riga. In an unfrequented suburb, a villa standing in a sandy grove of young pines, was suddenly emptied of inhabitants. Russian laborers, working round the clock, enclosed the villa at some distance with a wooden stockade of some 10 ft. high, through which nobody could see, the smallest chinks and knotholes being carefully closed. The villa remained uninhabited; the gates were always locked. It was surrounded by a mystery. In the afternoons and evenings dampened shots were heard. The people tried to find an explanation, contending that the villa was used as a training place for the N.K.V.D. personnel, which had been seen arriving in closed cars from Riga. After the Bolshevik retreat the mystery was solved. The villa was nearly empty, its floors strewn with broken bottles of alcoholic beverages, its walls bloodstained. The courtyard yielded thirteen mass graves, when searched with iron pikes. In each pit 8 x 9, in one even 16, wretched Latvian nationals had been thrown crosswise. They still carried in their pockets copies of their death sentences prepared by the Bolshevik authorities, their arms had been strung behind their backs and tightly bound with fine cords. They all bore marks of heavy blows and torture, and the backs of their skulls were pierced by pistol shots. This had happened in times of peace without the least public reference being made to it. The death sentence was formulated in short general phrases, stating that subject person was to be punished because of anti communistic attitude and failing to mention specific offenses. The sentencing and the killing were conducted in utmost secrecy. The kin were not notified. Being unacquainted with Bolshevism the inhabitants of the cultural Western countries could think that the murdered had been distinguished adversaries of Communism who probably had fulfilled important functions in the resistance movement. Nothing could be more mistaken. Peaceful Latvian citizens were killed in revenge for loyal work with the Latvian state prior to occupation or for critical remarks offered in private conversations. Among those murdered were students, teachers, and laborers. Altogether 130 corpses were exhumed in the yard of the fateful villa: from these only 90 could be recognized, the rest of the named bodies had to be buried unidentified. The arm of the N.K.V.D.., however, reached far. When, after the Bolshevik retreat, the authorities conducted a survey of the N.K.V.D. activities, the lonely uninhabited villa burned down one night.
Wide pine forests covering the sandy colored coastal plains surround the beautiful capital of Latvia, the City of Riga, clasped in a belt of lakes and streams. In these pine forests beyond the residential districts, the N.K.V.D. had hidden its victims in camouflaged pits. A layer of yellow sand being removed, bound, pale bodies with faces disfigured and mouths full of sand appeared in various postures. Out of one of these holes the body of the beloved youth educator, the President of Latvian Boy Scouts and participant in fights for Latvia's liberation, General Kārlis Gopers, was lifted. During the Russian Civil War the general had commanded units fighting the Communists. Now two decades later the revenge of the Cheka had overtaken the aging man. Another grave at the same place produced the body of General Kārlis Prauls, Commander in Chief of the Latvian Home Guard. The snare by which he had been led toward his doom was still around his neck. The patriotic Home Guard organization consisting of volunteers aiming to prepare for the defense of the state, was hated most vehemently by the Communists. The Bolsheviks as a grave crime and reason for a death sentence regarded already membership in it. Thus its commander shared the fate of his comrades.
In June, 1941, after the war between Germany and the Soviet Union had begun and the German troops were already approaching Riga the N.K.V.D. had no more time to transport its prisoners from the Central Prison to the pine woods, wherefore 98 Latvian patriots were shot in one of the prison yards between June 27 and 29 and buried on the spot in two mass graves. The greatest tomb contained 62 dead who were shot in the night to June 27. The smallest tomb harbored 36 victims killed in the night to June 29. Pistol bullets entering the body through the nape, forehead, or stomach had shot the prisoners. Several were mutilated. The distorted faces grinning horribly with mouths full of sand belonged to men thrown in the pits still alive. These executions cannot be explained by a war emergency in which irresponsible officials or guards preparing for flight would have carried out the slaughter. Among the documents found in the prison office of the Central Prison was a "Copy of the List of Persons Apprehended by the Latvian S.S.R. People's Commissariat for State Security because of Counterrevolutionary Activities." This list contains 78 enumerated names whit short notices of the individual incriminations. The People’s Commissar for State Security, Simon Shustin himself, signs it further by the Chairman of the N.K.V.D. Military Tribunal, Soldatenkov, and the Deputy Prosecutor for the Baltic Military District, Solncev. The list is marked "absolutely secret". No legal proceedings are mentioned in this document, instead it caries a remark by Shustin in red ink: "All to be shot as socially dangerous. 26. 6. 1941." The receipt of the hangman is also in red: "Received the 62 arrested persons." These 62 arrested persons were found dead in the yard of the Central Prison. The list of persons to be killed was written in Russian. The resolution for shooting, as well as the certification of its fulfillment by the hangman, was also written in Russian. One of the chief hangmen was Shustin People's Commissar for the State Security of PSR Latvia , a non Latvian , not even a citizen of Latvia arrived from Soviet Union. The lives of 62 Latvian citizens were exterminated by a stroke of the pen without any court proceedings and investigations, without the possibility of being defended, without charge sheets, without any appeals. Besides that, immorality was denoted as "entirely secret". The rest of the victims found at the same place were shot according to individual orders. The graves were opened on July 4, 1941, after the expulsion of the Bolsheviks from Riga. Throngs stood around the prison gates from early morning hours in nervous apprehension to find a dear one among the bodies to be unearthed. The corpses were found in a depth of two feet with hands tied and in disorderly layers. The exhumation and identification began. The hot summer air vibrating with odors of decay, people walked between the rows of the corpses holding their breath trying to recognize their family members among the dreadful dead. These unforgettable, tragic scenes have been perpetuated in photographs.
Let us examine who were these men so dangerous to the Soviet regime, and what ignoble crimes they had committed against the state that they had to be disposed of so hurriedly. Among others the following reasons calling for capital punishment were offered: "Made remarks hostile to the party and state. "Took part in the Kronstadt rebellion" (which occurred 1917 during the Russian Civil War. "Sang Fascist songs on the street and derided the Soviet regime after arrest" (by now the West also knows that to the Soviets Fascist is all that is not Communist). "Fought actively against the Soviet regime and the Red Army in 1919; from 1920 to the establishment of Soviet Latvia served as adjutant to the Latvian President Ulmanis and others." "Served in the Polish Army 1919 to 1920 and fought actively against the Red Army." “Spread rumors that after June 26 foreign trade would be interrupted, advising to conceal greater quantities of food; thus damaging state interests." "Assumed an inimical attitude toward the Soviet regime." "Served in the White Army in 1919. Worked as examining magistrate from 1922 to 1940" (in the sovereign Latvian Republic). "Spoke of the weakness of the Red Army remarking in the same time appraisingly on the German Army.' "Was a member of the Home Guard from 1934 to 1940." It should be noted that the Home Guard did not serve as an organ of a separate party but was an auxiliary military organization of the regular army, designed to maintain the population on a certain level of military preparedness. "Officer of the old army; entered in 1919 the Latvian Army as a volunteer and was assigned to important positions.' "Being dissatisfied with the establishment of the Soviet regime in Latvia held anti-Soviet discourses with his acquaintances tending to diminish Soviet authority in Latvia." "Kept the Fascist swastika." (Here it may be said that both archaeology and ethnography have documented swastika as a national Latvian ornament. This popular sign of thousand years` standing has nothing in common with Hitler and Hitlerism.) The identifying mark of the Latvian as well as of the Finnish airplanes was "Svastika." The authorities should clear those facts before shooting a person. "Has been deputy director of the school department of the fashistical Latvia." "Was a 3rd rank captain of the former Latvian navy." The sentences of the other victims contain similar reasoning. "Came from a wealthy family. Until the establishment of the Soviet regime, owned a great bakery and shop, and two story houses. Exploited up to eight workers.", " Cut paper letters signifying welcome to Hitler and displayed these in her window." (During the first days of war the population of Riga busily pasted paper strips on their windowpanes hoping to protect them from detonations. The strained Bolshevik imagination read "welcome to Hitler" out of the crisscross.) "Was a wealthy farmer. Being dissatisfied with the establishment of the Soviet regime in Latvia held anti Soviet discourses with his acquaintances, tending to diminish Soviet authority in Latvia."
The accusations consist of stereotype formulae, which in several cases have identical wording. Same persons were accused also of maintaining contact with the enemy, signaling to airplanes and spying. The only witnesses were Soviet militia men or the denouncing agents themselves. Not only were their assertions not proved, they were not even discussed. As can be seen, individuals were killed just to revenge them for their service or social activity contributing to the welfare of independent Latvia, or their resistance to Bolshevism several decades ago. Among the victims were Col. M. Lukins; adjutant of the Latvian President of State; A. Cuibe, deputy director of the Department of Schools, popular pedagogue, mathematician, and author of textbooks; his son A. Cuibe, chief of the Latvian Bureau for School Architecture; physician N. Reinics M. D.; and quite unpretentious persons such as the longshoreman A. Dzerens. Among the murdered were several women. The Soviet occupation power persecuted all those Latvian nationals who had served the interests and independence of Latvia in spite of the friendly diplomatic relations the Soviet Union had maintained with Latvia, undertaking by solemn treaties not to intervene in Latvian domestic affairs. In the opinion of the Bolsheviks, the whole Latvian nation had to be exterminated not only the department director or a captain but also the owner of a two story building, or a woman who let a room had to be killed.
“Rights are the weapon of politics," declared Vishinsky in the Danube Conference held after the Second World War. Rights in the Soviet conception do not serve for the protection of the individual but for his subjection to the Bolshevik Party. Therefore the wording of the laws, the court and prosecution instances are in the Soviet Union adapted to perpetuate fear instead of establishing justice. The courts do not exist for the examination of the guilt and the punishment of crime but serve as a machinery for the extermination of the eventual political adversaries or their reduction to slave labor. The most noteworthy article of the Soviet penal code is Article 58. Its 20 paragraphs qualify political offenses to be punished by imprisonment from half a year up to 25 years and also with death sentence, which lately has been supplanted by forced labor for life. Article 58 qualifies any activity against the Soviet Union and Communism as a crime, no matter whether the offender is or is not a citizen of the Soviet Union. This article is very handy for stamping as "anti-Soviet activity" any action "tending to weaken the Soviet regime". A management mistake, a critical remark made in friendly conversation could be interpreted as weakening of the Soviet regime. There is also no term of limitation. This system enables the Soviet authorities to doom any Soviet citizen and also foreigners for activities in their own countries. Thus the N.K.V.D. designed the Latvian Frontier-Guard Brigade an anti-Soviet organization for its duties had allegedly been the persecution of Communists and spying. A frontier guard admitting that he had been in the employ of Latvian state (which, always had been on friendly terms with the Soviet Union) and that he had carried out the instructions of his superiors, never thought of confessing guilt according to Article 58. The decision incorrigible, always was to be sentenced to death. The Latvian Army, Home Guard organization, and police were also classified as Fascist and counterrevolutionary. Even civilians could not escape the notorious Article 58. The political parties, student fraternities, and youth organizations were all decreed Fascist and counterrevolutionary. They had supported the counterrevolutionary regime of independent Latvia, had resisted international Communism and spread anti‑Communist propaganda ‑all crimes falling under capital punishment. If the accused disavowed any political activity, it was pointed out that he had been a member of a counterrevolutionary organization and had done nothing to check its devious influence and was incorrigible, to be sentenced to death.
The authorities in charge of “political cases" were: the Army Tribunal of the People's Commissariat of State Security; the Baltic War District Tribunal; and the secret criminal colleges of the Latvian S.S.R. Supreme Court and district courts. The N.K.V.D. forces and tribunal were indeed remarkable. The N.K.V.D. troops consisted of selected Communists and played in the Soviet Union a role similar to that of the SS in Germany. The N.K.V.D. had its own army and courts. Court-martials took place in times of peace. The Bolshevik courts seldom bothered to examine witnesses; no records of the sessions were kept; the decisions lacked legal motivation. All the accusations were considered proved by the investigation materials presented by the N.K.V.D., which were regarded, as irrefutable. After the sentence had been announced, the prisoner was notified that he could submit an appeal for clemency within two hours to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. not of the Latvian S.S.R. The innocent victims had lost any sense of legality, justice and logic. They were ruined mentally and physically by the prison regime and methods of investigation. They did not have to write much in the allotted two hours. It was sufficient to confess guilt, to regret the committed „crimes" and to promise to amend. “The will to survive, hope, and faith in a miracle caused everybody to write and they did. There were also some who did not," said a former N.K.V.D. captive speaking of his tribulations. Thus in the result, the N.K.V.D. had usually exhorted a confession and the miserable victim had delivered himself by his own signature to death or forced labor. Those sentenced to death were squeezed in special cages in the Central Prison of Riga that resembled coffins in their narrowness. There they had to wait two or three months for Moscow's answer. What these peaceful citizens (who had never dreamt of violating a law) suffered is difficult to conceive.
The Bolshevik regime however provided for actions, which it did not see fit to cover with even a semblance of legality. By this we mean the deportations. Immediately after the Baltic states were occupied in June 1940, the N.K.V.D. began to draw secret lists of persons to be deported. As materials for these, not only data of the N.K.V.D. files and agencies were used, but also private lists of public enemies which functionaries of the party and militia, and in some cases even the newly created communistic house supervisors, had to submit, thus giving the widest play to diverse attitudes and personal revenge feelings. The final list of deportees for Latvia was prepared by the N.K.V.D. headquarters in Riga and certified by Moscow.
To ensure a smooth progress of the deportation, special directives were issued and thousands of different forms printed by the secret division of the state printing house in Riga. From the carefully projected preparations, extending over a whole year, it can be seen that the deportation was not an emergency measure caused by the impending war, but a planned action fitting into the general occupational policy of the Soviet Union. The Baltic peoples had been found to be inadaptable to the Communist ideas because of their prosperity and historical traditions. They were regarded as an obstacle to be cleared in the path of the Red imperialism to Western Europe. Therefore, they had to be crushed and destroyed politically, military, economically, morally, and finally also physically.
The deportation was executed in all three Baltic states simultaneously in the nights of June 13 to 14, 1941. Already several days before the population had been surprised by large scale requisitions of vehicles which were concentrated in open places of towns and cities. Iron barred freight cars had been prepared in the railway workshops. Though various rumors circulated, nobody anticipated the gruesome truth. "Operative groups" consisting of N.K.V.D. and militia men, guardsmen, and members of the Communist youth organization tore in trucks along the streets after the signal was given. Toward the morning loud raps on the doors awakened many families. The weapons of the human scum busily searching the apartments, throwing everything on the floors, and stamping it with their feet threatened the peaceful citizens, frightened out of sleep. The surprised Latvian families were requested to pack in half an hour, as they were going to be deported to the remotest districts of the Soviet Union. No heed was paid to protests or appeals. Under heavy guard the deportees were conveyed to points of embarkation or "loading" stations, as the instruction literally has it. Suddenly detached from their homes and relatives 30 to 50 deportees were locked in each freight car and left there without food and water for several days. The N.K.V.D. men, the operative groups, and Communist Party members often plundered the abandoned apartments. The climax of inhumanity was reached by the separation of the family heads from their families and placement on different trains. Men were deported to other regions of the Soviet Union than women though no prior reference was made to it. At 2:30 a. m. the leader of the deportation action received a telegram from Moscow containing directions as to where the deportee transports were to be sent. Their final destinations were northern regions of the Soviet Union near the Arctic Circle, Siberia, Turkestan, and the Far East. The trains were strictly guarded, the cars lighted at night. People, some weak, some ill, crowded in closed cars under terrible sanitary conditions without any medical care, were deported from their native country and had to pass many days on the way, while the latticed trains crossed the continent. 661 cattle trucks were provided for the deportation of the inhabitants of Latvia on June 13/14. The deportations continued on a smaller scale till June 27. During the time of deportation 38 trains with thousand cars were sent to the Soviet Union. The press, however, did not carry even the smallest notice just as if nothing had happened.
A total of 16,206 was deported from Latvia on June 14, 1941. Deported were persons engaged in agriculture, trade, commerce and industry including owners, managers and workers. Railroad employees, sailors, drivers, former policemen, former officers and soldiers, clergymen, lawyers, doctors, chemists, professors; writers, and newspaper men were also prominent among the deportees. Thus numerous "counterrevolutionaries" had been found in all trades and professions. The Latvian cultural and economic life was gravely impaired by the deportations. But there were also many deportees who had never been responsible state or municipal employees, or distinguished social workers, had never, and belonged to the armed forces or any political groups. Farmers, laborers, old people, pupils, children, and infants were deported, no child being allowed to stay behind with relatives remaining in Latvia. The enfeebled and sick were also rounded up, several dying of sheer fright before the convoys left Latvian territory.
After the Bolshevik withdrawal the whole deportation scheme was discovered. The deportation of June 14 had been only the first step in the schedule to be followed by two more actions within the next month. The German invasion frustrated these. For the Baltic nations June 14 has become a day of national mourning.
The net results of one year of Red terror in Latvia (June 17, 1940 to July, 1941) were 6,041 accused and imprisoned Latvian nationals, among them 344 women not to speak of the deportees. The Red Army invasion in summer, 1940, delivered from Latvian jails political prisoners the total number, which in all Latvian territory proved to be only 250. From the six thousands detained by the Bolsheviks most were sentenced and deported to forced labor camps in the Arctic, some were killed, and some disappeared, i.e. were deported or killed.
The investigating authorities were able to count 979 persons sentenced to death for political reasons and executed during the year of Soviet rule. Only persons whose death could be established beyond doubt are included in this number During more than twenty years of Latvian independence, by contrast, only a few death sentences had been pronounced, dooming some Communists guilty of commonplace murders. The Reds had adjudged nearly a thousand death sentences condemning among others fifty-four women and one child. What these figures signify is illustrated by A. Ceichners, Latvian economist and statistician, who writes in his book "The Sovietization of Latvia": The "Great Soviet Encyclopedia," Volume 48, (Moscow, 1941) states that Czarist Russia had executed 2,073 persons in the period following the revolution of 1905 (19071909) or about 700 persons a year Russia at that time had 160 million inhabitants. A single year of Soviet rule took a toll of one thousand judicially murdered from the Latvian population of two millions. Besides, no armed uprising had taken place in the country. From the very beginning of the occupation the population was deprived of weapons. About twenty Soviet divisions stationed in the Baltic states constituted the occupation forces. The well to do classes had surrendered their property, the intellectuals worked in Soviet offices and enterprises. Part of the officers and men continued to serve in the army, which had been made an ingredient of the Red Army. No "counterrevolution" was on the way for a rebellion was well nigh impossible. The Bolshevik regime had to be borne in patience and endurance. Therefore, all the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the N.K.V.D. were not directed toward crushing incipient attempts at a "counterrevolution" but were just a mean revenge for the past. The other reason for these outrages was the sensation of extraordinary suspicion and uneasiness the Bolsheviks felt in Latvia. They were quite convinced that the local population would never be friendly disposed toward them and consequently saw everywhere a dangerous "counterrevolution" which they tried to stem by savage reprisals designed to eliminate wide sections of the population. In Czarist Russia, on the other hand, the government had been constantly harassed by repeated attempts on the lives of the governors, ministers, generals, and the nobility. The Bolsheviks arrested and condemned 22,000 men during the year they reigned in Latvia; from these about 16,000 in the night of June 13-14 alone. The government of Czarist Russia in a period of three years in its whole gigantic state condemned the same number. If also those missing, those forcibly evacuated by the retreating Soviet authorities, and those killed in partisan fighting are classified as victims of the Soviet regime the total loss of population adds up to 34,250 or 1.8%. A corresponding percentage of the English population would mean 900,000 victims a year; in the U.S.A. the yearly casualty toll would be 2,700,000.
Summing up A. Ceichners says: "Within a couple of months the Soviet regime murdered 1000 innocent persons who had not resisted its authority (not like the Communists who had formerly incessantly pursued their disintegrating underground activities in Latvia). In a single night the Soviet government arrested 15.000 innocent citizens, deporting them to forced labor camps in Siberia, which meant nothing less than a slow and painful death. Even before this night, the Communists had apprehended 6,000 persons who were also (mostly) sent to Northern Russia or Siberia. And at last, when the Communists were forced to flee the advancing German Army, they took forcibly 12,000 more along with them. The Soviet system was so inhuman and senseless that the overwhelming majority of the people hated it, and also the Soviet government regarded this majority as its enemy and was afraid of it. The Communists felt in Latvia as in an enemy's country, the only foundation of the Soviet power being frightening, torturing, killing and exterminating human beings." The data mentioned in this survey concerning the communist victims, is based on the facts compiled by the Latvian authorities after the expulsion of the Bolsheviks during the period from 1941 to 1944. The Latvian Red Cross, later on “People’s Aid”, assorted that concerning the imprisoned and deported. All the other material was compiled and examined by the Institute of History in Latvia, Department of Social Affairs and the organization "National Guard." The data was compiled by Latvian scientists and publishers and analyzed in the following publications: M. topers, "The horrible year" (Illustrative material), A. Ceichners "Sovietization of Latvia" (economical analysis), O. Freiwalds "The great community of pain" (deportation), Dr. H. Vitols "The Stalin's Empire in the light of truth" (general analysis of bolshevism), J. Kronlins "379 days" (schools), V. Balkans "In the whirl of lies" (press), J. Kalnins "The proof of the accuse" (death sentences). There were essays of less importance. Some other great investigations have not been published. All the books mentioned were published in the Latvian language in Riga. "The Horrible Year" and "The Sovietization of Latvia" have been translated into German. In Lithuanian the compiling and evaluation of the data was performed in the Office for Studies of the Red Terror and in Estonia by the Archives of Present History.
As a result of the activity of the Bolshevistic terror, the Baltic inhabitants felt they were slowly drowning and tried to save themselves by any means possible. For this reason the beginning of the war in the east June 22, 1941 i.e. 2 weeks after the deportation was considered as the greatest relief. The German intrusion, which was to defeat the red army and expel the N.K.V.D., was awaited.
Partisan unions occupied offices, enterprises and strategic centers. The partisan movement turned into an armed people and facilitated the expulsion of the red army from the Baltic territory. Those in authority during the Bolshevistic period saved their lives by fleeing. The national flags were hoisted in the liberated towns; and in the country; the national anthem resounded; the people gathered around the national monuments; thanksgiving church services took place; prisons were opened and the graves of martyrs dug up. The patriots expected that Germany would divide the Red empire and help not only the Baltic states to freedom but also provide for free Karelia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, the Crimea, Caucasus, and Turkestan.
They hoped that a national government would be established in Moscow with its powers limited to Russia proper. They imagined that the annexation of Austria, Sudetenland, Bohemia, and the Polish Corridor could be explained by a wish to create a rounded state comprising all German speaking people. That the German Eastern policy outside its geopolitical sphere would strive to establish a colonial empire to rule over the countless millions inhabiting the East so distant from the German Reich did not appear possible, in spite of all the fervor of the party theorists. Not only a part of the Balts, but also members' of the other peoples suppressed by the Soviet Union thought of joining forces against Bolshevism, in the hope of attaining their liberation from Russia.
The German army in the Baltic states pursued military tasks but the administration of the country was grasped by the Baltic people themselves. The former state and self government offices were voluntarily restored. The leadership of the national movement assigned the former officials of the period of independence returned or new ones. At the beginning the new occupation power had to respect those accomplished facts.
They were rudely awakened by the proclamation of a German Civil Administration in those districts liberated from Bolsheviks where no more fighting was going on. The Civil Administration (Deutsche Zivilverwaltung) proved to be a pyramidal structure of commissars, consisting of party functionaries and subordinated to the Ministry of Eastern Affairs in Berlin. One State Commissar "Reichskommissar" with his seat in Riga was appointed for all of the Baltic states and White Ruthenia. These countries were called "Ostland" a word that expresses a certain ideology and a certain program. The second State Commissar was appointed for Ukraine. The State Commissariats were divided into General Commissariats. The State Commissar in Riga exercised supervision over the General Commissars for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and White Ruthenia (with their seats in the capitals of these countries). The General Commissar supervised the Regional Commissars, whose duty was to care for some districts. A duplicate pyramid of the political and the militarized regular police, and some more departments supplemented the system. The restored national government authorities were subdued to the order of the Civil Administration and were named as the Local Self Government (Die landeseigene Verwaltung.) Its further significance consisted of the defense, of the interests of the country, and the passive resistance against the activities hostile to the people's interests. The peoples' hopes were frustrated in the shortest period possible.
The results of the German Eastern policy were opposite to the logical foresight and political realities. It was based not only on the historical attitude and theories of National Socialism but also on the person of Alfred Rosenberg. But Rosenberg was nobody else but a member of the Baltic German minority from Estonia. Being unable to acquiesce in the recovered Baltic independence after the First World War and the collapse of the German privileges in the free Baltic states, Rosenberg immigrated to Germany and joined Hitler's budding National Socialist party. There, Rosenberg became the prime "philosopher" of the party and wielded a fateful influence on Hitler's opinions, which the latter, once adapted, never changed, but eagerly strove to realize. The Eastern ideology and the Eastern policy of National Socialism did not evolve from the general traditions of the German people but were inspired by an isolated and radical ideological group. Therefore; the attitude of the German occupation power in the East during the Second World War was nothing else than an expression of the mentality and particular strivings of a certain historically ideological group. At once the Baltic peoples recognized infallibly from centuries of experience the well known features of the historical colonizers and conquerors in the outwardly correct faces of the new German rulers. For the mistakes committed the whole German nation had to pay. It is, however, even now only vaguely aware of the true nature of its former leaders' policy in the East. If our article recognizes the brutal mass atrocities and N.K.V.D. activity as the most significant characteristics of the Bolshevik occupation, so is the period of German occupation best denoted by the so-called Eastern policy and of the Civil Administration which was to bring the "Ostpolitiker" by a more subtle route to the same ends the Bolsheviks had tried to achieve by sheer brutality.
Let us first examine the general policy of the Civil Administration which was to last from 1941 to 1945: three and in Courland even four times as long as the first period of the Bolshevik rule.
The Civil Administration brought to Latvia an unheard of empire of bureaucracy with innumerable parallel offices and an abundance of officials never before experienced in Latvia. The Civil Administration tried to settle the different matters by removing them from the jurisdiction of the national administrative organs but was soon lost in a maze of details and its own ignorance of the local situation most often to the detriment of Latvian interests. The Civil Administration severed the competence of the local self administration by introducing the institution of German district commissars. Now the subordinated Latvian authorities had twofold superiors the central Latvian Self Administration authorities in Riga, and the German district commissar on the spot. A system like this could only create but confusion. The decentralization was the more accentuated by the subordination of whole branches of administration directly to the German management. Railways, postal service, broadcasting, trade unions, youth organization all were removed from the jurisdiction of the Self Administration. The greatest difficulties emanated from the subordination of the City of Riga municipality to the sole authority of the District Commissar of Riga Wittrock who soon became the most hated Civil Administration official in Latvia because of his personal qualities and persecution of Latvians. Though a fifth of the population of Latvia inhabits the capital of Riga, Wittrock did not consent to the participation of Latvian administration in matters pertaining to Riga. The secretly cherished plan of the "Ostpolitiker" was to detach this city from the Latvian territory directly incorporating it into Germany.
This system established by the Civil Administration brought about by its confused competencies, cryptic designations, and lack of responsibility, a general public inability to orientate in the simplest procedures. German officials intervened in the most trivial matters, ignorant of the local circumstances and without command of the Latvian language.
The fact that the administrative system was not created at once and according to a certain plan but constantly in a state of reorganization, could only add to the confusion. At the beginning, a so called general director headed each of the departments of the Latvian Self Administration. The council of these general directors was to correspond to the former cabinet of ministers but was superseded by the German Civil Administration whose department chiefs and officials intervened in the work of the separate Self Administration departments, giving direct orders and demanding that their requests be complied with even without the knowledge and consent of the respective Latvian department heads. Various changes in the administrative system as well as in the relations between the Latvian Self Administration and the German Civil Administration continued throughout the German occupation. The Latvian Self Administration was neither able to conduct public affairs successfully nor to defend the interests of the Latvian people.
The administrative chaos was heightened by the tendency of “Ostpolitiker" not to touch the economic system left by the Bolsheviks. This naturally caused bitterness and consternation, for had not National Socialism been initially, regarded as the antithesis of Communism At first it appeared that the Civil Administration did not think of allowing offices and enterprises to assume the names they had used prior to the Bolshevik occupation. New designations, not in keeping with good Latvian usage were assigned according to German will and pleasure. It was explained that the socialization of the landed property was still valid. Trade, industry, and houses also remained socialized. The protestations, that time was needed for a gradual liquidation of the Bolshevik system served only to divert attention, for there was abundant time during the three years of German occupation. It was not used to return property to its lawful owners. It was given to new German administrative units and to organize mysterious G.m.b.H. (Ltd.), which, as the Latvians used to say, stood for "Grab With Both Hands" (Greif mit beiden Handen). What was the legal basis for ceding Latvian property to a private German ,Grundstiick G.m.b.H." Even worse Latvian state and communal property was turned over to private German companies. Thus the great State Electric Appliances Factory was swallowed by the German A. E. G. concern; the Latvian Broadcasting Corporation became "Rundfunkgesellschaft m. b. H."; the gas and electric power plants of the City of Riga were taken over by “Energieversorgung Ostland G. m. b. H."
The Latvians had never recognized the Soviet occupation regime and regarded the order introduced by it as an unlawful and illegitimate act of naked force, to be liquidated in a single day. The Hitler government, although at war with the Soviet Union, used the Bolshevik system to her own advantage. The Latvians felt deceived. Had the Bolsheviks robbed them by socializing all their property, so did the Civil Administration regard this state of affairs as a matter of course and handled the socialized property as its war booty. The Latvian people found themselves landless as hundred years before when serfdom had been abandoned. Under the Communist rule the socialized property had at least theoretically belonged to the Latvian S. S. R. and had been administered by Soviet Latvian organs themselves. Now as war spoils it was suddenly at the disposal of a foreign country and the Latvian people inferred the "Ostpolitiker" already had concrete plans for the use of their estates. It was expected that the socialized land would be distributed to German colonists (the press of the day wrote: where a German soldier dies, once a German cradle will rock), city houses to German immigrants and business to German companies. The war, drawing on Germany's strength, its difficulties mounted. A few overtures toward reestablishment of private ownership were made. Isolated properties were returned by individual acts or general ordinances. The Latvians noted that the Civil Administration did this for the sake of moral advertising. In each community only a few farmers "received" in a solemn act the farms they had continued to manage all the time, from the hands of the District Commissar, who presented them with ostentatious diplomas, in German.
Against the background of such economic policy the tolerance displayed by the Occupation power on many occasions toward Communists and other leftists, appeared most remarkable. The general belief had been that Communism being now supplanted by "Fascism", the Communists, with all their fellow travelers and henchmen, would be subjected to unrelenting persecution, but this was true only for a part of the Communists. Others still occupied public positions and were tolerated even as youth NCO. The evident purpose of this policy was to use, for the ends of the strange power, those men who had lost contact with their own people.
The Jews had to suffer quite different treatment . No matter whether they were Communists or not, whether they had committed a crime or were law abiding citizens, they were assembled in a ghetto marked with yellow stars and finally shot in masses. Collective punishment of a national group, savage murders of innocent persons, old people, women, children and anti-Communist Jews were repulsive to Latvian mentality and national traditions as known by everybody versed in Latvian history and culture. The Latvian public turned away in disgust from such actions. There were Latvians who risked their own lives helping, saving, hiding, and feeding their innocent Jewish acquaintances. The Jewish problem in Latvia was completely removed from the jurisdiction of the Latvian Self-Administration. The German Security Police and the SS handled Latvian citizens of Jewish faith.
The "Ostpolitik" was directed toward the seizure of the administrative and economic machinery and the extermination of the Jews, attempting simultaneously to root out all tokens of the former Latvian state, trying to reduce Latvia to a mere territorial conception lacking national significance.
Soon after the Civil Administration was established the name of Latvia virtually disappeared from press and official parlance. The censure permitted the name of “Latvia" to be used only in compounds as the “General District of Latvia". The General Commissar did not call himself “General Commissar of Latvia" but “General Commissar in Riga." Offices and establishments were said not to be in Latvia but in the "General District of Latvia" or the "former free state of Latvia." The University of Latvia had to change its name to “University in Riga." These newly constructed phrases paid no attention to the rules of the Latvian language Wing the attributive in locative where genitive would have been right. The reaction in such attitude found an outlet in the underground newspaper characteristically named "Latvia". The "Ostpolitik" had proved in its actions that the regime in power was bent on the erasure of the very conception of independent Latvia and her traditions, not only in the immediate war circumstances, but in general. To further these aims the Civil Administration plans provided for a considerable extension of the "Latvian General District" by adding to it Soviet districts inhabited by Russians and White Ruthenians. This policy being consequently followed, the designation "state" was dropped next from official language. The State Library and the State Archive were now called "Land Library" and "Land Archive." Nobody doubted that the Germans did not think of leaving Latvia after the war but contrived to tie it to Germany as a "land" inhabited at the one end by the Latvians and the other by the Russians but ruled by the Germans. The term "National" was also outlawed. The National Opera was baptized "Opera in Riga" (un-Latvian expression) and the National Theatre was given its Bolshevik denomination "Dramatic Theatre" just to avoid saying "National". All these manipulations were crowned by the withdrawal and annihilation of the great Coat of Arms of Latvia.
The Civil Administration as official language in Latvia introduced German. Russian had been introduced in Latvia during the Bolshevik occupation but Russian had been used as a second language, the Russian text being placed under its Latvian equivalent. The use of Russian as an auxiliary language seemed founded on the theory of the federation of peoples within the Union of Republics. The arrogant superimposing of German, even in everyday writing, which had nothing to do with the German authorities, had absolutely no justification. It only served to reveal the German design of the "Ostpolitiker" to absorb Latvia into Germany.
The Civil Administration by strict orders forced the Latvian press and publishing houses to use the original German spelling for all German names used in Latvian texts, contrary to the rules of the phonetic Latvian orthography. This edict was not intended to establish new orthographic principles but was extended by way of exemption only to German names. English and French names could be transcribed phonetically as always. Besides constituting a rude interference in the Latvian cultural life this mode of procedure openly emphasized that the Latvians were to live in shadow and dependence of their German masters. Obviously the widest sections of population felt deeply insulted. Under strong pressure the Civil Administration consented that German names in original spelling should always be placed in parenthesis beside the correctly transcribed Latvian form. Thus, a singular reverence had to be displayed toward German names. It did not suffice to insert the parallel form once but it had to be repeated as often as one and the same German name occurred in the Latvian text. It was not permitted to translate into the Latvian German administrative terms, thus the use of the correct Latvian phrase "State commissar" was prohibited and the German term "Reichskommissar" made obligatory. People whose languages and spelling rules have been formed according to different patterns will regard these happenings irrelevant compared with the bitter war where nations fought for their survival. The fundamental significance of these things, however, is relevant. The way Civil Administration treated the Latvian tongue implied the deprivation of Latvian cultural sovereignty. Latvians did understand this very well and were embittered and inspired to resistance by these ordinances.
But the Civil Administration wanted to speak an even weightier word in Latvia. Just like the Bolsheviks, they withdrew from circulation all Latvian books dealing with Latvian independence or not conforming to the party views or historical ideology. Those familiar with the high standard of the Latvian editions and the influence books exerted on the widest masses will understand what the reaction to this policy was like. How narrow minded the representatives of the Occupation Power were is illustrated by the prohibition of monograph on Jacob, Duke of Courland. who had been of German ancestry. These doctrinaires tried to remind Latvians of the 13th century .crusades and of the Teutonic Knights" Order which in bygone days had tried to deprive the Latvians of Self Government. The Civil Administration functionaries stressed on various occasions that they were now carrying on the work of their ancestors.. Extolled were the historic deeds of the Baltic nobles. Crusaders against Latvian independence during the fights for the liberation of Latvia in 1919 were conspicuously honored. There were some insolent enough to remark that now they had a chance to revenge Latvians for the defeat suffered in 1919. The Civil Administration felt they had a mission to accomplish in the Baltic states, and imagined that the time had arrived to turn back and rectify at the expense of the Latvians the whole course of history. For this purpose spotlights were turned on characteristic moments of former German Latvian conflicts.
The orders of the Civil Administration turned against the scientific research of Latvian history, the teaching of history and the researchers of history and history books had to be taken out of circulation. The activity of the Institute of the History of Latvia was prohibited.. The Latvian historians were released from their work at the University and the Section of History of the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy was closed. The archives and museums of Latvia were not left under the supervision of Self Administration but subordinated to the Civil Administration directly. History and geography of Latvia as separate subjects were struck off the school program.
The climax of this romantic policy was reached by the changing of street names. The Civil Administration had a whole program of changing street names, which most spectacularly was accomplished in Riga. All the major streets of the Latvian capital were given new German, names, the mutilated Latvian translations of which were placed under the German text. Not only the names of Hitler potentates but also those of historical persons whose memory could only produce the greatest indignation and hate in the Latvians were widely used for this purpose. German military leaders of the First World War prominent in fighting Latvian units, experienced a rebirth on the street corners. Latvians were again confronted with the names of their fiercest enemies from the battles for Latvia's liberation in 1919. From the oblivion of archives were raised and dusted names of Baltic German public workers which were never heard before even by their countrymen from Germany proper. At last also pure fantasy had full play and street names were changed just for the sake of a change. Systematically the memory of Latvian writers and patriots of the period of national emancipation was obliterated from the street designations for their strivings in the 19th century had allegedly been directed against the Baltic German minority, diminishing its influence and affecting its privileges in the aristocratic Baltic districts. The names of Latvian statesmen, fighters for freedom and national heroes including the mythical Lacplesis whose name had been used for the Latvian order of merit completely disappeared. If the N.K.V.D. had persecuted living persons without recognizing the principle of limitation, the "Ostpolitiker" embarked on a fight against history. Riga was given an appearance as if Latvians did not live there at all and as if the city had nothing to do with Latvian cultural history and life. All this had the effect of causing a general indignation and serving as an open declaration of German program to be perceived by everybody, and exhibited on every corner. Everybody asked himself what an eventual German victory would bring if already during the uncertain times of war such narrow‑mindedness, intolerance, and hostility were displayed.
The Civil Administration even dared to use the youth for the furtherance of their schemes. The German Work Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) was declared compulsory also for the Latvian youth. It was decreed that only those high school graduates would be admitted to the University of Latvia, who after completing school would have to spend a year in the German work service in Germany. It was emphasized that those who would not enter the work service within a certain number of years would be barred from studying forever. So, in order to be allowed to attend the courses offered by the highest institute of learning their native country had, the Latvian youth had to undergo the German Work Service, toil Germany and learn the German way of thinking. It was also made public that this order would be permanent.
For the decomposition of Latvian integrity served also the devious policy of favoring the minorities of Latvia. This was done to destroy the national unity of Latvia and reduce it to a conglomerate to be disposed easily. Most suitable for these tactics was Latgale, the eastern province of Latvia. Having suffered most in the course of history from denationalization and colonization it had already earlier served as a target for various separatists. Surprisingly, this benevolence was extended to peoples with who Germany was at war, such as the Russians and the Poles. The Latvian Department of Education lost its authority over the minority schools, where subsequently it was forbidden to teach Latvian even if desired. The minorities of Latvia were treated to organizations and manifestations, taboo to the Latvians themselves.
The policy of the Civil Administration left no room to doubt that Germany meant to rule Latvia after the close of the war, and that Latvians were slated to be subordinates in their own country just as they had been under the former Baltic German aristocracy. The "Ostpolitiker" were planning to deprive the Latvians of their cultural and national existence, leaving them bare life for which they were asked to bleed fighting the Bolsheviks.
After the German-Russian war begun in June, and July, 1941, a considerable number of Latvians had the intention to fight Soviet Russia and Bolshevism for the sake of their own country. After the Latvian soil was liberated from the Red Army a wave of enthusiasm swept the country. Active patriots clad in their old Latvian Army, Home Guard or police uniforms, assembled in partisan units. A complete reconstruction of the Latvian armed forces and establishment of a Latvian government were generally awaited. Instead something unexpected, something, incomprehensive to a sane mind occurred. Latvian uniforms, Latvian insignia and even bands in national colors were outlawed. The whole nation was disarmed. Everyone caught in possession of a weapon was punished with dead. Thus even the participants and heroes of the guerrilla fighting were sentenced to die. It may be remarked that the Latvians could not desist from keeping arms because Bolsheviks hiding in the woods of the sparsely inhabited country threatened lonely farms. A special "German Extraordinary Court" was established to take care of the reprisals. It did not differ from the Bolshevik tribunals in its activities and consisted of witless persons.
The German representatives renounced to the cooperation of other nations in the war against bolshevism.
The more the Germans became involved on the Eastern front the more they needed military help. The fighting spirits of the Latvians was generally known. The "Ostpolitiker" did not want to see, however, Latvian military units other, than incorporated in the German Army and clad in German uniforms. The negotiations with the Latvian Self Administration gave no tangible results. Then the German authorities began to recruit the projected Latvian legion by force. It was done by special German draft boards which served individual summons. The Latvian Self-Administration was initially not even notified of the proceeding. At this moment serious national resistance had already began. The Latvian Legion was nevertheless founded as the Red Army once more approached the Latvian frontier. There are many who still remember the grim and sullen faces of then legionaries who, having taken their first oath, marched on the Cathedral Square in Riga behind the German not Latvian banner. Not soldiers marched there but captives going to die for an unknown place Germany was to assign their people after the conclusion of the war. They knew only the realities of the day, they were threatened by German colonization policy, their socialized property was owned by the German state, around them were German officials and German language, they wore the German uniform and before them were the colors of Germany. They had to fight, and they fought bravely, but lacked the symbols and meaning of their sacrifice; the legion was deprived of a moral foundation. It was already undermined by the manner in which the drafting was conducted. Conspicuous was the unusual designation "voluntary" for a legion, although its members had been mobilized under the threat of capital punishment. The mobilization plans provided exemptions for irreplaceable persons in administration and economy. Now a multitude of offices fought to declare their own employees irreplaceable, and a deluge of exemptions ensued. The replaceable, the "less valuable" were drafted. Naturally the landless were not glad to die so that the owners might live. Thus this policy served to cause dissent among the Latvians themselves. When the Red Army had already crossed the Latvian frontiers, the Latvian Self Administration was given the rights to conduct mobilization but only on a limited scale. The Germans did not consent to the formation of National Armed Forces although the German Army proved to be incapable of warding off the new invasion. Estonia, the greatest part of Latvia, and also Lithuania were soon easily lost without anything but skirmishes taking place.
After Riga had been abandoned (Oct. 13. 1944) the German armies and the mass of refugees were trapped in the Courland peninsula as in a fortress encircled by the sea and the Bolsheviks. For a whole year the Fortress of Courland resisted in superhuman gallantry the onslaught of the numerically and materially far superior Red Army. But mistaken are those who think that in sight of these dangers the Occupation Power relaxed its policy toward the Latvians, giving them more rights their own country to enable them to defend it more efficiently. It was just the opposite. The main organs of the Latvian Self Administration were suspended, all the administration was taken over by the party bureaucrats. Behind the front held by the gallant German and Latvian soldiers corruption, debauchery, and arbitrariness were in full swing.
German ships from the harbors of Courland to Germany transported refugees and their belongings. There were no selections and no examinations. Without any exceptions all the old and sick people, children and women were transferred to the other shore and integrated in the German economy and cared for by the Germans. So, many thousands of Latvians saved their lives from the Bolsheviks. These facts should be mentioned far the sake of truth.
Relations between the Germans, and Latvians, however, grew consistently more hostile.
The Fortress of Courland capitulated only on May 8, 1945, when all Germany had already laid down arms. Thus the din of the Second World War ceased also in the territory of Latvia, although the Latvians had hoped that it would not. They had imagined that the German armies had only one chance to avoid deportation and slow death in the slave labor camps to continue fighting under the directions of the Latvian government to be formed. Latvians certainly based their hope on the Atlantic Charter and, relied also on the help of the great Western Nations, as it was the case in 1919, during the fight for liberation. However, also quite practically they could not conceive that the Western states would permit the Baltic states and a part of Central Europe to be seized by the Bolsheviks to the detriment of their own security as it presently appears. These were the reasons why the Latvians, though gravely mistaken, expected Courland to receive at least diplomatic backing against the Soviet Union. It was supposed that there were Allied agreements on the withdrawal of the armies within the boundaries of 1939. A request for aid was made to the British and American representatives, through Stockholm. The undefeated armed forces of Courland could in case of further resistance turn at least a guerrilla army. The refugee masses could have fled under its protection to Sweden to avoid capture by the Red monster. The German High Commander in Courland refused the offer of the secretly formed Latvian National Council representative. The proudest German army set out for a shameful and agonizing captivity; its generals were hanged on public squares.
This was the short sketch of the German Eastern policy in Latvia, fundamentally influenced by a small historically ideological group, which, in the past, had not been able to come to a compromise with the Latvian nation. That this approach would cause resistance, the respective leaders knew only too well from their experience in other countries. The German Security Police contained from the very beginning an extra branch for the repression of the national resistance. This subdivision was appropriately called "Department Resistance Movement." The Latvians could not fight the Occupation Power with all means possible as was the case in the Western countries. A serious impairment of the German forces could only speed the return of the Red Army. Resistance and consequent reprisals nevertheless took place although attempts were made to hush the latter up to avoid widespread agitation. Individual public workers, active patriots, and the youth were the victims of retributions. The methods of the Hitler Security Police are already well known in the West. It did not invent anything new while working in the East, which could surprise after the description of the N.K.V.D. brutalities.
Similar events to those in Latvia occurred during both the occupations also in the other Baltic countries , Estonia and Lithuania.
At first the Baltic states were inundated by the Russian wave. That was rolled away by the German wave, but the German wave rolled away as the unhappy "Eastern Policy" did not understand how the Russian Empire could be defeated.
The Baltic nations in this war, just as in the whole of history , proved its validity in resisting the one as the other occupational power. At the present , after 50 years of repression, they are finally free to live as they choose without fear of being punished by foreign powers.
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