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Latvia Dedicates SS Veterans’ Cemetery
EFL....How NOT to celebrate Rosh Hashanah
The ceremony to open the common cemetery of Latvian legionaries - Nazi SS veterans - is taking place in Latvia today. The solemn ceremony started at midday, local time, it was broadcast on the national television and radio. Former legionaries, their relatives and Hitler fan club members followers are to take part in the ceremony together with a lot of Latvian politicians and leaders of Latvia’s largest religious confessions. Three military orchestras of the Latvian Defense Ministry will be playing at the ceremony. "The whole Latvia will see that monument to disgrace an old sanctuary has appeared in the country," chairman of the National Warriors Association Nikolay Romanovskis said.
Note to Nikolay....these guys weren’t warriors. Shouldn’t you have really gone somewhere else that day? And taken the military bands with you?
It is very hard to be unbiased about the current events in Latvia.
Gotta agree with them on that.
Of course, one may recollect that SS divisions had not been formed only in Latvia. Nazis attracted the French, the Dutch, the Croatians. However, the attitude to SS members was the same for all countries after the war was over - people despised them. Monuments or memorials in honor of SS members have never been opened or unveiled in any country of West Europe. At times, SS veterans organize demonstrations in Germany, although the German government has always tried to stand aloof from marching elderly men, who were lucky to avoid a Soviet, an English, a French or an American bullet. In addition, the German police had to take a lot of efforts not to let antifascists beat SS veterans on such demonstrations. In Latvia, SS veterans are referred to as the military men, who defended their fatherland from the Soviet invasion.
Well, ok, they helped round up Jews and some other undesirables, and maybe worked as camp guards, and tortured some of the camp inmates on the way to the gas chambers.....but they REALLY didn’t like the Soviets, so we won’t hold those little "indiscretions" against them.....
Latvia has recently held the referendum devoted to the country’s membership in the EU. The majority of Latvians supported the idea - they already imagine themselves the "residents of the joint European space." One may only congratulate Brussels: the European Union will have the country that praises Nazis’ "deeds."
Posted by: Baba Yaga 2003-09-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19206