Waffen SS Vets Parade Through Riga, Latvia, March 16, 2010

One can hardly believe that headline, but it is true. About 350 old men surrounded by 2,000 supporters and the red and white flags of Latvia marched in the Legionnaires' Day parade. It commemorates a battle in 1943 between two Latvian divisions of the Waffen SS against the Red Army, which the Latvians won. After a church service, the veterans headed to the Freedom and Fatherland monument where they laid flowers and Waffen SS memorabilia.

Although the city council tried to ban the march and the counter-protest this year, a local court overturned the ban at the last minute. Oddly, the march would never have taken place in Germany. By and large, this journal supports the rights of even the most extreme political factions to peacefully make their case. At the same time, having Nazi jackboots walk through a European capital 65 years after the war is emotionally difficult to accept. It is even harder to understand how these men can remain proud of what they did.

One of them, 86-year-old Visvaldis Lacis, said he and his compatriots had fought along side the Nazis to free their country. They could not join the regular German army, only the Waffen SS "legions." This was the case for all conquered countries. Mr. Lacis told Tony Paterson of the Independent, "The Germans and Russians invaded Latvia for centuries and incorporated us into our empires. We chose the lesser of two evils because during the German occupation, the Germans killed or deported 18,000 Latvians, whereas the Russians killed or deported 300,000. Were we not right to make such a choice?" Except the Waffen SS was involved in fighting partisans, which almost certainly meant mass executions. Perhaps, they did not know it when they started, but to be proud of it after the fact is shocking.

Latvia has a large ethnic Russian population which sees things quite differently. Nils Usakovs, Riga's ethnic Russian Mayor, said, "They say they were fighting for a free Latvia. But it's obvious this fight was always doomed. It is a bit difficult to claim to be a hero if you were fighting for the Nazis." One might amend that with the words, "or for Stalin."

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, remarked, "With all my sympathy for the victims of Communism, the crimes of Communism are simply not the same as the Holocaust. Part of this is fuelled by a desire to deflect attention away from the extensive collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War. They thought they were fighting for Latvia but the real beneficiary of these men's service and bravery was Nazi Germany." Quite.

There is, however, some good news in all of this. Eventually, there will be no more living veterans of the Latvian wing of the Waffen SS. There will be no one to march. One hopes that the younger generations of Latvians will look forward rather than back and that they let this awkward period in their history fade away.

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