MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov) - The politically correct European Union is deep in thought, as it decides whether or not to accept Turkey, which still does not want to recognize the genocide of the Armenian people.
EuroNews recently showed an empty Bundestag hall, where twenty or thirty people listened to one of their colleagues. The other parliamentarians evidently cared neither about the genocide, which to some extent resembled the Holocaust, nor the lack of repentance on the part of the Turks, even though the Germans themselves sincerely confessed the acts of Nazi Germany and many of them, even the young, still have a feeling of historical guilt. What can be said about the other European countries, where the issue depends solely on the respective strengths of the Armenian and Turkish lobbies?
It is not for me to advise Europe about who it should admit to its club, but, as the example of the Baltic states shows, a wish to grow and expand often plays a malicious joke on EU officials. Europeans who survived Nazism are unlikely to take any pleasure from the openly pro-Nazi actions by a number of political leaders in the Baltic States. For instance, the ceremonial marches by former Baltic SS members and, on the contrary, the arrests of young people trying to stop those disgraceful episodes. And all this is happening a few days before the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Victory in Europe.
The EU accepted the Baltic states without thinking too much about their former collaborationism, when hundreds of thousands of their residents serving in SS punitive detachments and Nazi police committed innumerable evil deeds wearing Nazi uniforms. Before those countries joined the EU, no one thought about making the Baltic collaborators confess to their annihilation of Jews in Vilnius, execution of Soviet prisoners of war and torture of Baltic anti-fascists. More's the pity.
On the first day the Nazis appeared in the Baltics, numerous people who wished to make short work of the local population joined police and Nazi military detachments. Baltic residents later volunteered for regular Wehrmacht units and the SS, which played a direct role in the hostilities against the Red Army. When Baltic politicians say today that this was all motivated by a desire to defend their countries' independence, they are bluffing. The Nazi leadership never promised the Baltic states anything more than a protectorate like Bohemia and Moravia. The only exception is Lithuania, the only of the three Baltic states, where no SS legions were formed. In the opinion of the Nazis, "Lithuanians appeared to be a weak nation not worthy of carrying arms."
Latvians and Estonians, on the contrary, were praised and won many iron crosses from the SS command. Latvian and Estonian SS members loyally served Berlin, unafraid of bloodying their hands. There are grim statistics illustrating this. Not to bore readers with details, I will cite only the figures pertaining to one spring mobilization. From March to August 1943, 22,500 people joined the Latvian SS alone and 12,700 more people went to serve the Wehrmacht. The number of Latvian police battalions also increased. They and not the Germans (the numerical strength of the German troops in Latvia at that time did not exceed 15,000) maintained "order." In other words, the collaborators watched over themselves, over the ghettos and the death camps, and fought the local partisan movement.
Naturally, there was a resistance in the Baltic states as well. Not every Latvian was a collaborator. During the 1943 conscription that was mentioned above, 6,000 people avoided serving in the SS and Wehrmacht, fled or joined the partisans.
Alfred Rosenberg, the former Reich Minister for Eastern Occupied Territories in Nazi Germany, who originated from a Baltic country, tried to prove cynically at the Nuremberg Trials that the "anti-Semitic movement was only a protection measure." Therefore, not a single Jew remained in Vilnius, even though they had been in the majority there prior to the outbreak of WWII.
Evidently, current Latvian politicians have the same reasoning when they refuse to grant citizenship to the Russians living in this Baltic State: "This is only a protection measure."
Friedrich Jekeln, who headed the SS and police in the Ostland, admitted in cold blood at a trial in Riga that the local SS had committed mass killings, for which he was executed in former Riga's Jewish Ghetto.
Rosenberg and Jekeln got what they deserved, but collaborationism in the Baltic States has survived, and now it mocks the victors in that terrible war. EU human rights champions, where are you? The virus of collaborationism in the Baltic States awakened long ago.
But Europe prefers not to interfere. Indeed, Armenians, Jews, Russians and Baltic anti-fascists were exterminated last millennium. It's time to forget about it.
But we remember. Like it was yesterday.
