Latvian Beehive denounced as a monument to Nazis

In early 2021, Lev Golinkin, neither journalist nor historian, published "Nazi collaborator monuments in Latvia"[1] as part of his series "The Nazi Collaborator Monument Project" in The Forward.

Golinkin featured every monument in Latvia to the Latvian Legion, plus Zedelgem's Latvian Beehive, alleging the Legion was "a formation in the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the Nazi party responsible for, among other crimes, the Holocaust," leading the reader to believe the Latvian Beehive was monument to military Latvian Nazi party members responsible for the mass murder of Jews and other war crimes. Activists and politicians picked up on Golinkin's purported exposé, igniting an Internet uproar and political firestorm. Particular wrath was directed at the Latvian Beehive in Zedelgem. Imagine the scandal: a monument to Nazis in Belgium, administrative home of the European Union!

This site is one of commemoration, not polemics. However, remaining silent could be taken as tacit admission the uproar and indignation were justified.

What motivates the Zedelgem administration when it erects a monument in memory of the Nazis? Do they themselves understand why the Latvian Nazis ended up in Zedelgem? They came to see the city? Or admire the restored mills? Eat fries in a local cafe? Are you serious? This is not a memorial to the victims, not a memorial to the victims of the occupation, this is a memorial to the soldiers of the Waffen SS, the military wing of the Nazi regime. — deputy of the Workers' Party of Belgium Tom De Meester

Ultimately a closed commission of fifteen international experts[2] was convened, which recommended removal from its public square. Parties involved with the formulation or erection of the memorial were not included in deliberations.

This incident illustrates the degree to which misconceptions regarding and vilification of the Latvian Legion are rampant. Afterwards, Martiņš Kaprāns, one of the Latvian appointees to the monument commission, stated:

Western European historians were obviously clueless ["obviously had completely foggy conceptions"] regarding the Latvian Legion. And, had we not been present, then it is possible the [commission's] report would have been far more radical regarding the most painful issues of Latvian history. [our translation]

How politicized did the Latvian Beehive become? Even the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the Belgians:

Though declaring rejection of the ideas of Nazism, neo-Nazism and hate ideology, Belgium follows the line of the EU and abstains from voting in the UN General Assembly on the resolution "Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" [a Russian initiative co-opting the anti-Nazism movement to denounce anything contrary to "the USSR liberated eastern Europe" as Nazism] annually adopted at the initiative of Russia and its other co-sponsors.

At the same time, occasional manifestations of Nazism and racism are recorded in Belgium. Thus, a notorious event occurred in September 2018, when a monument in honour of Latvian Waffen SS legionnaires was erected in Zedelgem (West Flanders) on the site of a former British POW camp where Latvian SS members were held after World War II (this was done in cooperation with the Latvian "Museum of the Occupation of Latvia"). In response to the complaint filed by activists of the Belgian Federation of Russian-speaking Organizations to the municipal authorities, mayor Annick Vermeulen said that the monument had been installed to honor the "historical ties" between this Belgian town and Latvia, to "keep the memory of former legionnaires just as human beings" and to "promote Modern Art."

Latvian Beehive portrayal in the press

As you read through various articles, a consistent theme in accusations against the Latvian Legion is that anyone wearing a German uniform was complicit in the Holocaust. And even if they weren't complicit, to commemorate anyone in a German uniform, especially the "SS" uniform, is a morally reprehensible glorification of Nazism. As if Latvians chose the uniform. These accounts conflate:

• police at the Rīga Central Prison under Roberts Štiglics and related collaborator units subordinated to Franz Walter Stahlecker, the architect of the Holocaust in Latvia, and
• Sicherheitsdienst (SD) units such as Arājs Kommando, also subordinated to Stahlecker;

and

• police battalions which performed asset protection and border/frontier patrolling unrelated to the Holocaust; many volunteered immediately after the Nazi invasion to guard against the return of infiltrators; volunteers had to commit to a minimum of a year of service, with severe consequences for desertion; and
• the Rekrutierungsreserve (recruiting reserve) established immediately after the Nazi occupation took in volunteers for a gun to pursue the retreating Soviets, who had occupied Latvia for a year and had mass-deported thousands of Latvians of all ethnic groups a mere week before the Nazi invasion; these "police" battalions served as combat units on the Eastern Front under the Wehrmacht with no involvement in the Holocaust;
• the Latvian Legion, formed in 1943 from those units already at the front, and subsequently enlarged via conscripts. In actuality, the Nazis had been conscripting Latvians since February 1942.

Holocaust scholar Andrew Ezergailis has documented that contrary to popular perception, a small minority of Latvian police battalions were Holocaust collaborators.

Annotated links to press reports follow.

• Uldis Neiburgs: Problems of the Latvian Legion in the Shadow of the Zedelgem Monument — A brief overview of the controversy with additional links.
• An honourable monument to freedom – Why the Zedelgem Beehive should stay — The Daugavas Vanagi (Hawks of the River Daugava) response to the monument controversy. Daugavas Vanagi are the self-help welfare group the Legionnaires founded in Zedelgem.
• DE ERFENIS VAN HET BRITSE KRIJGSGEVANGENKAMP OP DE SITE VLOETHEMVELD (The Legacy of the British POW Camp on the Vloethemveld Site) — A comprehensive article (Google Translate works well). Unfortunately, it also contends:

  However, a significant proportion of the Legion's recruits had previously belonged to units of the Sicherheitsdienst (SS Security Service) and Ordnungspolizei (German Order Police) police battalions, which committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the murder of tens of thousands of Latvian and German Jews in Latvia and of civilians in parts of the occupied Soviet Union.

  This fails to distinguish collaborators from non-collaborators. Again, the vast majority of police battalions were not Holocaust collaborators. (Soviet show trials further complicate the picture. For example, multiple officers of the 18th Police Battalion were tried and executed for killing all the Jews in Slonim, Belorussia, yet the battalion did not exist when the Nazis documented the Germans themselves committed most of the killings. Nor was the battalion in Slonim when Soviet authorities allege. One of the executed was in a hospital at the time. However, scholars report on the the crimes of the 18th Police Battalion as convicted.) After the Holocaust swept through Latvia, collaborators did not form the core of the Legion — based on the false assumption they had served their purpose; rather, they were redeployed westward into Belorussia and reportedly even as far as Poland. Legionnaires were well aware of these collaborators and despised them them as "cowardly rats."
• Flanders to take down ‘inappropriate’ monument to SS collaborators — The Brussels Times headline says it all: "monument to SS collaborators". The article references an article in De Standaard, following.
• Gemeente Zedelgem verwijdert omstreden oorlogsmonument na internationaal advies (Municipality of Zedelgem removes controversial war monument after international advice) — The article describes the Latvian Beehive as a monument to collaborators who served in the Waffen-SS and clouds the issue by injecting the Flemish Waffen-SS.
• Zedelgem eert 12.000 Letse collaborateurs (Zedelgem honors 12,000 Latvian collaborators) — An earlier article referencing an earlier exposé: "A month ago, the magazine Paris Match Belgique established the link between those 12,000 and the Waffen SS, the Nazi political shock troops. During the war the Latvians are said to have been guilty of crimes against humanity and have cooperated in the persecution of the Jews." Link follows.
• Enquête exclusive: Des SS lettons commémorés en Flandre (Exclusive investigation: Latvian SS commemorated in Flanders) — This is the cover page to a long investigative piece, link follows. Note the use of "Latvian SS." It is also notable for quoting Efraim Zuroff: that the monument is "a terrible mistake that insults the Allied soldiers who fought the Nazis, as well as the millions of innocent victims of the Third Reich." Yet Zuroff attested on television in 2012 that the Latvian Legion played no role in the Holocaust.
• «Ruche» de Zedelgem, Des SS lettons commémorés en Flandre (“Beehive” of Zedelgem, Latvian SS Commemorated in Flanders) — The investigation is heavy in denouncements.

  Wilfred Burie is bitter: "I would have hoped for a little more lucidity and civic sense on the part of our leaders. Each time there are elections, they lament the progress of the extreme right, but at the same time I must note that we tolerate the presence of such a monument which trivializes the participation of individuals to a Nazi criminal organization."

  Roland Binet continues: "A few years after my first stay, it led me to come back to Riga. I wanted to observe this 'Legionnaires' Day' with my own eyes: believe me, this celebration, these flags, these nationalist songs, it sends shivers down your spine. When I saw this, I was amazed. But I was far from imagining that one day a monument would be erected to celebrate these same Waffen-SS in Belgium!"

  Binet has been railing against Latvians at defendinghistory.com and elsewhere since denouncing the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in 2010. Like Golinkin, Binet is neither a historian or sociologist. He is a flautist.

  The article goes on to contend: "In Latvia too, the question of the SS Legionnaires is debated. Each time these sentimentalists parade, counter-demonstrators seek to make their disapproval heard in the name of the memory of the victims of Nazism." The article fails to mention the primary driver behind these counter-demonstrations is Josef Koren's Kremlin-funded Latvia Without Nazism branch of World Without Nazism (of which Koren is also a member). Kremlin-staged demonstrations continue to attract swelling ranks of onlookers and press at the annual Latvian Legion Day of Remembrance held in Rīga, drawing both legitimate anti-Holocaust activists and genuine neo-Nazis, both believing the propaganda that the purpose of the remembrance is to glorify Nazism, turning a once solemn, reverent event into an international media circus.

  The article eventually observes "Ultimately, according to a certain Latvian national narrative, these SS Legionnaires are no longer considered as collaborators of the Nazis but as heroes of anti-Sovietism, "freedom fighters" who faced the Red Army in the struggle for their national independence," note "certain" and "SS" with no qualifier, and then grants Kremlin propaganda the last word as an equally valid opinion: "This Latvian reading of the facts is disputed by numbers of Russian historians who have highlighted war crimes committed against civilian populations by Latvian legionnaires in Russia and Belarus. In this vein, the Russian Federation published in 2004 a memorandum entitled “Involvement of the Lettish SS Legion in War Crimes in 1941-1945 and the Attempts to Revise the Verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal in Latvia”. That 2004 document cited is anti-Latvian Kremlin propaganda rife with lies. A response to that document from Latvian historians is available at archive.org: The Volunteer SS Legion in Latvia, by Inesis Feldmanis and Kārlis Kangeris.

  To provide an academic perspective, the investigation devotes considerable space to a paper contending commemorating the Latvian Legion glorifies Nazism. Its author states:

  Joining the SS in 1943 was very significant when this criminal organization had been at work in Latvia, in plain sight, since 1941. — Dr. Leanid Kazyrytski

  While initially constituted of earlier volunteers, the Legion was largely conscripted, it was created illegally under Nazi military occupation, and served as combat units under the Wehrmacht — wholly unrelated to Franz Wilhelm Stahlecker's elite German Nazi SS and Latvian SD units. Those refusing conscription were sent to labor camps, to the front line to dig trenches, or were shot. Kazyrytski's statement that Latvians (freely!) joined the "SS" confirms his bias. Kazyrytski is also mistaken to contend everyone was aware ("in plain sight") of what the Nazis were doing. Even the police escorting Jews to Rumbula — where Germans shot 25,000 dead over the course of two days — were told they were taking Jews to the railway station to be transported out of Latvia. In the countryside, there was little awareness. The prior Soviet occupation had already taught the lesson: People disappear. If you don't want to disappear yourself, don't ask about it.

Who do we commemorate in Zedelgem?

We commemorate those whose bravery and sacrifice Latvians have commemorated annually for seventy-three years, since 1952. There should be no controversy regarding the role of the Latvian Legion during WWII. Unfortunately, the most public annual commemoration of the Legion, in Latvia, is now portrayed in the press as a battleground of anti-Nazi activists versus neo-Nazis.

After WWI, a defeated Germany was supported in its war against the Bolsheviks, who had occupied virtually all of Latvia. Germans held only a small small southwest corner. When Latvia declared independence, November 18, 1918, Latvians held not a spec of their ancestral homeland, and the just-declared provisional Latvian government was ensconced on a boat, the Saratov, in the port of Liepāja, protected by British frigates. Collaborating with the Germans, the Latvians eventually drove out the Bolsheviks — and then drove out the Germans to achieve independence, as enshrined in Latvian Legion song. Legionnaires hoped the Legion would become the core of a new Latvian Army at the end of the war.

Research has revealed that of the 11,700 to 12,000 Latvians held in Zedelgem, 69 appear to be confirmed Holocaust collaborators. So, who and what does the Latvian Beehive intend to commemorate? The roughly half-percent of POWs who collaborated, or the more than 99% who regardless of conscription or volunteerism wore their only loyalty, the Latvian flag, under their uniforms, and whose only hope was to repeat the miracle of Latvian independence a generation earlier?

It is grotesque to contend that honoring a majority of virtually all also unequivocally honors collaborators. By that logic, it is immoral for Americans to honor its Vietnam War veterans because that would honor perpetrators of the Mỹ Lai massacre.

Golinkin's baseless attack and its viral spread underscores the need to redouble efforts to commemorate the Legionnaires who passed through Zedelgem and dispel the lies told about the Legion, thereby honor their dream of Latvia's freedom restored.