The Murder of the Jews in Latvia

The Murder of the Jews in Latvia
Author: Bernhard Press
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780810117297

A challenging account of the systematic and brutal slaughter of Jews in Latvia during the Second World War.

The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944

The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944
Author: Andrew Ezergailis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 496
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN:

A history of the Holocaust in Latvia, focusing on the question of the involvement of Latvians in its implementation. Contends that extant historiography on the Holocaust in Latvia has been greatly influenced by Soviet publications, which tend to vilify the Baltic and Ukrainian peoples. Examination of documents and witnesses' accounts shows that there were no "spontaneous killing actions" on the part of Latvians during the occupation - the killing was initiated and basically perpetrated by the Nazis, mainly by Einsatzgruppe A. Before the war, traditional antisemitism was prevalent in Latvia, but not modern racist theories. The regime of Ulmanis (1934-40) was not antisemitic. The main antisemitic organization in prewar Latvia, Perkonkrusts, supplied mainly writers, not killers. Dwells on the Arajs commando, created by the Nazis in 1941, which killed tens of thousands of Jews in Latvia, Russia, and Belarus. The contribution of the Latvian auxiliary police to the Holocaust was smaller. Describes the extermination of Jews in Riga, Liepaja, Daugavpils, Rezekne, Ventspils, and other places (in some of which ghettos were established) and Nazi camps in Latvia - Kaiserwald, Salaspils, and others.

The 'Final Solution' in Riga

The 'Final Solution' in Riga
Author: Andrej Angrick
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857456016

"With its ... over thousand] detailed and expansive footnotes drawing on twenty-four different archive collections in eight countries and three continents and an enormous secondary literature, this is one of the best researched regional studies of the Holocaust ever to appear. It is helped by the fact that the authors are also always so cognizant of what was happening elsewhere in Europe at the same time and thus frequently draw out the relationship between seemingly haphazard local decisions and trends across Europe...Indeed, the way in which the book 'makes sense' of complex institutional behavior is at times breathtaking...The precision in the detail and the scope of the contextualization make this one of the more important works to appear on the Holocaust in recent years." - English Historical Review "This very readable and well documented study fills an important gap in the Holocaust literature: it offers insight into the microcosm reflecting the entire terrifying and murderous scenario of the SS State." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung " This] excellent study of the Riga ghetto, informed by Eastern European sources and available now in English translation, provides a precise and ghastly description of what the liquidation] meant for the local Jews. With laudable thoroughness, they describe the organized shooting of Jews, the first form of industrial-scale mass murder." - The New York Review of Books Ghetto, forced labor camp, concentration camp: All of the elements of the National Socialists' policies of annihilation were to be found in Riga. This first analysis of the Riga ghetto and the nearby camps of Salaspils and Jungfernhof addresses all aspects of German occupation policy during the Second World War. Drawing upon a broad array of sources that includes previously inaccessible Soviet archives, postwar criminal investigations, and trial records of alleged perpetrators, and the records of the Society of Survivors of the Riga Ghetto, the authors have produced an in-depth study of the Riga ghetto that never loses sight of the Latvian capital's place within the overall design of Nazi policy and the all-of-Europe dimension of the Holocaust. Andrej Angrick, a native of Berlin, is a historian, consultant, and researcher affiliated with the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture. He has published numerous articles about the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and co-edited Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (1999) and Die Gestapo nach 1945: Karrieren, Konflikte, Konstruktionen (with Klaus-Michael Mallmann, 2009), as well as Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der s dlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943 (2003). Peter Klein, a Berlin-based historian, consultant, and researcher affiliated with the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture, has published widely on the Holocaust and German occupation in various parts of central and eastern Europe during the Second World War. Klein was the editor of Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/1942 (1997) and a co-editor of Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (1999). He is the author of "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" (2009). Ray Brandon is a freelance translator, historian, and researcher based in Berlin. A former editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, English Edition, he is co-editor, with Wendy Lower, of The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization.

Latvia in World War II

Latvia in World War II
Author: Valdis O. Lumans
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780823226276

Valdis Lumans provides an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive account of one of the most complex, and conflicted, arenas of the Second World War. Struggling against both Germany and the Soviet Union, Latvia emerged as an independent nation state after the First World War. In 1940, the Soviets occupied neutral Latvia, deporting or executing more than 30,000 Latvians before the Nazis invaded in 1941 and installed a puppet regime. The Red Army expelled the Germans in 1944 and reincorporated Latvia as a Soviet Republic. By the end of the war, an estimated 180,000 Latvians fled to the West. The Soviets would deport at least another 100,000. Drawing on a wide range of sources--many brought together here for the first time--Lumans synthesizes political, military, social, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history. He moves carefully through traditional sources, many of them partisan, to scholarship emerging since the end of the Cold War, to confront such issues as political loyalties, military collaboration, resistance, capitulation, the Soviet occupation, anti-Semitism, and the Latvian role in the Holocaust.

The Case for Latvia

The Case for Latvia
Author: Jukka Rislakki
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9042024240

What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: "Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917", "Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family", "Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941", "Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia", "The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . ." True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.

Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust

Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust
Author: Edward Anders
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9984993183

Edward Anders, son of Adolf Alperovitch (1897-1941) and Erika Sheftelovitch-Meiran (1895-1992), was born in 1926 in Libau, Latvia. He immigrated to the United States in 1949. He married Joan Fleming in 1955. They had two children.

Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust

Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust
Author: John-Paul Himka
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2021-09-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3838215486

One quarter of all Holocaust victims lived on the territory that now forms Ukraine, yet the Holocaust there has not received due attention. This book delineates the participation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed force, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armiia—UPA), in the destruction of the Jewish population of Ukraine under German occupation in 1941–44. The extent of OUN and UPA’s culpability in the Holocaust has been a controversial issue in Ukraine and within the Ukrainian diaspora as well as in Jewish communities and Israel. Occasionally, the controversy has broken into the press of North America, the EU, and Israel. Triangulating sources from Jewish survivors, Soviet investigations, German documentation, documents produced by OUN itself, and memoirs of OUN activists, it has been possible to establish that: OUN militias were key actors in the anti-Jewish violence of summer 1941; OUN recruited for and infiltrated police formations that provided indispensable manpower for the Germans' mobile killing units; and in 1943, thousands of these policemen deserted from German service to join the OUN-led nationalist insurgency, during which UPA killed Jews who had managed to survive the major liquidations of 1942.

Past for the Eyes

Past for the Eyes
Author: Oksana Sarkisova
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 6155211434

How do museums and cinema shape the image of the Communist past in today’s Central and Eastern Europe? This volume is the first systematic analysis of how visual techniques are used to understand and put into context the former regimes. After history “ended” in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, museums and other memorials mushroomed all over the region. These efforts tried both to explain the meaning of this lost history, as well as to shape public opinion on their society’s shared post-war heritage. Museums and films made political use of recollections of the recent past, and employed selected museum, memorial, and media tools and tactics to make its political intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from scholars around the region take a fresh look at the subject as they address the strategies of fashioning popular perceptions of the recent past.

The World Reacts to the Holocaust

The World Reacts to the Holocaust
Author: David S. Wyman
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 1022
Release: 1996-09-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801849695

Among the issues examined are the extent of the human destruction, the degree of collaboration, Jewish reactions, and efforts to save the Jews.

Eavesdropping on Hell

Eavesdropping on Hell
Author: Robert J. Hanyok
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0486481271

This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.