It is very rare,
if not unprecedented, for an American ambassador to write
an op-ed
piece in a local newspaper severely criticizing the country
he is serving in for failing to take sufficient measures
to prosecute local Nazi war criminals, but that is precisely
what
Joseph De Thomas, U.S. ambassador to Estonia, did in late
May this year. In a pointed op-ed piece which appeared on
May 28
in the Estonian daily Eesti Paevaleht, Ambassador De Thomas
took his host country to task for its failure to adequately
deal with three major issues relating to the Holocaust and
suggested the following practical steps to help remedy the
situation. In his words, Estonia had to “Do justice where
justice is needed,” i.e. take a proactive stance on the
prosecution of Estonian Nazi war criminals, not a single one
of whom had been brought to trial since Estonia obtained its
independence from the Soviet Union (as opposed to Communist
criminals many of whom have been brought to trial); “Recognize
the Holocaust is part of Estonia’s history,” i.e.
observe Yom Hashoa in a dignified and significant manner and
mark all the sites in the country in which the crimes of the
Holocaust were committed; and “Teach our children about
the past,” i.e. make sure that the subject of the Holocaust
is adequately covered in Estonian textbooks, which as far
as Ambassador De Thomas understood is not currently the case.
The article by Ambassador De Thomas aroused a flood of angry
responses from Estonian officials, local journalists and irate
Estonian citizens, practically all of whom defended their country’s
record in dealing with Holocaust issues. Some pointed out that
Estonian textbooks have more than a page and a half on the
Holocaust, as Ambassador De Thomas alleged, while others responded
that his focus on the prosecution of Nazi, rather than Communist,
criminals constituted a discriminatory application of justice
which was a violation of Estonia’s constitution (not
to mention American principles of law). And then there were
the accusations made by prominent columnist Eerik-Niiles Kross,
son of the famous Estonian novelist Jaan Kross and former director
of the Estonian Secret Service, who had the audacity to suggest
that if Estonians have not rushed to cherish the memory of
Estonian Jews who perished during the German occupation it
was primarily dire to the “ridiculous exaggerations of
Efraim Zuroff [regarding the complicity of Estonians in the
crime of the Holocaust]
and the activities of Estonian Jews in the Soviet destroyer battalions [KGB operatives
who took harsh measures against thousands of Estonian citizens, among them hundreds
of Jews, in 1941 and after World War II].” In short, the Estonian response
was essentially one of denial, especially in regard to the issue of the prosecution
of Estonian Nazi war criminals.
As someone who has followed this issue closely for many years
and has actively sought to bring Estonian Nazi war criminals
to justice, I think that Ambassador De Thomas’ article
not only accurately reflected the Estonian reality, but focused
on the heart of the problem – the refusal of Estonians
to fully acknowledge and internalize the fact that numerous
Estonians participated in the crimes of the Holocaust. And
although the amnesia regarding the role played by local collaborators
in implementing the Final Solution is endemic throughout the
Baltics, the situation in Estonia is particularly difficult
for several reasons. The first is the extremely small size
of the prewar local Jewish community which only numbered approximately
four thousand five hundred Jews. The second is the fact that
close to eighty percent of Estonian Jewry succeeded in escaping
to the Soviet interior before the Nazis arrived in the country,
leaving behind only about one thousand local Jews in Estonia
while it was under Nazi occupation. The third factor is that
numerically speaking far more foreign Jews were murdered in
Estonia than local Jews, which makes identification and/or
sympathy with the victims, as well as assuming responsibility
to punish the perpetrators, more difficult. The last factor
is that many of the crimes committed against Jews by Estonian
police battalions, both inside Estonia but especially outside
the country (in Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania) were virtually
unknown to the Estonian public which only recently found out
that they had transpired.
All of these factors led many Estonians to believe that unlike
their Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Latvia, who have been
forced to deal with the issue of local collaboration with the
Nazis from the moment they obtained their independence, that
question was virtually irrelevant in Estonia. The historic
facts, however, clearly prove otherwise, as has been unequivocally
demonstrated by the findings of the International Commission
for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity established
by Estonian President Lemart Meri in 1998 to investigate the
crimes committed during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of
Estonia. According to the summary findings of the commission
which were released in January 2001, numerous Estonians bear
at least a share of the responsibility for:
1. |
the murder of virtually
all the Estonian Jews who were living in the country when
it was occupied by the Nazis; |
2. |
the murder of approximately
3,000 Jews deported in 1942 from the Theresienstadt Ghetto
to the Jagala labor camp who were killed at Kalevi-Liiva; |
3. |
the murder of thousands of
Jews deported to the Vaivara camp complex who were killed
prior to the Russian advance into Estonia; |
4. |
the persecution and/or murder
of thousands of Jews in Estonia, Belarus, Poland and Lithuania
by members of the Estonian Legion and various Estonian
police battalions. |
Yet neither these events themselves nor their revelation by
the commission have ever been translated into practical legal
action against a single Estonian Holocaust perpetrator (living
in the country or abroad) during more than a decade which has
passed since Estonia regained its independence. In fact, throughout
this period, the Estonian authorities have failed to launch
a single such investigation on their our initiative. In this
regard, Estonians like to point to the numerous prosecutions
of local Nazi collaborators carried out by the Soviet authorities
immediately after World War II and well into the early seventies,
which ostensibly rid the country of any and all unprosecuted
Holocaust perpetrators.
The fact remains, however, that Estonia could have taken legal
action against numerous Nazi war criminals since it obtained
independence, but there was no political will to do so. The
most blatant examples of Estonia’s failure to take action
against Estonian Nazi war criminals are the cases of Evald
Mikson and Harri Mannil, both of whom escaped overseas during
World War II and were discovered living in Iceland and Venezuela
respectively. Mikson had been the leader of the Omakaitse (a
group of Estonian nationalists who volunteered for security
tasks and served as vigilante squads during the initial weeks
following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Baltics) in the
Vonnu district and later served as Deputy Chief of the Estonian
Political Police in the Tallinn-Harju district. In both capacities,
he actively participated in the persecution and murder of numerous
civilians, primarily Jews. Mannil served under Mikson in Tallinn
and was an active participant in the arrest of many civilians
who were subsequently murdered by the Estonian police.
Rather than actively seek the extradition of these two criminals,
the Estonian authorities initially chose to provide support
for Mikson and to ignore Mannil. Thus, for example, after Mikson’s
presence in Reykjavik was exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
which demanded that Iceland take action against him, the Estonian
Foreign Ministry published a communiqué claiming that
Mikson “was not guilty of any crimes, and least of all
against the Jewish people,” and accused Soviet officials
of trying to frame him, despite the existence in the Estonian
archives of highly –incriminating documents clearly proving
Mikson’s involvement in serious crimes.
In Mannil’s case, it was only after the Wiesenthal Center
submitted an official request for his case to be investigated
by the Estonian authorities that such a step was finally taken
last year. In that regard, the fact that Mannil is reputedly
not only the world’s richest Estonian but also a very
generous contributor to local cultural institutions undoubtedly
reinforced the general reluctance of the Estonian authorities
to actively pursue the cases of Estonian Nazi war criminals.
(Such reluctance, it should be noted, has never been the case
in Estonia as far as Communist criminals are concerned, many
of whom have already been put on trial.)
Following the revelations last year by the International Commission
of the participation of members of the 36th Estonian Police
Battalion in the murder of approximately 2,500 Jews on August
7, 1942 in Nowogrudok, Poland and the active involvement of
Estonian Police Battalions in genocide and crimes against humanity
in Estonia, Poland and Lithuania, I urged Prime Minister Mart
Laar to establish a special unit to investigates Estonian Nazi
war criminals. To my surprise, Laar responded by informing
me that such a unit had already been set up in the framework
of the Security Police. Under such circumstances, one would
imagine that for the first time, Estonia would initiate investigations
of Estonian Nazi war criminals which might result in prosecutions.
Yet almost a year later, not a single such investigation has
been launched and we can only hope that some action will be
taken so that at least a few of those Estonian murderers who
committed the crimes of the Shoa will indeed be held accountable
for their crimes. And this is precisely why Ambassador De Thomas’ article
was not only accurate in this regard, but was long overdue
and badly needed by a society in deep denial of the complicity
of its nationals in the Holocaust.
|