Shall Latvians Perish?AN URGENT APPEAL of the LATVIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL to the CIVILIZED WORLD, September 1948

III. Under the Occupants’ Yoke.

The Government appointed by Moscow hurried to reorganize completely the economic and social life of Latvia. All landed property, factories, banks, commercial enterprises, ships, city houses and funds were nationalized without any compensation.

Parallel to this reorganization there was established in Latvia the Soviet political system and a slave regime with all its cruelties and atrocities.

The first period of Communist dictatorship in Latvia lasted only one year. During this period the registered number of citizens imprisoned, killed and deported to Siberia exceeded 34 000 of the total number of 2 000 000 inhabitants. But as many cases were not recorded or notified to the respective authorities, the actual loss of population in Latvia was considerably higher.

The first to be persecuted were government and public functionaries, the army staff, safety police and the intelligentsia of independent Latvia. Neither the peasantry and workers, nor children and women were spared. This is to be seen from the official documents submitted to the UN General Assembly President by the Latvian, Estonian und Lithuanian representatives on November 24, 1947. Mass reprisals with regard to the local population were started on June 13/14, 1941, when during one night alone there were imprisoned and deported in the most inhuman way for slave labour about 15 000 persons. According to the found NKVD plans they were to be followed by many thousands of other Latvian men, women and children. But the war with Germany, which broke out on June 22, frustrated the Bolshevik plans of extermination.

The first Bolshevik occupation period of Latvia was followed by Nazi German occupation. The Latvian people hoped that after the expulsion of the Bolsheviks they would get a chance to reestablish the independence of Latvia and also the civil rights of which the citizens were deprived by the Bolsheviks. But already the first German decrees proved that these hopes were idle.

The German occupation powers left in force the nationalization decrees issued by the Bolsheviks and they did it with the deliberate purpose to keep the most valuable nationalized property for themselves. All more important enterprises and establishments were taken over by newly created German so11cieties. These were also granted considerable prerogatives as to jurisdiction and taxation.

At the same time the remaining Latvian private firms were suppressed by all possible means. The Nazi intention was to extirpate any enterprise of Latvians, who were even not allowed to call themselves Latvians, renaming them simply as „Einheimische” or natives.

The Latvian farmers felt the burden of occupation still more than the tradesmen and industrialists. They were assessed with exceedingly heavy taxes, duties and compulsory labour, which they could fill only with the utmost strain. For non-fulfilment of these obligations, even partly, the farmers were penalized. They were deprived even of their hereditary property. For the delivered products they were paid ridiculously low prices. By these few examples it is to be seen that all classes of Latvian population were economically and legally reduced to the level of pariahs.

One of the most harmful was the order deporting Latvians to Germany for war work. This affected many thousands. Still more detrimental was the order concerning the conscription of Latvian young men for the so-called Latvian Legion and several other technical units.

In order to hide this flagrant violation of the Hague Convention, which forbids to mobilize the population of occupied countries for military purposes, the conscription was carried out under the guise of volunteering. Actually everything was carried through by force, as it had been with the population of Alsace and Lorraine after the occupation of these French provinces in 1940 when the Germans had carried out there a mobilization, sending the drafted to the Eastern front. The conscripts, who did not appear at the mobilization point or tried to resist anyhow, were imprisoned and court martialled. In such a way there were mobilized men of 28 conscription years and furthermore even youths for anti-aircraft defence.

The question of the restoration of the country's independence annulled by the Bolsheviks was out of discussion with Nazi Germany. As it has been established at the Nuremberg Trials, Rosenberg had planned to move the Baltic people further to the east in order to get free space for German colonization. With the help of the Gestapo and the SD, Nazis stood up against everything reminding of the existence of a Latvian State and were striving to root out every thought of independence the Latvians might have had. Many outstanding Lat12vian politicians, public functionaries and participants of resistance movements had to sustain persecutions. The actions of the occupation power created a powerful underground movement in which in some way or other participated the whole nation. Many were arrested and put into concentration camps. Early in 1945 in the one camp of Stutthof, near Danzig, there were 6500 Latvians of whose final fate, except of a few persons, nothing has been heard since. The total number of imprisoned Latvians, however, was much higher. From the uncomplete nominal rolls which came into the hands of the Allies it is to be seen that in the concentration camps of Western Europe alone there have perished more than 3500 Latvians.

Nazi commissaries of various ranks, SA and SS functionaries did not so much persecute Communists as could be surmised, but mainly Latvian patriotic citizens, particulary the youth.

When in summer 1944 the Eastern front line had reached the Latvian territory, the Commanding Staff of the retreating German Army issued orders as to the devastation of the Latvian country and the evacuation of its inhabitants. This was motivated with military considerations. Masses of refugees were moving from east to south-west of the country, i.e. to districts not touched by war activities, whereby they had to experience all the misery and sufferings that usually afflict innocent people on similar „via dolorosa”.

When the war activities were sweeping more and more over the Latvian territory the German occupation authorities issued orders for the removal of the population to Germany. The transfer to this country was disliked by Latvians. But the mere thought of getting again under the power of Bolsheviks was terrifying, and therefore many looked for the opportunity of escaping to neutral Sweden. Only a small number of the population succeeded in doing this. To leave Latvia by sea — and this was the only way to Sweden — was prohibited under capital punishment. At the sea there were patrolling units of German Navy and Air forces which picked up the refugees and brought them to German concentration camps.

With the retreat of the German Army the second most terrible period of Bolshevik occupation in Latvia began. As already described, during the first period of Bolshevik occupation in 1940/41 the number of killed and deported was high. But since the Red Army broke into 13 Latvia for the second time in 1944/45, the number of victims is increasing rapidly and the annihilation of the Latvian people is going on uninterruptedly affecting ever larger masses of the people, not excluding old men, women and children. Prisons, and various other places of detention are overcrowded to the utmost, as there are steadily arriving floods of new prisoners. The treatment of the prisoners is brutal to the highest degree, and the outsider may scarcely imagine that such things are happening in the middle of the 20th century and morever in the name of „democracy”. In the eastern and northern parts of the country which has been occupied by Soviet Russia in summer and autumn 1944 there has been left a rather small number of men from 16 to 60 years of age according to information which has passed around the iron curtain and arrived here. But the conditions are not better in those districts of Latvia which fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks only after the German capitulation in May 1945, because in these districts all men of the mentioned age were immediately pressed into investigation camps and many of them later sent away in an unknown direction. Women and children were deported as well, and the total number of deported is already running up to several hundreds of thousands. If that will be allowed to take its course, then in a comparatively short time the majority of the Latvian people will perish as victims of the red terror.

Parallel to this the looting and ruining of the Latvian economy is going on. When in June 1940 the Bolsheviks came into Latvia they sent immediately all corn and other vitals, flax, manufactured goods, particularly textiles and footwear, which they found on the spot to Soviet Russia. But the Bolshevik press reported in one voice just the opposite and stated that when the red army had marched into Latvia they found there starving masses and that it was necessary to bring immediately food from Soviet Russia to feed the hungry population.

The Latvian woods are cut down in a hurry and the timber materials are said to be sent for reconstruction of devasted districts in Soviet Russia, although Latvia herself has suffered not to a small extent. According to Soviet Russia's own published figures in Latvia there were destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses.

The rural estates are burdened with exaggerated taxes, duties and compulsory work, which the farmers are not able to 14 fill, but for not filling the imposed duty the farmers are dispossessed and their estates delivered to the „Sovkhoz” or „Kolkhoz”. In such a way there have been created hundreds of collective farms at the expense of the estates of individual farmers, and the former landed proprietors are perishing in slave camps of Soviet Russia.

In the same way the disintegration of the social structure and the bolshevization of schools, churches and the families is being carried out, making these a political instrument for the Soviets. The Soviet power is instructing pastors and priests what and how they have to preach and those of them, who resist, are arrested and deported to arctic regions where they are doomed to perish. The churches have to pay high taxes among which in the first place there stands the room tax. This is computed according to the cubature of the church, and the churches ar closed as soon as the parishes are not able to pay the tax in due course. As to the tax rate, the churches are put on a par with the movies, first class restaurants and night bars. The income tax of the clergyman has been raised by 75% and they are not allowed to engage domestic servants. Parallel to that there are being cultivated and promoted Godless movements. These movements, however, are not popular with the peoples of the Baltic States and are represented mainly by the newly arrived alien elements who are taking up the place of the deported inhabitants. The aliens are provided with personal documents by the Soviet authorities taken from deported Latvians. This is evidently done when due to possible changes in the international situation there might be carried out a plebiscite in the Baltic States. Then those strangers would be claimed to be natives and with their votes there would be once more falsified the actual will of Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians.

The Soviets have invented new methods of liquidating a nation. With a decree they have dissolved all marriages in which one of the consorts is living abroad and refuses to return, while the women compulsory divorced are pressed to marry the racially strange elements brought to Latvia.

If this process of annihilation will not be stopped, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania will be russified within the nearest future but the Baltic Nations themselves exterminated. 15