A March through central Riga by SS veterans has drawn strong condemnation from Russian and Jewish organisations. Yesterday's demonstration, sanctioned by the Latvian government, was ostensibly one in which the dead of all wars were commemorated, but it was officially set to mark the anniversary of a Latvian SS victory in the second World War.
The participants were almost entirely SS veterans, their families and supporters. Dressed in civilian clothes and wearing no German medals or insignias, the veterans marched peacefully through the streets of Riga's Hanseatic old town to lay flowers at a freedom monument.
A similar march last year drew fierce worldwide condemnation and an official note of regret from the German government. Nevertheless nationalists, convinced that soldiers in the notorious Latvian SS Legion were fighting for independence rather than for the Third Reich, went ahead with the march. Local Russians have reacted with dismay to such events including the building of a monument to the SS in a Soviet army graveyard.
Old differences have also been opened between ethnic Latvians. While many thousands of Latvians served as volunteers and conscripts in the second World War, the Latvian Rifle Brigade of the Red Army was the most effective force in bringing the communists to power in the Russian Civil War. The Latvian Prime Minister, Mr Vilis Kristopans, whose father served in the legion, said it was a mistake.
"I believe that this March 16th date was a very unsuccessful choice to commemorate Latvian soldiers," he said.
A spokesman in Jerusalem for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre attacked the march as "an insult to the victims of the Holocaust". The "stubborn insistence" of the legionnaires was, the statement said, an indication that many Latvians had still not internalised the lessons of the second World War. All but 5 per cent of Latvia's 70,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
