Wiesenthal Center Protests March of Latvia SS Veterans

March 16, 2015

Riga - The Simon Wiesenthal Center has protested the annual march of Latvian SS veterans held in the center of the capital today. The Center was represented by its director for East European Affairs, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who came to Riga specifically for this purpose. In his interviews to numerous local and foreign media outlets Dr. Zuroff stressed the Center's objections to the march:

1. It glorifies people who fought for a victory of the Third Reich, the most genocidal regime in human history.

2. Some of those who served in the Latvian SS had actively participated in the mass murder of Jews before joining the Waffen-SS.

3. The march hailed the veterans as those who paved the way for Latvian independence but the Nazis had no intention of granting Latvia independence.

According to Zuroff:

"This march is the tip of the iceberg of Baltic efforts to rewrite the history of World War II and the Holocaust, to hide the crimes of local Nazi collaborators and try to falsely equate Communist and Nazi crimes."
 
For more information: Dr. Efraim Zuroff  972.50.721.4156   Twitter: @EZuroff,

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400.000 members. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the OAS and the Latin American Parliament.