Wiesenthal Center’s Chief Nazi-Hunter Responds to Criticism by Latvian Foreign Minister in Relation to Recent Riga March of Latvian SS Veterans

March 22, 2010

Jerusalem-The chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, responded today to the attack leveled by recently-resigned Latvian Foreign Minister Maris Reikstins against his comments denouncing the march of Latvian-SS Legion veterans held last week in the Latvian capital. In a statement issued here, Zuroff categorized Reikstins’ comments in which he asserted that all the victims of World War II suffered equally as “an outrageous revisionist rewriting of history which erases all distinctions between perpetrator criminals and innocent victims.”

According to Zuroff:

“It is countries like Latvia, which attempt to cover up the complicity of their nationals in the crimes of the Holocaust, which are seeking to rewrite European history by creating false symmetries between Communist and Nazi crimes. The time has come for Latvia and its Baltic neighbors to stop trying to deflect and/or minimize local participation in the mass murder of the Jews during World War II and to desist from trying to equate Communist crimes with the Holocaust. Such efforts are not only an insult to the Nazis’ victims but dishonor those who suffered under Communism as well.”

For more information call 00-972-50-7214156