Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 18.sējums "Holokausts Latvijā

32 Konferences “Totalitārie režīmi Baltijā: izpētes rezultāti un problēmas” referāti par holokausta tematiku
skills: in the first year of the Soviet occupation, he was a canvasser of Soviet trade unions;
during the German occupation, he was a murderer of the Jews; and at the beginning of
the second Soviet occupation, he joined the exterminators’ battalion and combated national
partisans. These examples alone present sufficient grounds to reject the traditional
percept – which luckily has been already seriously refuted in scholarly circles – or even
the stereotype of the murderers of Jews as almost exclusively coming from the ranks of
anti-Semitically disposed members of the “Pērkoņkrusts” (Thunder Cross) organization.
3. Thirdly, the history of rescuers of the Jews has become an independent section
of research into the Holocaust history. Museum “Jews in Latvia,” established by Marģeris
Vestermanis, serves as the main and presently also as the only centre of such research;
by 2005, the museum had already established 512 cases of rescuing and hiding of Jews
during the German occupation. Regretfully, not all attempts at rescuing Jews resulted in
saved lives: the German occupation was long-lasting (in Kurzeme region, almost four years),
the Germans’ obsession with total and universal extermination of the Jews was absolute
and was not shaken even by the approach of the irreversible defeat; moreover, the betrayal
of rescuers was not infrequent. At least 472 residents of the occupied Latvia, who were
people of different ethnic and social backgrounds, have to-date been identified as rescuers
of Jews; altogether they saved approximately 400 Jews. Almost every museum of regional
history is now involved in the identification of the rescuers of the Jews; the destiny of the
rescuers comes into the focus of increasing interest of public at large – among journalists
and publicists, on involving TV and in films. Latvia becomes acquainted with previously
completely obscure names, such as railroad worker from Kārsava Antons Barkāns, his
wife Helēna and their seven-year-old daughter Valentīna – this family saved three Jews
from Kārsava: Judīte Zilbere, Ļevs Ūdems, and Soņa Minkina; the Matusevičs family of
Polish origin from Rēzekne, on their turn, saved Haims and Jaša Izraelits. Rescuers are
gradually becoming a part of our historical memory. There is a reason to hope that in the
very near future a monument to the rescuers of Jews in Latvia will be erected on the site
of the former Choral Synagogue on Gogoļa street in Riga.