Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 18.sējums "Holokausts Latvijā

Andrievs Ezergailis
Six Versions of the Holocaust in Latvia
From the years of occupation and domination by German and Soviet empires that for
five decades endeavored to manage their historical memory, Eastern European lands,
unlike countries in the West, have inherited more than one version of the Holocaust. For
Latvia there are at least six variants, which to date show no tendency to amalgamate
or disappear. In retrospect we can see that competing interests – imperial, ethnic, and
ideological – were instrumental in producing these varied and at times contradictory, at
times overlapping, versions of the same event. The forces that shaped the memory of
the Holocaust in Eastern Europe were represented by Germans – Nazi public relations
organs and post-war German judicial agencies; Soviets – their judicial and agitprop
offices; and Jews, the victims who searched to explain the inexplicable. It is perhaps
illustrative of the powerlessness of the post-war ethnic Latvians that over the decades
they did not work out a version of their own. Even after the collapse of the empire, no
distinct Latvian version has emerged as yet. Neither have the “revisionist” or “denial”
variations from America and Germany made any significant inroads among historians
in Latvia.
The six versions are not without overlap and some unifying core elements, yet they
are also quite distinctive, and each has been formed by disparate social and ideological
forces. From an academic point of view, some of these versions are underdeveloped,
repetitively skeletal, and more like folklore than narrative history. The Nazi propaganda
version, for example, did not have sufficient time to evolve. Presently, the six variants still
compete to reconstruct the past and each has seized a part of the public. Both imperial
powers and their successors today have been aware of the adage that the power that
controls the past controls the future; thus, the struggle is ongoing.
Considering the six schools in broad strokes, they fall into two groupings: those
that see the killing of the Jews as a German project and those that consider it to be a
Latvian one, locally generated. The dispute is not about the Latvians (everyone agrees
that they played a role) but rather about the German part in the killings. Unlike the
historical perception in the West, where the German role is not at issue, among the
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