Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 18.sējums "Holokausts Latvijā

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Pētījumi par holokausta problēmām Latvijā
reintroduced a nebulous concept “pogrom” and a nebulous motive – “revenge” for killing
Jews.
The polyglot nations of East Europe were treated as if they comprised a homogeneous
and uniform subgroup of humanity. Thus, by sophistry and misuse of words,
the Nazis obtained three goals: deposit a phony story in the public square, divert the
world’s attention, at least for one year from their project to kill Jews, and assuage the
sensibilities of German public. From a historian’s point of view, the public relations
version is underdeveloped – it lacks contiguity, a narrated beginning, exposition, and a
conclusion. Everything is proclaimed and nothing is analyzed or argued. Its plausibility
is obtained by disconnected glosses and “eye-witness” testimonials mostly of Nazi
provenance. The testimonials related scenes of extreme brutality, mob action where
the killing was done by a primitive mob without orders, organization, or structure.
A documentation of a causal chain, such as some German historians insist for proving
the existence of the Führer Befehl, is completely missing,
We can extract the nutshell of the Nazi propaganda version from Hitler’s conversation
with Croatian Marshall Kvaternik. At the very beginning of the killings, July 22,
1941, Hitler received the foreign visitor in an official state visit. Present were Foreign
Affairs Reichsminister Ribbentrop and Generalfeldmarshal Keitel. The conversation in
reality was a Hitler monologue:
The mighty Mongolia is pressing towards us. The old school books knew nothing
about racial science, and therefore, there was no clarity about Russia’s racial
composition. The proof from the POWs shows that today 70 to 80% of Russians
are Mongols. They are short in body stature; among them there are some Slavs
and few members of other races. The Marshal interjected that the situation now
is much different than during the War. Then the army was made up of Russian
peasants. They were destroyed by the Bolsheviks, the Führer said. The way it
was done we know from the Lithuanian experience. On the second day when they
[Soviets] entered there, in order to cleanse them, they ordered all shopkeepers
to assemble on the street at 7 o’clock in the morning. Automatic weapons were
positioned on street corners with which all of the people were killed; then the
Jewish commissars took over the shops. Jews are the plague of mankind.
Therefore, now the Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians are wreaking bloody
revenge on them. The Soviets deported children from these countries; it is to be
noted and made clear that they did the same thing in their own regions. When
Jews have free hand, as it was in the Soviet paradise, the Jews carry out the
craziest plans. That is how Russia became the plague of mankind. 3
Soon thereafter, the premises of Hitler’s conversation became the mantra of
Nazi officialdom within the Baltic and the Reich offices. Upon appointment as the