| Tallinn honors the memory of the “liberators” from the SS Estonia, which, apparently, will be the first of the former Soviet republics to join the European Union, is experiencing a period of creeping rehabilitation of the Nazis. In the central park of Pärnu there is a bronze bas-relief - a soldier in the uniform of the 20th Estonian SS Division (formed on the orders of Hitler and under the patronage of Himmler), an MP 40 machine gun at the ready, the barrel pointing to the east, the SS sign on the helmet is bashfully erased. The author of the idea for the monument, Leo Tammiksaar, believes that the SS symbol should be restored.
The opening ceremony of the monument is scheduled for next weekend, among the guests is the speaker of the Estonian parliament Toomas Savi. The bas-relief was built with funds from Estonian Nazi veterans; plans are to transform it into a 4-meter-tall soldier made of bronze. Initially, they tried to install the monument at the Alevi cemetery - defenders of ancient monuments opposed it. Then an alternative location next to the monument to the deportees on the Riga Highway was rejected - local authorities decided that this was an inappropriate place for a person in a punitive uniform and with a machine gun at the ready.
The inscription on the bas-relief is amazing: “To all Estonian soldiers who died in the Second War of Liberation for the Motherland and for the freedom of Europe in 1940-1945.” “Freedom of Europe from whom?” - the question arises. The percentage of Holocaust victims in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is the highest in Europe. In Estonia, almost all the Jews who did not have time to leave with the retreating Red Army were exterminated. The operations in Estonia “were especially carefully prepared and carried out in the shortest possible time,” SS-Brigadeführer Stahlecker reported to Berlin. The city of Pärnu became notorious for burning Jewish children alive.
The head of the Jerusalem bureau of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Ephraim Zuroff, provided Tallinn with a list of Estonians of the 36th police battalion involved in the execution of 2,500 Jews in the Belarusian city of Novogrudok in 1942 (according to Zuroff, “from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, police units were sent to Belarus, Poland and other regions where they participated in the executions of Jews"). In the days of the appearance of the bas-relief in Pärnu, the Estonian security police KAPO reported, according to Interfax, that they did not find war criminals on Zuroff’s list. In Estonia, the Wiesenthal Center is running a new project, “Last Chance,” which offers a $10,000 reward for information about a Nazi that leads to a lawsuit, conviction, and prison. Member of the Estonian Parliament Igmar Fyuk called Zuroff’s method “creepy.” “Is it ethical to persecute frail old people?” - Estonian media wonder.
The children of the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych, Yuri and Maria, as well as a number of UPA veterans, refuse to accept the title “Hero of Ukraine,” INTERFAX reports. They reported this in an open letter distributed in Lvov. They call the main reason for the refusal that “the current Ukrainian authorities do not recognize the justice of the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people.” The authors of the letter emphasize that the title “Hero of Ukraine” was inherited from the former USSR and is compromised by the fact that “it is awarded to various anti-Ukrainian elements.” On July 11, the Lviv Regional Council appealed to the country’s leadership with a request to posthumously award Yevgeny Konovalets, Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera the title “Hero of Ukraine” in connection with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the UPA. Andrey ZLOBIN |
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