1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910299792503321

Autore

Plavnieks Richards Olafs

Titolo

Nazi Collaborators on Trial during the Cold War : Viktors Arājs and the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police / / by Richards Plavnieks

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2018

ISBN

3-319-57672-0

Edizione

[1st ed. 2018.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XVI, 297 p.)

Collana

The Holocaust and its Contexts

Disciplina

940.53

Soggetti

World War, 1939-1945

Russia—History

Europe, Eastern—History

Europe—History—1492-

World politics

Crime—Sociological aspects

History of World War II and the Holocaust

Russian, Soviet, and East European History

History of Modern Europe

Political History

Crime and Society

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction: The Latvian Auxiliary Security Police and Cold War Justice -- 2. Wartime Latvia: Viktors Arajs, Hell's Plowman -- 3. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Justice behind Propaganda -- 4. West Germany: The Pursuit, Prosecution and Punishment of 'The Chief' Himself -- 5. East Germany: An Elaborately Squandered Opportunity -- 6. The United States: Perjury, the Public, and the Passport -- 7. Conclusion: Justice for Some, the Truth for All of Us.

Sommario/riassunto

This book is a study of the legal reckoning with the crimes of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police and its political dimensions in the Soviet Union, West and East Germany, and the United States in the context of the Cold War. Decades of work by prosecutors have



established the facts of Latvian collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. No group made a deeper mark in the annals of atrocity than the men of the so-called 'Arajs Kommando' and their leader, Viktors Arājs, who killed tens of thousands of Jews on Latvian soil and participated in every aspect of the 'Holocaust by Bullets.'   This study also has significance for coming to terms with Latvia’s encounter with Nazism – a process that was stunted and distorted by Latvia’s domination by the USSR until 1991. Examining the country’s most notorious killers, their fates on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and contemporary Latvians’ responses in different political contexts, this volume is a record of the earliest phases of this process, which must now continue and to which this book contributes.