| Lettonia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Founded | 1870, reestblished 1989 Tartu University |
| Type | Literary and fencing |
| Scope | Local |
| Motto | Vitam, salutem, veritatem (Life, prosperity, truth) |
| Symbol | Rapier |
| Chapters | 1 |
| Members | 400 collegiate |
| Headquarters | Rūpniečias iela 4a Riga LV-1010 Latvia |
| Website | lettonia |
Lettonia is a Latvian student fraternity, called a corporation in Latvia. It is the oldest active student fraternity in the country. [1]
Students at Tartu University established the fraternity Tērbata Latvian in 1870. [2] [3] Its name changed to Fraternitas Lettonica on December 3, 1881. [2] Its current name, Lettonia, was adopted on February 20, 1882, when the government allowed the ethic-Latvian fraternity to incorporate. [2] [4] It expanded to the University of Latvia. [5]
In this era, activities included cultural activities, oratory, singing, and festival banquets. [4] Membership was limited to ethnic Latvians; Jews, Russians, and Germans were not allowed to join. [3] A modern historian notes that this was consistent with Latvia at the time—unwelcoming to those who were not of its own. [3]
Members of Lettonia fought for their country during World War I. [2] During the occupation of Latvia, the fraternity ceased its operations. [2] Some members were imprisoned while others managed to emigrate to safety. [2] Before World War II, there were an estimated 500 members still in Latvia. [2] At least seven members were early Nazi collaborators under the leadership of Lettonia member Viktors Arājs. [3] [2] Arājs set up Nazi recruitment tables in front of the Lettonia headquarters. [3] The Lettonia presence was common enough amongst the Latvian–German collaborators that the Jews of the Riga ghetto called their guards "Arājsen Burschen" or "Arājs's fraternity brothers". [3] However, more than half of the Lettonia membership had left Latvia by the end of the war. [2]
In 1989, Latvia was again free and the restored country's statutes were adopted on May 18, 1989. [2] Rector J. Zakis approved the restoration of Lettonia to the country's colleges on July 4, 1989. [2] Lettonia accepted its first class of new members in the fall of 1989. [2] In 2020, it had around 150 (Latvian : pusotrs simts) with about 250 members living outside Latvia. [1]
The fraternity's name was selected based on the Latin version of their country's name. [3]
Its motto is "vitam, salutem, veritatem" or "Life, prosperity, truth". [1] The rapier is its symbol, representing masculinity and courage. [1]
The fraternity holds literary evenings which are designed to expand its members' knowledge of topics such as art, history, literature, and science. [1] and fencing. [1] Fencing is also an important activity, included to help members to overcome fear and develop heroism. [1]
Rudolf Lange was a German SS functionary and police official during the Nazi era. With the invasion of the Soviet Union, he served in Einsatzgruppe A before becoming a commander in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and all RSHA personnel in Riga, Latvia. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned, and was largely responsible for implementing the murder of Latvia's Jewish population during the Holocaust.
The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II but collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war. Hence, this article does not cover former members of the NSDAP and their fates after the war.
Einsatzgruppen were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The Einsatzgruppen had an integral role in the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish question" in territories conquered by Nazi Germany, and were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, including members of the Catholic priesthood. Almost all of the people they murdered were civilians, beginning with the intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political commissars, Jews, and Romani people, as well as actual or alleged partisans throughout Eastern Europe.
Pērkonkrusts was a Latvian ultranationalist, anti-German, anti-Slavic, and antisemitic political party founded in 1933 by Gustavs Celmiņš, borrowing elements of German nationalism—but being unsympathetic to Nazism at the time—and Italian Fascism. It was outlawed in 1934, its leadership arrested, and Celmiņš eventually exiled in 1937. Still-imprisoned members were persecuted under the first Soviet occupation; some collaborated with subsequently invading Nazi Germany forces in perpetrating the Holocaust. Pērkonkrusts continued to exist in some form until 1944, when Celmiņš, who had initially returned to work in the occupying German administration, was imprisoned.
Karl Rudolf Werner Best was a German jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer, Nazi Party leader, and theoretician from Darmstadt. He was the first chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, and initiated a registry of all Jews in Germany. As a deputy of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, he organized the World War II SS-Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary death squads that carried out mass-murder in Nazi-occupied territories.
The ArajsKommando, led by SS commander and Nazi collaborator Viktors Arājs, was a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police subordinated to the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD). It was a notorious killing unit during the Holocaust.
Herberts Albert Cukurs was a Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator. He served as the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist unit that carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews during the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial, the accounts of multiple Holocaust survivors, including Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to personally supervising and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for the duration of the German occupation of Latvia. His crimes included shooting Jewish children and babies in captivity, burning Jews alive, and sexually assaulting Jewish women.
The military occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany was completed on July 10, 1941, by Germany's armed forces. Initially, the territory of Latvia was under the military administration of Army Group North, but on 25 July 1941, Latvia was incorporated as Generalbezirk Lettland, subordinated to Reichskommissariat Ostland, an administrative subdivision of Nazi Germany. Anyone not racially acceptable or who opposed the German occupation, as well as those who had cooperated with the Soviet Union, were killed or sent to concentration camps in accordance with the Nazi Generalplan Ost.
After the occupation of Latvia by the USSR in June 1940, much of the previous Latvian army was disbanded and many of its soldiers and officers were arrested and imprisoned or executed. The following year Nazi Germany occupied Latvia during the offensive of Army Group North. The German Einsatzgruppen were aided by a group known as Arajs Kommando in the killing of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust. Latvian soldiers fought on both sides of the conflict against their will, and in 1943 180,000 Latvian men were drafted into the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS and other German auxiliary forces.
The Latvian Legion was a formation of the Nazi German Waffen-SS during World War II. Created in 1943, it consisted primarily of ethnic Latvian personnel. The legion consisted of two divisions of the Waffen-SS: the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, and the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. The 15th Division was administratively subordinated to the VI SS Corps, but operationally it was in reserve or at the disposal of the XXXXIII Army Corps, 16th Army, Army Group North. The 19th Division held out in the Courland Pocket until May 1945, the close of World War II, when it was among the last of Nazi Germany's forces to surrender.
In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion." Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops they believed would liberate their countries from colonization. The Danish, Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease and bargain with the invaders in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies.
Responsibility for the Holocaust is the subject of an ongoing historical debate that has spanned several decades. The debate about the origins of the Holocaust is known as functionalism versus intentionalism. Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf Hitler planned the extermination of the Jewish people as early as 1918, and personally oversaw its execution. However, functionalists such as Raul Hilberg argue that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives that were taken by bureaucrats in response to other policy failures. To a large degree, the debate has been settled by acknowledgement of both centralized planning and decentralized attitudes and choices.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states were under military occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. Initially, many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians considered the Germans liberators from the Soviet Union.
Konrāds Kalējs was a Latvian soldier who was a Nazi collaborator and an alleged war criminal during World War II. He gained notoriety for evading calls for his prosecution across four countries, more than once under the threat of deportation.
The Rumbula massacre is a collective term for incidents on November 30 and December 8, 1941, in which about 25,000 Jews were murdered in or on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during World War II. Except for the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps. About 24,000 of the victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto and approximately 1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by train. The Rumbula massacre was carried out by the Nazi Einsatzgruppe A with the help of local collaborators of the Arajs Kommando, with support from other such Latvian auxiliaries. In charge of the operation was Höherer SS und Polizeiführer Friedrich Jeckeln, who had previously overseen similar massacres in Ukraine. Rudolf Lange, who later participated in the Wannsee Conference, also took part in organizing the massacre. Some of the accusations against Latvian Herberts Cukurs are related to the clearing of the Riga Ghetto by the Arajs Kommando. The Rumbula killings, together with many others, formed the basis of the post-World War II Einsatzgruppen trial where a number of Einsatzgruppen commanders were found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Viktors Arājs was a Latvian/Baltic German collaborator and Nazi SS SD officer who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arajs Kommando. The Arajs Kommando murdered about half of Latvia's Jews.
The Holocaust in Belarus refers to the systematic extermination of Jews living in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic during its occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II. It is estimated that roughly 800,000 Belarusian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. However, other estimates place the number of Jews killed between 500,000 and 550,000.
The Holocaust in Latvia refers to the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany and collaborators victimizing Jews during the occupation of Latvia. From 1941 to 1944, around 70,000 Jews were murdered, approximately three-quarters of the pre-war total of 93,000. In addition, thousands of German and Austrian Jews were deported to the Riga Ghetto.
Fraternitas Lataviensis is a student organization, known as a Corporation, which differs from American fraternities. Its goals as formulated in 1939: “To gather under our flag students from the University of Latvia, to raise in tradition and garner national and cultural unity as good citizens and public figures, to consciously hone responsibility within community, honour the mind, togetherness and friendship and tactful social values, to encourage towards knowledge and art, as well as Sporting activities encouraging members' physical development.”
Wartime collaboration occurred in every country occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, including the Baltic states. The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, first invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in summer 1940, were later occupied by Germany in summer 1941 and incorporated, together with parts of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of the U.S.S.R., into Reichskommissariat Ostland. Collaborators with Germany participated in the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, as well as in the Holocaust, both in and outside of the Baltic States. This collaboration was done through formal Waffen-SS divisions and police battalions, as well as through spontaneous acts during the opening of the war.
