The Jewish Community of Estonia protested the unveiling of a plaque honouring a Waffen SS officer.
A non-profit unveiled the plaque in the town of Mustla for the local Nazi collaborator Alfons Rebane, who fought with the Germans against the Soviet Union as part of the Waffen SS.
Across Eastern Europe, collaborators with the Nazis, including perpetrators of the Holocaust, are celebrated as heroes, as a result of their fight against Soviet occupation.
There is no evidence that Rabane was involved in the murder of Jews, Alla Jakobson, the chairperson for the Jewish Community of Estonia, the country’s EJC affiliate, told JTA. But men who served in “an organisation recognised as a criminal by the Nuremberg International Tribunal,” she said of the SS, “is hardly worthy of commemoration.”
