Latvian Waffen SS veterans and their supporters, including several members of parliament, are set to march in the capital Riga next Wednesday in an event that has become an annual tradition.
At least several members of the rightest All for Latvia party will join the parade, which marks Latvian Legion Day – an unofficial holiday honouring those who fought in the anti-Soviet Latvian Legion – a unit of the Waffen SS, according to reports by the Baltic Course and TASS news agency.
A counter-protest march is also scheduled to be held.
Around 67,000 of Latvia’s prewar population of 70,000 Jews died in the Holocaust.
According to the Baltic Course news website, many Latvians were forced into service in the Legion and “saw the German army as a lesser of two evils.”
“For many of these soldiers, the choice to join the Latvian SS Legion was a result of the brutal Soviet occupation between 1940 and 1941, during which tens of thousands of Latvians were executed or deported to Siberia.
Many soldiers naively believed that, if they helped Germany win the war, Latvia might be rewarded with independence or autonomy,” the site asserted.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Lithuanian ultra-nationalists were also set to march in Vilnius less than a month after a similar parade in the city of Kaunas in which participants screamed slogans in honour of Holocaust collaborators.
