War crimes trials in Soviet Estonia: Difference between revisions

An Estonian war crimes trial was held in 1961 by Soviet authorities in the Soviet-occupied Estonia for Estonians who had collaborated in the execution of the Holocaust in Estonia. The accused were charged with murdering up to 5000 German Jews near the Kalevi-Liiva concentration camp in 1942. The public show trial by the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR was held in the Estonia Theatre and attended by a mass audience. All three defendants were convicted and sentenced to death, two of them were executed shortly after.

• Ain-Ervin Mere, commander of the Nazi occupation era Estonian Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei), was tried in absentia. Before the trial he was an active member of the Estonian community in England, contributing to Estonian language publications.^{[citation needed]} At the time of the trial he was however held in captivity, accused of murder. He was never deported^[1] and died a free man in England in 1969.
• Ralf Gerrets, the deputy commandant at the Jagala/Kalevi-Liiva camp
• Jaan Viik, (Jan Wijk, Ian Viik) was singled out for prosecution out of the hundreds of Estonian police for his particular brutality.^[2] He was testified as throwing small children into the air and shooting them. He did not deny the charge.
• A fourth accused, camp commandant, Alexander Laak was discovered in Canada but committed suicide in his garage.

"The accused Mere, Gerrets and Viik actively participated in crimes and mass killings that were perpetrated by the Nazi invaders on the territory of the Estonian SSR. In accordance with the Fascist racial theory, the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst were instructed to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies. For that end in August-September 1941 Mere and his collaborators set up a death camp at Jagala, 30 km from Tallinn. Mere put Alexander Laak in charge of the camp; Ralf Gerrets was appointed his deputy. On 5 September 1942 a train with approximately 1,500 Czechoslovak citizens arrived to the Raasiku railway station. Mere, Laak and Gerrets personally selected who of them should be executed and who should be moved to the Jagala death camp. More than 1,000 people, mostly children, the old, and the infirm, were translocated to a wasteland at Kalevi-Liiva where they were monstrously executed in a special pit. In mid-September the second troop train with 1,500 prisoners arrived to the railway station from Germany. Mere, Laak, and Gerrets selected another thousand victims that were condemned by them to extermination. This group of prisoners, which included nursing women and their new-born babies, were transported to Kalevi-Liiva where they were killed. In March 1943 the personnel of the Kalevi-Liiva camp executed about fifty Gypsies, half of which were under 5 years of age. Also were executed 60 Gypsy children of school age..."

Quoted from the verdict passed on 11 March 1961, published in Немецко-фашистская оккупация в Эстонии. 1941-1944. Tallinn, 1963. Pages 53-54.

The Jews from Theresienstadt and Berlin arrived at the railway station at Raasiku after a five day trip. According to testimony by one of the accussed, Gerretts, eight busloads of Estonian auxiliary police had arrived from Tallinn^{[citation needed]}. A selection process was supervised by Ain Mere, chief of Sicherheitspolizei in Estonia; able bodied men were sent to work on the oil shale mines at Kalevi-Liiva. Women, children, and old people were sent by bus to an execution site near the camp. Later the police^{[citation needed]} would execute the Jews by machine gun fire. On the first day a total of 900 people were murdered in this way^{[citation needed]}. Gerrets told that he had fired a pistol at a victim who was still making noises in the pile of bodies. ^{[citation needed]}

The whole operation was carried out by Estonians. The only German present was Obersturmführer H. Bergmann.^{[citation needed]}

In January 1962 another trial was held in Tartu. Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas and Ervin Viks were accused of murdering 12,000 civilians in the Tartu concentration camp. They were sentenced to the capital punishment. According to the official Soviet record of the trials, "the main culprit, Ervin Viks, fled the ire of the people and now lives in Australia, whereas Linnas found shelter in the USA".^[3] The Soviet authorities demanded both criminals to be put on trial, but were flatly refused.^[3] In 1986 Linnas was finally deported to the USSR, after a federal appeals court had deemed evidence against him "overwhelming and largely uncontroverted."^[4] The American judge remarked that his crimes "were such as to offend the decency of any civilized society."^[4] Linnas died in a Soviet prison hospital on account of his advanced age.

Inline

General

• De dödsdömda vittnar Template:Sv icon
• Estonian policemen stand trial for war crimes - Video footage at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Extermination of the Gypsies in Estonia during World War II: Popular Images and Official Policies
• Jägala laager ja juutide hukkamine Kalevi-Liival - Eesti Päevaleht March 30, 2006 Template:Et icon
• Omakaitse omakohus - JERUUSALEMMA SÕNUMID Template:Et icon
• Phase II: The German occupation of Estonia in 1941–1944

• The Holocaust and the concentration camps in Estonia Template:De icon English translation