Now yet another person has in Estonia been charged with genocide and assault against the civilian population. Vello Paltmann, 79, is accused of deporting four families in 1949.
Last year the cousin of the former president Meri, also faced a similar prosecution. The man, Arnold Meri, 88, fought the Nazis and became a prominent official in the Communist Party during the decades of Soviet occupation in the Baltic. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Of course, I do agree, that anybody who has been involved in such hideous crimes should be punished for their evil deeds, however it do put a shimmer of hypocrisy over the Estonian authorities, that they, not until now, 17 years after the independence from Soviet Union, finds these people, and that they at the same time have not filed any charges against any Estonian suspected of having committed genocide against the Jews and other “unwanted” people, killed in camps throughout Estonia during the Nazi occupation, where many Estonians were directly involved.
I am aware, that Estonian government claims that the KGB “cleaned” out all of these evil people, however many of these criminals fled the country and some returned after the fall of the Soviet Union, only to be considered heroes as they fought on the Nazi side in the SS against the Russians.
I believe that there are not many countries in the world where memorials in recent times have been erected over the Nazi SS troops, beside just Estonia.
I truly wonder why Estonia only recently have started just a massive pogrom against Soviet atrocities and at the same time are increasingly glorifying the Nazi ones, and that seemingly without any raised eyebrows from the rest of the NATO/EU society.
The only “western authority” that are trying to raise this question seem to be the Simon Wiesenthal Center, that has accused Estonia of ignoring and even putting obstacles to investigations into apprehending Nazi criminals.
Two years ago, Harry Mannil, was invited to Estonia as an honorary guest of the government. He was a former officer in Estonia's political police, during the Nazi time, and is listed among top 10 Nazis on the run. Estonia however claims he is innocent. The Simon Wiesenthal Center claims that Mannil was responsible for hundreds of Jews and Communists being sent to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their Estonian collaborators.
Estonia then conducted an investigation into Mannil’s past, and insists that he has a “clean record”. The Wiesenthal Center labelled this investigation “a pathetic political whitewash”, and repeated its calls for Mannil to be brought to justice.
In the light of this it seems even stranger that Estonian government is so eager to prosecute Communist war criminals, and at the same time seems totally unwilling to even look into Nazi war criminals.
The Estonian Communistic war criminals killed “normal” Estonian citizens, whereas the Estonian Nazi war criminals killed Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war, but can it really be that the Estonian government considers these latter ones of less human value than the first mentioned? And is Nazism an accepted and growing ideology in the Baltic States?
Also the Wiesenthal Center last year criticised Estonia for removing a Soviet memorial commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany, calling the removal of the statue an “insult to victims of Nazism”.
And NATO/EU are as usual simply placing their “no comment” to it all.
