Every May 8, Europe commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of one of history’s greatest evils. Political leaders deliver solemn speeches about freedom, democracy and the obligation to remember the victims of fascism.
But in Latvia, a disturbing contradiction continues to unfold in plain sight.
At Riga’s Brothers’ Cemetery—the country’s most sacred military burial ground, Latvia’s equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery—rests SS-Standartenführer Voldemārs Veiss, a man associated with the Nazi occupation apparatus and the persecution of Riga’s Jews. Flowers continue to appear at his grave even as Latvia officially participates in ceremonies marking the defeat of Nazism.
What makes this even more disturbing is where he is buried.
Veiss rests in the most sacred section of the cemetery—directly at the feet of the Mother Latvia monument itself—a place intended to symbolize national honor, sacrifice and the soul of the Latvian nation. The symbolism is impossible to ignore: a man connected to the Nazi occupation and the destruction of Latvia’s Jewish community remains embedded within one of the country’s highest patriotic shrines.
That is not historical complexity but moral collapse.
One cannot simultaneously honor the victory over Nazi Germany while preserving public reverence for individuals tied to the machinery that enabled the destruction of Latvia’s Jewish community.
Voldemārs Veiss is only a small example of a much larger and deeply rooted problem. Across the Baltics, and particularly in Latvia, historical revisionism has increasingly blurred the line between national remembrance and the rehabilitation of individuals and movements tied to Nazi collaboration. The issue is no longer isolated graves or symbolic gestures. It is the broader rewriting of historical memory itself.
This paradox is not new. I explored it extensively in my documentary “Baltic Truth,” which examined Holocaust distortion and historical revisionism in Eastern Europe. The issue is not whether Latvia suffered under Soviet occupation; it unquestionably did. The issue is whether the suffering inflicted by one totalitarian regime is now being used to sanitize or relativize collaboration with another.
Veiss was not merely a random wartime figure trapped by circumstance. He became a high-ranking officer within the Waffen-SS structure during the Nazi occupation. During the years when Riga’s Jewish population was being systematically isolated, terrorized and erased, men like Veiss were part of the broader collaborationist system that helped make those crimes possible.
Historical records further indicate that he was placed in command of auxiliary police units in Riga whose role included rounding up Jews throughout the city and delivering them to the Riga Ghetto. Those attempting to flee or resist risked execution on the spot. This was not passive association with the occupation. It was direct participation in the machinery of persecution that led to the destruction of Latvia’s Jewish community.
The Riga Ghetto was not an abstraction. It was a place where tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned before mass murder in the Rumbula forest outside Riga. Latvia’s Jewish community—one of the oldest and richest in Europe—was almost completely destroyed during the Holocaust. This history is not disputed.
And yet today, in an E.U. and NATO member state that speaks passionately about democracy and European values, a man associated with that system remains buried with honor at the nation’s most revered military cemetery.
Imagine if Germany maintained a prominent grave honoring a high-ranking SS officer at a national military shrine. Imagine if flowers were publicly laid there during ceremonies commemorating the defeat of Nazism. The international outrage would be immediate and overwhelming.
But when it happens in the Baltics, the world too often looks away. That silence matters.
Because historical revisionism rarely begins with outright denial. It begins with euphemism. With selective memory. With the gradual transformation of collaborators into “national patriots,” while inconvenient truths are pushed into the background.
Over time, the line between remembrance and rehabilitation becomes dangerously blurred.
I recently wrote to Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs regarding this contradiction. In return, I received a three-page nonsense response from the presidential office filled with self-congratulatory language praising Latvia’s Holocaust education programs, memorial initiatives and democratic values while carefully avoiding the central question altogether: Why is a man tied to the Nazi occupation apparatus still honored at Latvia’s most sacred military cemetery?
The response was bureaucratic, evasive and ultimately hollow—another example of the carefully managed language Latvia has mastered when confronted with uncomfortable questions about Holocaust memory, collaboration and historical accountability.
But this issue cannot be solved with public relations language. It requires moral clarity.
Latvia has every right to remember its suffering under Soviet occupation. But remembrance cannot become an excuse to whitewash those who aligned themselves with Nazi structures. The victims of Soviet crimes deserve remembrance. So do the victims of Nazi crimes. History does not require choosing one over the other.
What it does require is honesty.
Today, Latvia presents itself internationally as a modern democratic state committed to European values. Yet the continued honoring of figures tied to the Nazi occupation undermines those claims and raises deeply uncomfortable questions about what kind of historical memory is truly being preserved.
This is not about punishing Latvia. It’s about asking whether a democratic nation can honestly claim to stand against fascism while still granting symbolic honor to individuals connected to fascist structures.
The answer should be obvious. A society that genuinely confronts its history does not place Nazi collaborators among its national heroes. It does not allow the memory of murdered Jews to coexist with ceremonial reverence for men associated with the system that destroyed them.
And it certainly does not lay flowers at their graves on the anniversary of victory over Nazism.
That is not remembrance. That is contradiction elevated into state-sanctioned symbolism.
