Baltic News Service
August 22, 2001

Tallinn, 22 August: Historian Lauri Vahtre, a member of the Estonian parliament, said Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff is unfair to Estonians and may provoke defiance instead of finding out the truth.

"If Zuroff's views are adequately mediated by the press, this can be regarded as instigation of interethnic hatred," Vahtre told BNS.

Vahtre added that Efraim Zuroff, director of the Isreali office of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, is creating very bad publicity for the centre accusing the Estonian people of Nazi crimes.

"I am shocked; this in inappropriate. What right does he have to do this, adding with ebullient condescension that the present generation of Estonians is not guilty? My grandparents, just like myself, have never done any harm to Jews," Vahtre said.

Zuroff's historical statements stand out in their tendentiousness, Vahtre said. "In the conditions of Soviet power Jews themselves killed Jews," Vahtre said in comment on Zuroff's words that many Jews managed to leave the Baltic countries for the Soviet Union before the Nazis' arrival. At the same time, Vahtre said, it is a fact that some Jews thus saved themselves from death.

"But one has to admit that there was no persecution of Jews in Estonia during independence, scoundrels of Estonian stock got that opportunity under foreign rule," Vahtre, author of schoolbooks on Estonian history, said.

"This should provide sufficient truth that it is out of place to accuse the Estonian people and lead to the conclusion that Jews will be safe in Estonia as long as Estonia is independent."

The daily Eesti Paevaleht wrote that Zuroff accuses hundreds of Estonians of the murder of Jews during World War II.

Zuroff said that in 1998 an international commission headed by Estonian President Lennart Meri published a survey, quoting the figure of about 1,000-1,200 men in the Omakaitse World War II paramilitary organization, which was involved in murders. Besides, the survey mentions members of police units and the political police.

"Omakaitse had as its members civilians who had organized themselves.They mainly killed Communists, but also Jews in Estonia," Zuroff said. "Your people served in the political police, in police batallions and SS units."

"Jews from many countries were brought to the Baltic countries and were killed here. That is a fact. And that is your problem, not mine," Zuroff continued. "What happened here is very bad, but no one is accusing young Estonians for what their grandparents did. We only accuse those who are guilty and if they are alive they have to be brought to justice."

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