An annual meeting in Tallin’s Hirve Park to mark the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which resulted in the annexation of the Baltic states into the USSR, turned antisemitic, according to an August 24, 2004 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. Speakers at the August 19, 2004 rally demanded that Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center, apologize for stating that some Estonians participated in the Holocaust.

“If not, we will be forced to reassess our up to now friendly attitude towards Jews living in Estonia,” one of the speakers warned.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s efforts to expose Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian war criminals who collaborated with the Nazis in the mass murder of Jews during World War II have led to a fierce counter-reaction from some Baltic nationalists in all three states. Mr. Zuroff is routinely vilified in some Baltic media organs, including some mainstream publications.

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