Associated Press

Russian Jewish leaders said Monday that they have appealed to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to oppose what they called "the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals" in the former Soviet republics of Estonia and Latvia.

In an open letter to Sharon, the Jewish leaders urged him to join them in sharp criticism of what they said was a decision by the Estonian authorities to build a monument to those who fought to free Estonia and died in World War II.

"In effect, it is a monument to Estonians who fought on the side of Hitler's Germany, including in SS units," said the letter, whose prominent signatories included the Chief Rabbi of Russia, Berl Lazar.

"We cannot consider this anything other that an attempt to rehabilitate Nazism and make it heroic - an attempt that is by no means the first in Estonia and Latvia," the letter said.

The Estonian government last year objected to a monument specifically to the Waffen SS - the SS fighting force - saying it would be seen as insensitive to those who died at Nazi hands. The monument now planned in Estonia is reportedly to bear the inscription: "To fighters for the restoration of Estonia's independent statehood in World War II."

Thousands who were drafted into the Red Army said they were fighting for Estonia against the Nazis - so the broader wording would be a concession to them as well.

Latvia and Estonia were independent before being annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. After the 1941-44 Nazi occupation - during which a large majority of the nations' Jews were killed - Soviet troops returned and remained until the Baltic states gained independence in the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Tensions between Russia and Baltic states over the World War II era are still high, and Russian officials have repeatedly accused Estonia and Latvia of persecuting former Soviet officials while lionizing the Nazis.

"The governments want to show that Latvians and Estonians fought together against the Soviet Army, but one must not forget with whom they fought together in doing so," the Interfax news agency quoted Lazar as saying.

The signatories of the letter urged Sharon, in Moscow for a summit with President Vladimir Putin, to "give your assessment of what is going on in the Baltics and stop the process of the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals."

They criticized European nations, saying "it seems they have made peace with the fact that countries that are seeking to forget the most important lessons of the second world war - primarily of all the Holocaust - are joining the European Union and NATO."

Estonia and Latvia are set to join the EU and NATO next year.

Russia and Israel last month angrily criticized a new memorial to Latvians who died fighting in Germany's Waffen SS during World War II, saying the state-sanctioned marble monument is an affront to millions of victims of the Nazis. The Estonian monument is to be smaller and is not expected to make specific mention of the Waffen SS.

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