Estonia outrages Russian Jewish community.

 Sometimes a war can breed strange allies. The Baltic nations had been seized by Russia. World war 2 gave them an opportunity to restore their sovereignty. Russia had also attacked Finland in its quest for expansion. The result of these attempts to regain and protect their homelands  was that they accidentally became allies of Nazi Germany once the Germans attacked Russia.

 Incidentally Japan was on our side in world war 1 and if my memory serves me right there function was to provide naval escorts for allied shipping.

 

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Estonia's commemoration of its pro-German World War II past, including the re-enactment of a Nazi victory, has outraged the Russian Jewish community.

 

A week ago, veterans of the Waffen SS 20th Estonian Division celebrated the anniversary of the first clashes between Estonian pro-German troops and the Soviet Army in 1941.

 

And on Monday, young Estonian nationalists began a week of commemoration by re-enacting the 1941 Erna Campaign, when a diversionary platoon of 42 Estonian paramilitary volunteers trounced the Soviet Red Army. According to the semi-official Russian Federal News Agency, the re-enactment attracted participation from 10 countries, including the United States, Finland and Germany.

 

Recalling its pro-German World War II past has been an annual tradition for Estonia since the republic SECEDED from the Soviet Union in 1991.

 

During last week's commemoration, in the small Estonian town of Sinimiae, elderly veterans from Estonia, Norway and Austria traveled three hours by charter bus from Tallinn, the Estonian capital. They were accompanied by dozens of young followers dressed in T-shirts with what the Jew press described as "Nazi symbols," (but of course were not) along with Estonian officials, including Parliament member Trivimi Velliste and Minister of Defense Jak Aaviksoo (illustration).

 

Speaking before the gathering, Aaviksoo reportedly called the former SS commandos ³fighters for independence² and Velliste described the Soviet soldiers as ³terrorists.²

 

Estonia has clashed previously with Moscow over what Russia has called Estonia¹s ³glorification² of its Nazi past. In January, 150 people were wounded and more than 1,000 detained in violent street protests in Tallinn after a bronze statue commemorating a World War II Soviet soldier was moved from a downtown square to a less prestigious location outside the city¹s center.

 

Boruch Gorin, the Moscow-based spokesman for the Chabad-affiliated Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, blasted the commemoration in Sinimiae, saying the Estonian government and church leaders who supported it made heroes of ³blood-thirsty killers² and were ³dancing on the bones² of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

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