After rounding up all the Jews, some were forced into slave camps while most "women, children and old people" were shot and buried in "mass nameless graves." Karasin’s book names 350 Jews massacred in Tukums.5

This "Holocaust of Bullets" was repeated across Eastern Europe. Nazis and local fascists killed about 95% of Latvia’s 70,000-75,000 Jews.6 Communists, gypsies and other "undesirables" were also executed, bringing Latvia’s civilian death toll to 230,000. About 30,000 Soviet soldiers died during WWII to defeat Latvia’s ethnonationalist fascism.7 About 140,000 Latvians were soldiers in the Nazi’s Waffen SS.

At the Nuremberg trials, the USSR submitted 500 reports on the crimes of Nazis and their accomplices.8 The Soviets amassed Nazi files, scoured slave camps, gas chambers and mass graves, and gathered accounts from victims and perpetrators. In 1966, when publishing this data from Latvia, they exposed Niedra’s work for the Nazis and noted his 1951 escape to safehaven in Canada. Captain Benedict Zaharans, the Nazi’s Latvian army commander in Tukums gave eye-witness testimony of Niedra murdering Jews in 1941.9

Having proven his loyalty to Latvia’s Nazi "liberators," Niedra was made the top official in Latvia’s second largest city, Daugavpils (Oct. 1942 - July 1944).10  Of the 16,000 Jews there when the Nazis invaded, said survivor Sidney Iwens, "less than 100 survived."11

Niedra was the key organizer of a mass Nazi rally in Daugavpils, on July 4, 1943. Gen. Otto Drechsler, Latvia’s Nazi ruler, addressed the crowd of 20,000 from a stage festooned with swastikas and Latvian flags. Film of this rally shows Latvians marching for Nazi bigwigs, and women in folk dress giving flowers to German officers that are doing the Heil Hitler salute.12 

In August 1943, Niedra met the two top Nazi war criminals from the Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories: Alfred Meyer and Alfred Rosenberg,13 a German-Estonian who led the ministry and was executed at Nuremberg in 1946.

After WWII, Niedra fled to Toronto where he met other Nazi collaborators, like Oskars Perro, a Latvian SS Obersturmführer and Iron Cross recipient. His books covered up Latvia’s role in the Holocaust. Perro and Niedra worked closely together to form the Latvian Union of Officers (LVA) to serve SS veterans. Their first meeting was in Toronto in 1951 but

Although continuing to meet, these officers waited until 1954 to officially form the LVA. Niedra and Perro were among its founders. LVA’s goals included to "unite Latvian officers in the whole free world" and to "celebrate those who have fought and worked for the benefit of Latvia’s freedom."15 Canada’s LVA had a key role in creating this global network of antiSoviet Latvian veterans.16

In 1961, as LNAK’s VP, Niedra met Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and presented him with a "hand-painted scroll with the national flags and coats-of-arms of the 18 ethnic groups" in the Mutual Co-operation League (MCL). This anticommunist lobby group for "captive nations" urged Diefenbaker to deport Abraham Feinberg, the Lithuanian-American Rabbi emeritus of Canada’s largest Reform synagogue. The MCL opposed the cross-Canada speaking tour of Feinberg,17 who was chair of the Toronto Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.

"Honor for Diefenbaker," Ottawa Citizen, May 02, 1969, p.52.  This photograph and caption also appeared that day in the Windsor Star (p. 12) and Saskatoon's Star-Phoenix (p. 2) http:// http://bit.ly/NiedDief69

In 1967, Niedra was among 13 Latvians, including five in Canada, named as war criminals by Simon Wiesenthal’s Vienna-based Centre for Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime. Although Lester Pearson’s Liberal government  was informed, it did nothing.18

Two years later, Niedra, then LNAK president, made the news, not as a war criminal but for presenting former-PM Diefenbaker with a medal and scroll for aiding the fight to "liberate the Latvian people."19

In 1980, Weisenthal gave a new list of war criminals to Trudeau’s government but, again, to no avail.20 

LNAK enjoyed keen media support throughout the Cold War.21  Even when Soviet trials exposed Latvian war criminals living in Canada, LNAK saw them as victims of communism. In 1982, Haralds Puntulis, a former police chief in Latvia (1941-44) was tried in absentia by the Soviets. "After 19 days of testimony from witnesses and the coaccused," Puntulis, who had lived undisturbed in Toronto since 1948, "was found guilty of the slaughter of 713 Jews, 28 gypsies and nine Communists."22 Canadian newspapers said that in 1941, Puntulis

One witness testified that Puntulis executed an "11-year-old Jewish boy" by shooting him "in the head." 

In reaction, LNAK’s president, T. Kronbergs, said such cases "automatically create a situation where" East Europeans defend the accused "whether he’s guilty or not because they feel insulted."  Jews also felt insulted since, as Wiesenthal said, "the typical Nazi in Canada lives free for many years ... and neighbors think he’s a nice old man."24

By vilifying the USSR, papers diverted attention from LNAK’s Nazi past. Latvians were said to be either victims or heroes for fighting the USSR. LNAK’s Linares Lukss told the Deschênes Commission: "Soviets are trying to discredit East European immigrants, by feeding rumors about Nazi war criminals... in Canada." He said "Latvians who fought Soviet communism shouldn’t be regarded as Nazi collaborators." Soviet evidence on war crimes was derided as fake news that was "‘very intimidating, most unpleasant’ for East Europeans..., said Lukss."25 (Lukss was a key founder and leader of the Black Ribbon Day campaign.)

When the USSR asked Canada to extradite Puntulis, "the response was a firm no." Although Canada’s Geneva-Conventions law obliged it to search for war criminals and put them on trial, Canada said all Nazi war crimes were exempt. The Solicitor General of Canada, Bob Kaplan, said he would not "risk his political career on the prosecution of alleged war criminals living in Canada." Meanwhile, Canada's Justice Minister Jean Chrétien said "I don’t intend to introduce legislation in Canada for crimes committed 35 years ago in other nations."26
 

1. Jânis Niedra, Daugavpils U. http:// http://bit.ly/Niedr

2. "Nehru on Side of Reds, Ethnic Group tells PM," Ottawa Citizen, Dec.20, 1961, p.4. 
http:// http://bit.ly/NiedDief61

3. LNAK history, p.48 
http:// http://bit.ly/LNAKhistory

4. Author’s collection of news clippings, May 2, 1969.  http:// http://bit.ly/NiedDief69

5. Yakov Karasin, Jews of Tukum city, 2002, p.34. (Note: In WWII, Karasin was one of 500,000 Jewish soldiers in the Red Army).  http:// http://bit.ly/Tukums

6. Dovid Katz, "Baltic Movement to Obfuscate Holocaust," 2018, p.11. 
http:// http://bit.ly/D_Katz

7. Vadim Erlikman, Poteri narodonaseleniia v XX veke: spravochni, pp. 21-35.

8. Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1949, "Exhibits of the Soviet Prosecution," pp. 170-186.   http:// http://bit.ly/USSRreports

9. A. Arklâns, J. Dzirkalis, J. Silabriedis, Vini Bez Maskas ("Them Without Mask"), 1966, pp.118, 159-62.  http:// http://bit.ly/un-mask

10. Ibid., pp.160, 162.

11. Sidney Iwens, How Dark the Heavens: 1400 Days in the Grip of Nazi Terror, 1990, p.291.  http:// http://bit.ly/Nazi-Terror

12. Daugavpilî notiek II Latgales dziesmu svçtk, ("Latgale Song Festival held in Daugavpils"), July 4, 1943. 
http:// http://bit.ly/Nazi-Fest

Film: "II Latgales dziesmu svçtki Daugav -pilî.1943.g.4.jûlijs." 
http:// http://bit.ly/NaziFestVid

13. News/photo of Alfred Meyer with Janis Niedra, Aug. 22, 1943. 
http:// http://bit.ly/NeidraMeyer

14. Latvieðu virsnieku apvienîba ["Latvian Officers Assoc."], 1922-2012, 2013, p.18    http:// http://bit.ly/LVA-Cda

15. Ibid.

16. Kadet, No.1, 1967.  http:// http://bit.ly/Kadets67

17. "Nehru on Side of Reds..." op. cit..

18. Bulletin of Information, No.5, April 1967.  http:// http://bit.ly/Nazi-list

19. Author’s collection ..., op. cit.

20. Jeff Ansell and Paul Appleby, "The War Criminal," Calgary Herald, Aug. 28, 1982, p.122.  http:// http://bit.ly/CH9-28-82

21. Author’s collection of news clips on LNAK (1947-91)  http:// http://bit.ly/LNAK47-91

22. Ansell and Appleby, op. cit., p.120.

23. Ibid., p.121.

24. Ibid., p.120-21.

25. "Soviets manipulate facts on Nazis, commission told," CP, Windsor Star, Jun.11, 1985, p.14.  http:// http://bit.ly/WS6-11-85