[ GEO ] London, England
[ GEO ] Kiev, Ukraine
[ Protesters ] Hang the Communists from trees!
[ Protesters ] Glory to the nation!
[ Protesters ] Death to our enemies!
[ GEO ] Tallinn, Estonia
[ Protesters ] Glory to Ukraine!
[ Protesters ] Glory to the heroes!
[ Zinaida ] I'm watching and can't believe my eyes.
[ Zinaida ] It's like a scene from a movie or a performance.
[ Zinaida ] So many terrible things happened in our lifetimes.
[ Zinaida ] This terrible war…
[ Zinaida ] Didn't people learn from this lesson?
[ GEO ] Riga, Latvia
[ Visvaldis ] 'First we'll beat the Reds!
[ Visvaldis ] 'Always! Always!
[ Visvaldis ] 'Then the grey-and-blue!
[ Visvaldis ] 'Always! Always! Always!'
[ Visvaldis ] This is what we sang and no one was arrested!
[ Visvaldis ] We sang it in Courland too! The Germans had to put up with it!
RENAISSANCE
[ Visvaldis Lacis, Historian, Served In Latvian Legion, Waffen-SS ]
[ Visvaldis ] My name is Visvaldis Lacis.
[ Visvaldis ] I'm now a pensioner.
[ Visvaldis ] In nine days I'll turn 91.
[ Visvaldis ] And the 92nd year of my life will begin.
[ Visvaldis ] I've written 14 books,
13 of them on history and politics.
[ Visvaldis ] I have a degree in philology,
I was a distance graduate,
of the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical University of Foreign Languages,
English language department.
[ Visvaldis ] I was mobilised in the beginning of March 1943,
and served in the Latvian regiment of the German Army.
[ Visvaldis ] We were called the Waffen-SS division, the armed division of the SS.
[ Protesters ] Glory to the nation! Death to the enemies!
[ Protesters ] Bandera and Shukhevych are heroes of Ukraine!
[ Protesters ] Put Russians – on spikes!
[ Zinaida Semyonova, Salaspils Concentration Camp Survivor ] We were brought
to Salaspils,
in July,
and the year was 1944.
[ Zinaida ] I still can't believe,
we survived,
that we went through this hell...
and we're alive.
[ Zinaida ] Not far from the statue of the Mother, to the left,
there was a children’s barrack.
[ Zinaida ] Most of the kids were small,
from seven to ten years of age.
[ Zinaida ] The kids were rotting alive,
especially the little ones.
[ Zinaida ] They were crying, screaming, would lose consciousness,
and fall asleep.
[ Zinaida ] They would take the small ones,
half-dead, but still moving, crying,
although they didn’t have strength to cry.
[ Zinaida ] And they'd be taken away like that,
on a special cart with wheels,
and thrown out of the gate.
[ Zinaida ] And beyond the gate were ditches.
[ Vlad Bogov, Historian, Search Team Member ]
[ Vlad ] We're now standing where the entrance to the camp was.
[ Igor ] The camp's border. [ Vlad ] Yes.
[ Vlad ] You see, there's a narrow path.
[ Vlad ] This is where the fence was.
[ Igor Gusev, Historian, Search Team Member ]
[ Igor ] The remains of the camp hospital.
[ Igor ] We're here and here are the ruins of this hospital.
[ Igor ] It was built before the war, probably for some technical purposes.
[ Igor ] They would conduct various medical experiments here.
[ Igor ] This is where they brought kids,
in order to take their blood,
for wounded German soldiers.
[ Zinaida ] They would inject some kind of poison,
that made your eyes water...
and body itch.
[ Zinaida ] They also made injections that would give the children diarrhoea.
[ Zinaida ] The kids would literally die within a week.
[ Zinaida ] You couldn't live in these conditions.
[ Zinaida ] Nobody gave you clean water,
to drink or to wash with.
[ Zinaida ] No vitamins for the kids,
whose teeth were developing still...
[ Zinaida ] We were children, we wanted something to play with.
[ Zinaida ] But there were no dolls, nothing.
[ Zinaida ] Boys would make slingshots out of branches.
[ Zinaida ] And my mum,
would twist her sweater like this,
like this, and tie a scarf or something on top,
so that it would look like a head.
[ Zinaida ] It'd look like a baby girl.
[ Zinaida ] Sometimes, I would paint eyes on her face,
and do like this.
[ Zinaida ] And that's what it was like throughout the whole war.
[ Zinaida ] If you found a dandelion,
a simple yellow flower,
you'd be happy!
[ Zinaida ] You could chew the leaves,
and the flower looked like a little sun.
[ Igor Gusev, Historian, Search Team Member ]
[ Igor ] The existence of Salaspils concentration camp in history,
doesn't fit the official Latvian version of history.
[ Igor ] According to it, independent democratic Latvia lived happily and freely until 1940.
[ Igor ] Then in 1940 the 'orcs', that is,
evil Russians from the East, came and brought the Soviet regime.
[ Igor ] Then in 1941 the German ‘liberators’ came. These Nazis weren't very good either,
but were seen as civilized Europeans.
[ Igor ] And as is fitting for civilized Europe,
they brought light and culture,
albeit with some malpractices.
[ Igor ] But in 1944 the evil Russians returned.
[ Igor ] And the terrible Soviet occupation started,
which only ended in 1991.
[ Igor ] So when you find out there were significantly more people murdered here under the 'kind',
and 'humane' Germans, than under the evil Russians from the East,
it doesn't really fit that narrative.
[ Igor ] So that's why the Salaspils concentration camp is,
an inconvenient point in history,
which is better to ignore.
[ Visvaldis ] I'm the only Latvian legionnaire,
who's still alive.
[ Visvaldis ] I left Riga on March 9, 1947.
[ Visvaldis ] Because soldiers who served,
in the Latvian Legion were being discriminated.
[ Visvaldis ] No one would touch us, but the discrimination prevented me from earning a living.
[ Visvaldis ] I couldn't defend my thesis on economics and so on.
[ Visvaldis ] So I decided to move to the country and build a house.
[ Visvaldis ] It's calm.
[ Visvaldis ] Far from the centre of the region.
[ Visvaldis ] Everything's in order here.
[ Visvaldis ] Dry wood...
[ Visvaldis ] As much as you want.
[ Visvaldis ] It's covered so as not to get wet.
[ Visvaldis ] I can't open it now!
[ Visvaldis ] That's to stop the wind from lifting the plastic…
[ Visvaldis ] I have five hectares of forest.
[ Visvaldis ] And central heating in the basement.
[ Visvaldis ] It works well. I heat it up with wood. I do it myself.
[ Visvaldis ] My office and library are upstairs.
[ Visvaldis ] There are some interesting books here.
[ Visvaldis ] Rare books, too.
[ Visvaldis ] I don't ignore other opinions.
[ Visvaldis ] I think if you seek truth,
and want to write about the truth,
you can't ignore other views.
[ Visvaldis ] I also have Solzhenitsyn in Latvian.
[ Visvaldis ] Only 200 metres to a wonderful lake,
the clearest, the highest above the sea level.
[ Visvaldis ] I have my own forest with mushrooms and berries!
[ Visvaldis ] I have a picture here.
[ Visvaldis ]It says on the back:
Visvaldis Lacis,
19th Division of the 44th Regiment, Courland,
the Courland Fortress, 1945.
[ Visvaldis ] This is my squad.
[ Visvaldis ] Very intelligent people.
[ Visvaldis ] It was a pleasure to work.
[ Evgenia Loginova, Salaspils Concentration Camp Survivor ]
[ Evgenia ] The whole world is watching them, right?
[ Evgenia ] They should have been stopped immediately, at the very beginning.
[ Evgenia ] These are the Banderites, right?
[ Evgenia ] That's what frightens me…
[ Evgenia ] I also watch the TV,
I think, have they all gone mad?
[ Evgenia ] Because they survived the war!
[ Evgenia ] These must be young people who were born in a different environment.
[ Evgenia ] And they've forgotten about the war.
[ Evgenia ] They've forgotten what these Banderites are capable of.
I just don't know…
[ Protesters ] 'Bandera!
[ Protesters ] 'Shukhevych!
[ Protesters ] 'Heroes of Ukraine!'
[ Evgenia ] When we were taken to the camp,
I was nine years old.
[ Evgenia ] I had older and younger brothers and sisters.
[ Evgenia ] And two of my brothers are buried there.
[ Evgenia ] I cry every time I visit the graves.
[ Evgenia ] I'm an ex-prisoner of Salaspils concentration camp.
[ Evgenia ] The terrible Salaspils.
[ Evgenia ] They would take blood from everyone.
[ Evgenia ] I don't know, maybe only the smallest ones were left alone, but not really.
[ Evgenia ] They pumped all the blood out of my two brothers.
[ Evgenia ] I don't know, the blood must have been good.
[ Evgenia ] I don't know why.
[ Evgenia ] My mum said that they turned to coal.
[ Evgenia ] They were black.
[ Evgenia ] Mum would cry and say, 'Into coal'.
[ Evgenia ] She saw it.
[ Evgenia ] She said I was also heading down that path.
[ Evgenia ] I remember I felt bad when they took my blood.
[ Evgenia ] I remember that.
[ Evgenia ] They took my blood and I moved away.
[ Evgenia ] You couldn't show you felt bad,
or they would separate you at once,
to meet your death.
[ Visvaldis ] We know there are Russian women,
there are Russians who say,
their blood was taken,
and kids would die from lack of blood…
[ Visvaldis ] But you won't hear about this,
among the Latvian historians,
because there was no proof!
[ Visvaldis ] No scientific proof!
[ Visvaldis ] It's just rumours.
[ Visvaldis ] Go to the Central market,
they'll show you a woman,
who heard it from a woman, and so on!
[ Visvaldis ] That won't do, kind man.
[ Vyacheslav Rukis, Historian, Search Team Member ]
[ Vyacheslav ] The camp was about 600 by 400 metres in size.
[ Igor ] That's definitely a pile of barbed wire.
[ Igor ] More barbed wire.
[ Igor ] It's from the Salaspils concentration camp.
[ Igor ] Note...
the distance between the barbs...
[ Igor ] It's almost impossible to grab with your fist.
[ Igor ] You'd definitely hurt your hand.
[ Vyacheslav ] Salaspils' latest victim!
[ Igor ] This is where one of the children's barracks stood.
[ Igor ] At one time, little kids...
[ Igor ] Suffered and died here.
[ Igor ] They were taken from their parents, their mothers.
[ Igor ] They were given special tags,
carrying their names and ID information.
[ Igor ] They'd play with them, exchange them.
[ Igor ] Many lost their names this way.
[ Visvaldis ] There was no death camp here.
Salaspils wasn't like that.
[ Visvaldis ] We know that.
[ Visvaldis ] There were lots of survivors.
[ Visvaldis ] The size of the pits where the bones were,
proves the Soviet authorities exaggerated the number of victims by ten times or more.
[ Protesters ] Hang the Communists from trees! Put Russians on spikes!
[ GEO ] Kiev, Ukraine
[ Protesters ] Bandera! Shukhevych! Heroes of Ukraine!
[ GEO ] Riga, Latvia
[ Faina Augustan, Salaspils Concentration Camp Survivor ] They're victims of repressions, supposedly.
[ Faina ] They fought against the Russians in the war.
[ Faina ] People don't know history.
[ Faina ] We don't know our history.
[ Faina ] They believe the Nazis brought freedom.
[ Faina ] They burnt people!
[ Faina ] So many Jews died in Auschwitz!
[ Faina ] So many people died in Salaspils!
[ Faina ] We were led into a large room...
[ Faina ] There was a man with a loudspeaker.
[ Faina ] He ordered the men to form one column,
the women another.
[ Faina ] Children under five were moved,
to the side too.
[ Faina ] I was separated from Vitaly.
[ Faina ] He was put with the 'over tens'.
[ Faina ] Mother was separated too.
[ Faina ] She was holding a baby.
[ Faina ] They would take these babies.
[ Faina ] It was 18 months old and she wouldn't give it up.
[ Faina ] There were many women like her.
[ Faina ] I remember there was a chair,
and a woman hid underneath it with her baby.
[ Faina ] A German was kicking her to make her move.
[ Faina ] But she held the legs of the chair,
and wouldn't give up her child.
[ Faina ] My mother had three kids.
[ Faina ] My older brother Vitaly was 12.
[ Faina ] I was five...
and my younger brother Gena was 18 months old.
[ Faina ] My brother died there, in Salaspils.
[ Faina ] There was a terrible outbreak of dysentery.
[ Faina ] Children started dying.
[ Faina ] Once I looked up at the pillar,
on the second floor...
[ Faina ] And I saw Gena sitting there, tied up.
[ Faina ] I called to him,
but he couldn't lift his head, it was slumped to one side.
[ Faina ] His lips were dark.
[ Faina ] I called his name but he didn't respond.
[ Faina ] Then he disappeared.
[ Faina ] It's painful to remember.
[ Igor ] This graveyard is now known to be,
where the Nazis hid their victims’ bodies during the war.
[ Igor ] Here are the ruins of the orthodox chapel,
which allowed us to locate it.
[ Igor ] Only one fifth of this area was used at that time!
[ Igor ] You see that area... that big pit?
[ Igor ] That's where the mass exhumation was.
[ Igor ] An area closer to the railway has also been located.
[ Igor ] It's about 25 sq. m.
[ Igor ] Corpses were burnt there.
[ Igor ] The ground was soaked,
in human fat half a meter deep.
[ Igor ] There were charred bones,
including many belonging to children.
[ Igor ] The corpses of 632 children have been found here in various graves.
[ Igor ] Their ages range from three to nine years.
[ Igor ] Just on a fifth of this area.
[ Igor ] Fir tree bark and pine cones were found,
in the stomachs of every single one of them.
[ Igor ] Many had been injected with arsenic.
[ Visvaldis ] I'm a happy person.
[ Visvaldis ] I've done sport all my life.
[ Visvaldis ] I commanded a platoon in Courland...
[ Visvaldis ] An assault unit.
[ Visvaldis ] We had machine guns.
[ Visvaldis ] The Germans called them 'Bonesaws',
'kaulu zagi' in Latvian.
[ Visvaldis ] We were taught these 'bonesaws'...
should be positioned on the flanks.
[ Visvaldis ] And placed in such a way,
that the enemy would not know where they were.
[ Visvaldis ] They fired 900 rounds per minute.
[ Visvaldis ] I had to position them,
so they were slightly in front, even.
[ Visvaldis ] So, now if the Red Army were to attack,
following a powerful artillery barrage,
they'd still be hidden.
[ Visvaldis ] Then I'd give the order to shoot.
[ Visvaldis ] I've been trained, so I know...
[ Visvaldis ] If you start shooting,
900 rounds per minute from here,
and from here...
[ Visvaldis ] They'll slice through your bones.
[ Visvaldis ] You won't get past.
[ Visvaldis ] Some did, but rarely.
[ Zinaida ] They organise all these marches now.
[ Zinaida ] Some of them were SS officers in the camps.
[ Zinaida ] They tormented us there, as they say.
[ Zinaida ] They stood there with machine guns.
[ Zinaida ] Now they march through the central streets.
[ Zinaida ] There were barracks with babies nearby,
very small babies.
[ Zinaida ] And they needed milk.
[ Zinaida ] We could hear them screaming and wailing.
[ Zinaida ] It was terrifying.
[ Zinaida ] We always hoped their mothers would come.
[ Zinaida ] We didn't know once someone was put on that side of the gate,
and that was it.
[ Zinaida ] We'd never see them again.
[ Zinaida ] They were all screaming, 'Mummy, Mummy!'
[ Zinaida ] One girl shouted, 'Granny!'
[ Zinaida ] Later we learnt she lived with her grandmother.
[ Zinaida ] The Germans called it a work camp.
[ Zinaida ] And then so did President Vaira Vike-Freiberga.
[ Zinaida ] She said it was a work education camp.
[ Zinaida ] It was no work camp.
[ Zinaida ] It was a death camp.
[ Igor ] This is the Salaspils expanded police prison,
and work education camp.
[ Igor ] This book states,
the government's official position,
regarding 20th century Latvian history.
[ Igor ] It's the first step in the process,
of justifying the Hitler regime.
[ Igor ] The attempt to justify,
and vindicate the Nazis of today,
automatically leads to an attempt to justify,
the Nazis of the Great Patriotic War and WW2.
[ Igor ] Why, for example,
does the global community ignore,
the swastikas on the helmets of the Ukrainian 'Azov' battalion?
[ Igor ] Why did people on Maidan wear the symbol of the 'Das Reich' division?
[ Igor ] The Wolfsangel, the wolf hook, which is a Nazi symbol?
[ Igor ] The Maidan fighters demonstrated it openly,
so why hasn't anyone taken notice of it?
[ Igor ] In these circumstances,
Hitler is seen as a figure,
who was standing up for civilised Europe.
[ Igor ] It's no secret that even Ukrainian Neo-Nazis say,
they're protecting civilisation from the barbarians to the East.
[ Igor ] Mr Goebbels must be rejoicing in his grave!
[ Igor ] The defence of Europe from Eastern barbarians was Goebbels' theory entirely.
[ Visvaldis ] We're labelled 'Nazis', 'Fascists', etc.
[ Visvaldis ] For the most part, Latvians thought:
'With God's help, the Germans in the East,
will destroy the Red Army forever.
[ Visvaldis ] And then Western Europe,
the Americans, the French, the British, will beat the Germans!
[ Visvaldis ] Then we'd be free!
[ Visvaldis ] That's my response.
[ Visvaldis ] You're uneasy, of course.
[ Visvaldis ] You don't want to acknowledge the guilt of your people.
[ Visvaldis ] That's why you argue.