Riga, Latvia – Police in Latvia were investigating Monday after a second incident of anti-Semitic vandalism in less than a week.
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A memorial to Zanis Lipke, a Latvian credited with saving more than 50 Jews from death during World War II, was daubed with paint in the early hours of Monday morning, police said. The memorial was quickly cleaned up by municipal authorities.
The incident came just days after 89 tombstones in the Jewish Cemetery in Riga were daubed with swastikas by vandals, (as was reported here on Vos Iz Neias).
Latvian Foreign Minister Girts Valdis Kristovskis was quick to condemn the latest incident, saying ‘recurrent acts of vandalism’ were unacceptable.
Lipke, who died in 1987, was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Holocaust memorial organization Yad Vashem. Nearly all of Riga’s Jews were murdered during World War II by occupying Nazi forces assisted by local volunteers.
Several Jewish organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, have warned about high levels of anti-Semitism in the Baltic states.
The issue is put into sharp focus every year in Latvia on March 16, when an unofficial parade takes place in the Latvian capital commemorating members of the Latvian Waffen-SS.
Latvian President Valdis Zatlers slammed the vandalism, in a statement, Zatlers said he “categorically condemned” the assault on the central Riga monument which honours the late Zanis Lipke and others who stopped Jews from falling into the clutches of the occupying Nazi Germans and local collaborators.
“Zanis Lipke is a man who deserved people’s admiration, respect and love,” Zatlers said. “Last night’s vandalism completely contradicts that.”
Police said they had not found any immediate evidence to link the incident to an attack last week on Riga’s Jewish cemetery, where white swastikas were painted on 89 tombstones.
Police are still probing the cemetery desecration, which was also condemned by Zatlers and government leaders.
Dock labourer Lipke rescued around 50 Jews during the war. After the Nazis occupied Latvia in July 1941, he found work with the German air force. Taking advantage of that cover, he smuggled Jews to various hideouts where many remained until Soviet troops arrived in October 1944.
In 1966, he was granted the title of Righteous Among Nations — conferred by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority on non-Jews who saved Jews during the war. He died in 1987.
Of around 85,000 Jews in Latvia at the start of WWII, only 3,500 survived.
While some were able to flee before German troops arrived, 70,000 were murdered in the country by the Nazis and local collaborators or perished after being deported to camps elsewhere in occupied Europe.
Between 200 and 450 Jews survived the war in Latvia.
Today, Latvia’s Jewish community numbers some 10,000 in a country of 2.2 million.
The Lipke monument, unveiled in 2007, is etched with his portrait, and also commemorates 260 less well-known Latvian rescuers by name.
It lies near the site of the city’s synagogue, which was blown up by the Germans on July 4, 1941 with the worshippers still inside.
Latvia is as bad as Poland when it comes to inbred hatred of Jews. All of these little backward third-world Eastern European countries are anti-Semitic, even though they are little to no Jews there. If they can’t find living Jews to attack, they will look for dead ones. Its a sickness.