Government's Attempt to Honour Latvian Nazi Collaborator on Anti-Communist Monument
The Canadian state remains caught in a serious bind because the
anti-communist monument it funded to the tune of millions of dollars,
continues to feature the names of Nazi collaborators despite attempts to
make sure they were removed prior to unveiling the monument.
The aim of the monument to impose the state's anti-communist ideology on
all Canadians is not a worthy cause.
The government has no qualms about commemorating those complicit in Nazi
war crimes and genocide in World War II, just like it has no qualms
about supporting the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza. But it wants to
maintain the fiction that Canada is nonetheless an exemplar of peace,
justice and democracy.
It has come to light that one of the odious characters the monument seeks to memorialize was an avowed Nazi collaborator from Latvia, Janis Niedra. His name was initially installed on an engraved plaque, before being removed. Canadian Heritage initially claimed that it had not proceeded with the engravings, when in fact Niedra's name was one of hundreds completed in 2023, to meet the date of the monument's original unveiling in November 2023. Surely his name is just one of many such people whose names should go down in infamy, not be commemorated on a monument.
Of the 500 some names proposed for the monument, more than 300 were under review because they were supporters of or collaborators with Nazi fascism, and themselves accused of committing crimes against humanity. At this point in time, many of the completed plaques bearing the proposed names for the monument are in storage.
The anti-communist organization Tribute to Liberty said in its Summer 2025 newsletter, issued July 30, that its "Many donors and supporters are disappointed not to be able to see the names of their loved ones displayed." It says that the latest reply from Canadian Heritage is: "We do not have any updates to share at this moment as we are still in discussions internally." It is worth remembering that the "many donors and supporters" that Tribute to Liberty claims to have were only able to fund less than two-thirds of the original $1.5 million cost of the monument after many years. The Canadian state had to step in to provide the balance of the total $7.5 million to guarantee the creation of the monument, despite broad objections from the public.
Journalist Taylor C. Noakes wrote in February for the website Ricochet:
"In an email dated November 3, 2023, Sandra Richards, a Canadian Heritage (PCH) project manager responsible for monuments and public art, indicated to her colleagues at Canadian Heritage and the National Capital Commission that an Assistant Deputy Minister with Canadian Heritage wanted the names removed as soon as possible.
"'Per my previous email, we fully understand the need to continue production of the names in the absence of a final decision from PCH so that you can close out that contract. It may have been a misunderstanding on our part that this work would also involve installation, but the direction from senior management is that tiles should not be installed until we've reached a decision.'
"Richards further stated that she noticed the name of a known Nazi collaborator during a site visit that occurred on November 1, 2023.
"'I didn't look at all the names when I was on site, but I did notice 'Janis Niedra,' which has already been decided in principle to be removed (it's a name that can be readily researched and identified as a nazi [sic] collaborator with no ambiguity).'"
It was known from 2007, for all those who cared to see, when the
monument was first proposed by Harper government Cabinet Minister Jason
Kenney, which then led to the creation of Tribute to Liberty in 2008,
that its aim was to commemorate reactionaries and Nazi collaborators.
This vile aim, based on the claim that those who fought or were killed
fighting against fascism in Europe are "victims of communism" besmirches
the memory of all Canadians, Quebeckers and Indigenous Peoples who
fought and died to defeat Nazi fascism.
The inscription on the monument, "Canada, a Land of Refuge," is anti-communist disinformation that presents former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers as refugees from communism, not as war criminals who escaped justice by the Soviet Union and its Red Army as a key member of the Allied forces. It covers up the Canadian state's active recruitment of such forces as immigrants to Canada as an anti-worker, anti-communist bulwark meant to split the working class.
For Canadian Heritage to claim that it is continuing internal reviews of proposed names for the monument is meant to fool the gullible. The monument and its funders and instigators and their reactionary aims are irredeemable. No amount of internal reviews will make this project acceptable. The entire monument, not just the names engraved on it, should be covered up and then removed in its entirety. Such a thing has no place in Canada.
Adding insult to injury, the Ottawa Citizen reported on August 13 that the National Capital Commission (NCC) "is warning that the cost of long-term maintenance of the Victims of Communism memorial has increased four-fold to at least $1 million, according to internal commission records." According to NCC documents obtained under the Access to Information law by researcher Ken Rubin, the NCC documents "noted that cracks were already appearing in the monument and needed to be repaired."
About Janis Niedra, Key Nazi Collaborator in Latvia
In a May 17 article, the Ottawa Citizen quotes Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, a senior director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, who said the organization repeatedly warned Canadian Heritage that numerous individuals whose names were to go on the memorial were Nazi collaborators responsible for the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity. "Over the years, we have submitted documentation detailing the atrocities committed by several individuals on the [memorial] list -- including in 2021, when we provided comprehensive evidence of the war crimes committed by Janis Niedra against Latvia's Jewish population," said Kirzner-Roberts. "It is deeply disturbing that, despite our repeated warnings and the clear, documented evidence, the name of a Nazi involved in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust was ultimately engraved on the Memorial. This is simply unacceptable."
The Spring 2021 issue of the anti-war publication Press for Conversion notes that Niedra was the founding President of the Latvian National Federation in Canada (LNAK). It says of LNAK:
"Since its creation in 1948, LNAK has had the same political
fixations as other émigré groups in Canada whose leaders also included
war criminals and Nazi collaborators. Seeing Latvia as one of the many
ethnic nationalities 'enslaved' within the multicultural USSR, LNAK
worked with pro-fascist,
Cold War networks like the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and the World
Anti-Communist League. LNAK was also active in leading Canada's 'Captive
Nations' movement and remains central to its Black Ribbon Day crusade."
Press for Conversion writes that "Janis Niedra (1908-69), who fled Latvia to safety in Germany and then to Canada in 1951, was LNAK's first president in 1954, its vice president in 1961, its chair in 1963 and president again in 1969.
"During the Operation Barbarossa invasion of the USSR in June 1941, when the Nazis entered the Latvian town of Tukums, they were aided by Janis Niedra, a former lieutenant in the pre-Soviet, Latvian army. Yakov Karasin, a local Jewish survivor from Tukums, said Niedra 'legalized' Latvia's pro-Nazi "self defense" forces and reinforced them with ex-soldiers and police from fascist militias that were 'ardent anti-Semites, nationalists, hating the Soviets.' 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.
[...]
"At the Nuremberg trials, the USSR submitted 500 reports on the
crimes of Nazis and their accomplices. 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.
"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). Of the 16,000 Jews there when the Nazis invaded, said survivor Sidney Iwens, 'less than 100 survived.' Niedra was the key organizer of a mass Nazi rally in Daugavpils, on July 4, 1943. General Otto-Heinrich 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.
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Reich Deputy Minister Alfred Meyer (left) meets Janis Niedra (right
front) and other local officials in Daugavpils, Latvia, August 22, 1943."In August 1943, Niedra met the two top Nazi war criminals from the Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories: Alfred Meyer and Alfred Rosenberg, 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 in view of the still unfavorable position of some Western countries against the soldiers, especially the officers who fought against the Red Army -- the then Western Allies -- there were fears that the establishment and affiliation of the LVA could be detrimental to the personal security of officers.
"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.'
Canada's LVA had a key role in creating this global network of
anti-Soviet Latvian veterans.
"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 anti-communist 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, who was chair of the Toronto Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.
"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.
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"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.'
"In 1980 Weisenthal gave a new list of war criminals to [Pierre Elliot] Trudeau's government but, again, to no avail.
"LNAK enjoyed keen media support throughout the Cold War. 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.' Canadian newspapers said that in 1941, Puntulis and his men carried out the annihilation of all the Jews in the hamlets of Silmalas, Malta and Riebiņi; ... he directed the firing squad in the execution of the residents of Audrini; and ... after each salvo he shot those who still showed signs of life.
"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.'
"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 president 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."(Lukss cofounded and helped lead the Black Ribbon Day crusade.)
"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. Solicitor Genernal Bob Kaplan said he would not 'risk his political career on the prosecution of alleged war criminals living in Canada.' Justice Minister Jean Chrétien said, 'I don't intend to introduce legislation in Canada for crimes committed 35 years ago in other nations.'"
The situation with Niedra and LNAK bring to mind the role of the
reactionary Ukrainian Canadian Congress and its close relations with the
Canadian state, which was brought to broad attention when the Nazi
collaborator Yaroslav Hunka was invited to Parliament and given standing
ovations in the
House of Commons in September 2023. All of this shows that the attempt
to put Niedra's name on the monument and the Hunka affair are not mistakes or aberrations, but that the promotion
of fascists, reactionaries and anti-communists is Canadian state policy. This is seen today in
Canada's support
for the crimes being committed in the present, such as the reactionary
neo-Nazi regime brought to power in Ukraine in 2014 and its brutal
massacres and other crimes committed against their fellow Ukrainians, or
the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza that is called self-defence. This is unacceptable.
The broad outrage from the Trudeau government's attempt to venerate Hunka, someone accused of crimes against humanity was such that the unveiling of the anti-communist monument scheduled for that November was delayed by more than a year. The fact that it now sits incomplete and falling into disrepair is fitting.
This article was published in
Volume 55 Number 29 - August 23, 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/TS55293.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca