Protest against destruction of soviet memorial in Riga, Latvia

24. August 2022

With horror and indignation the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) had to learn that the state institutions of Latvia have actually begun with the destruction of the Soviet “Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German-fascist invaders”. The monument was erected in 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of the victory over Hitler’s Germany.

It is a barbaric act of unculture, equivalent to the iconoclasm of the Inquisition, when the government of a country of the European Union – instead of making efforts to preserve historical memory, wantonly destroys the commemorative and memorial signs of liberation from Nazi fascism.

It is an expression of an unacceptable forgetfulness of history when, on the one hand, the collaborators of the German SS are allowed to march through Riga annually on Latvia’s National Day as “fighters for Latvian freedom”, but the liberators from Nazi barbarism are no longer to be honoured by a monument.

We expect the government of the Republic of Latvia to immediately stop this act of barbarism and restore the memorial. We expect from the European Union and its representatives to fulfil their responsibility for an anti-fascist European memory and to stop such barbarism.