A famous monument in Tallinn Bronze Soldier, dedicated to the memory of the fallen in the Second World War. Photo: Oleg Lastochkin/Sputnik.
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sep 22, 2024
Estonia may prefer not to remember that it owes its liberation from the atrocities of Nazi troops in WWII to the USSR/Russia, but history’s stark facts and figures cannot be swept under the rug. September 22 is one such date.
80 years ago, the Soviet Red Army liberated Estonia’s capital Tallinn. By November, the Red Army’s successful Baltic operation had driven the Nazi German invaders out of all Estonian territory.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and in July the battles of World War II reached Estonia. German troops unleashed genocide and terror on civilians with the help of Estonian collaborators.
Over 5,000 volunteers signed up to join the Estonian SS Legion, while close to 7,000 joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht.
Members of the international movement World Without Nazism holding a rally against fascism not far from the Sinimaed hills, where the meeting of the veterans of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) was held.
© Sputnik / Alexei Olis’ko/Go to the mediabank
Mass murder of civilians, especially Russians, Jews, and Roma, was carried out by the Nazis together with so-called self-defense units, such as the Omakaitse.
After Nazi troops occupied Tallinn on December 19, 1941, the Estonian Political Police arrested 4,365 people in the capital and its suburbs. Days before the Soviet liberation of the capital, around 1,000 prisoners were executed.
Human remains at the site of massacres in the Kalevi-Liiva tract carried out by Nazi collaborators on the occupied territory of Estonia during the Great Patriotic War. Nazis and Estonian collaborators massacred Jews brought from Central European countries, as well as Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.
© Sputnik / RIA Novosti
ALBA-TCP’s Arreaza Bids Farewell and Good Riddance to EU’s Borrell
Practically all of Tallinn’s male Jews over the age of 16 were arrested and executed by the so-called self-defense squads. Estonian police units also executed Jews deported from Nazi-created ghettos in Europe.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. The Tallinn Operation of 1944, conducted from September 17 to 26 with the aim of defeating the enemy on Estonian territory and liberating Tallinn. Soviet soldiers examine a captured banner of one of the Nazi units.
© Sputnik / David Trahtenberg
During the Baltic operation from September 14 to November 24, 1944, Soviet losses in terms of killed, wounded, and missing amounted to 218,000. More than 6,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed and 24,000 wounded during the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army.
The criminality of the SS (including the Estonian SS Legion) was recognized by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.
However, eager to march in lockstep with American neocons rewriting the history of WWII, Estonian officials have glorified Nazi criminals.
A young man gives a Great Patriotic War veteran flowers on May 9th at the Liberator Soldier monument (also known as the Bronze Soldier) located in a military cemetery in Tallinn, Estonia.
© Sputnik / Alexei Olis’ko/Go to the mediabank
For more than 60 years, September 22 was marked as the Day of Tallinn’s Liberation from Nazi Occupation, only to be rebranded in 2007 by Estonian policymakers as Resistance Day against “occupying Soviet forces.”
Today’s Estonian leaders nurture the atrocious legacy of the country’s SS legionnaires, have no scruples over demolishing tombs of Soviet soldiers, and sacrilegiously digging up for relocation mass graves of those who fell while defending their country from Nazism.
