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A number ofwar crimes trials were held during theSoviet occupation of Estonia (1944–1991). The best-known trial was brought in 1961, by theSoviet authorities againstlocal collaborators who had participated in theHolocaust during theGerman occupation (1941–1944). The accused were charged with murdering up to 5,000German andCzechoslovakian Jews andRomani people near theJägala concentration camp in 1942–1943. Thepublic trial by the Supreme Court of theEstonian SSR was held in the auditorium of the Navy Officers Club inTallinn[1] and attended by a mass audience. All three defendants were convicted andsentenced to death, one in absentia. The two defendants present for the trial were executed shortly after. The third defendant,Ain-Ervin Mere, was not available for execution.
A second trial was held inTartu in 1962. The accused Estonian collaborators were charged with killing Soviet citizens and were sentenced to deathin absentia. The trial verdict and testimony were inadvertently published in the magazineSotsialisticheskaya zakonnost ('Socialist Legality') before the trial began.
While the accused may have been involved in othercrimes against humanity during theGerman occupation of Estonia, the trial focused on the events of September 1942. According to testimony of the survivors, at least two transports with about 2,100–2,150 people,[8] arrived at the railway station atRaasiku, one fromTheresienstadt concentration camp withCzechoslovakian Jews and one fromBerlin with German Jews. Around 1,700–1,750 people, mainly Jews, notselected for work at the Jägala camp were taken toKalevi-Liiva and shot.[8]
TransportBe 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt arrived at the Raasiku station on September 5, 1942, after a five-day trip.[9][10]According to testimony by one of the accused, Gerretts, eight busloads of Estonianauxiliary police had arrived fromTallinn.[10] A selection process was supervised by Ain-Ervin Mere, chief ofSicherheitspolizei in Estonia; those not selected for slave labor were sent by bus to an execution site near the camp. Later the police[10] in teams of 6 to 8 men[8] would execute the Jews bymachine gun fire, on other hand, during later investigation some guards of camp denied participation of police and said that execution was done by camp personnel.[8] On the first day a total of 900 people were murdered in this way.[8][10] Gerrets told that he had fired a pistol at a victim who was still making noises in the pile of bodies.[6][10] The whole operation was directed byObersturmführerHeinrich Bergmann andOberscharführer Julius Geese.[8][10][11]
Usually able bodied men were selected to work on theoil shale mines in northeastern Estonia. Women, children, and old people would be executed on arrival. In the caseBe 1.9.1942 however, the only ones chosen for labor and to survive the war were a small group of young women who were taken through concentration camps in Estonia, Poland and Germany to Bergen- Belsen, where they were liberated.[12] Camp commandant Laak used the women assex slaves, killing at least one who refused to comply.[13]
According to an article published by the journal "Contemporary European History" in 2001,
In 1942, transports of Jews from other countries arrived, and their murder and incarceration in slave labour camps was organised and supervised by German and Estonian officials (including Mere and the German head of A-IV). The final acts of liquidating the camps, such asKlooga, which involved the mass-shooting of roughly 2,000 prisoners, were committed by Estonians under German command, that is by units of the20.SS-Division and (presumably) the Schutzmannschaftsbataillon of the KdS. Survivors report that, during this period when Jewish slave labourers were visible, the Estonian population in part attempted to help the Jews by providing food and so on.[14]
TheEstonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity rests the responsibility for such crimes mainly on 2.5–4 % of the EstonianOmakaitse civil defence units and the EstonianSecurity Police.[15] A number of foreign witnesses were heard at the trial, including five women, who had been transported onBe 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt.[10]
The accused Mere, Gerrets and Viik actively participated in crimes and mass killings that were perpetrated by the Nazi invaders on the territory of the Estonian SSR. In accordance with Fascist racial theory, theSicherheitspolizei andSicherheitsdienst were instructed to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies. For that end in August–September 1941 Mere and his collaborators set up a death camp at Jägala, 30 km from Tallinn. Mere put Aleksander Laak in charge of the camp; Ralf Gerrets was appointed his deputy. On 5 September 1942 a train with approximately 1,500 Czechoslovak citizens arrived to theRaasiku railway station. Mere, Laak and Gerrets personally selected who of them should be executed and who should be moved to the Jägala death camp. More than 1,000 people, mostly children, the old, and the infirm, were translocated to a wasteland atKalevi-Liiva where they were monstrously executed in a special pit. In mid-September the second troop train with 1,500 prisoners arrived to the railway station from Germany. Mere, Laak, and Gerrets selected another thousand victims that were condemned by them to extermination. This group of prisoners, which included nursing women and their new-born babies, were transported to Kalevi-Liiva where they were killed. In March 1943 the personnel of the Kalevi-Liiva camp executed about fifty Gypsies, half of which were under 5 years of age. Also were executed 60 Gypsy children of school age...
Original documents related to the Mere-Gerrets-Viik trial are to be found in Estonian State Archives – Party Archives Branch – ERA PA, Collection 129, boxes 63–70.[5]
Mere, Gerrets, Viik and were all sentenced to death. Gerrets and Viik were both executed by shooting on March 31, 1961. Gerrets was 55 and Viik was 44.[16]
By the early 1960s, the Soviet government was pursuingJuhan Jüriste,Karl Linnas andErvin Viks, who were accused of murdering 12,000 people in theTartu concentration camp. A more recent estimate concluded that the number was around 3,500 people, mainly Estonian and Estonian Jews as well as some Soviet POWs and Jews from Poland and Czechoslovakia.[17] According to an official Soviet account: "the main culprit, Ervin Viks, fled the ire of the people and now lives in Australia, whereas Linnas found shelter in the USA".[18] The Soviet authorities requested the extradition of both men, but against the background of theCold War, were flatly refused.[18]
In January 1962, a show trial was conducted with the three accused [Jüriste present and Linnas and Viks absent] men triedin absentia inTartu and sentenced to death. The transcript and verdict of the trial were published in the magazineSotsialisticheskaya zakonnost (Soviet Jurisprudence) in December before the trial had even occurred. The actual trial started in January the following year, delayed because one of the defendants was ill.[17][19][20] Jüriste was executed on March 16, 1962, at the age of 65.
During the trials in Tallinn and Tartu several witnesses pointed out Heinrich Bergmann as the key figure behind the extermination of EstonianRomani people.[5][21]
The AustralianAttorney General, SirGarfield Barwick, continued to reject extradition requests for Viks, saying that since the USSR and Australia did not have an extradition treaty and Viks had passed immigration screening processes, any such extradition would undermine Australian sovereignty.[22] Viks died in Australia in 1983.
In 1987, Linnas was deported to the USSR, after a US federal appeals court had deemed evidence against him "overwhelming and largely uncontroverted."[23] The American judge remarked that his crimes "were such as to offend the decency of any civilized society."[23] Linnas died in a Soviet prison hospital, reportedly of old age, in the same year, 1987.