Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
Stan,

A lot of this is from my memory of Ian Kershaw's book, specifically on how the Holocaust developed to the extent it did out of the German war effort in the East. Timothy Snyder's The Reconstruction of Nations also has a lot of good stuff on Lithuania and Poland, specifically on the development of ethnic nationalism separated out different groups which previously did not define themselves by ethnic categories. Most of the slaughter of the Jews in the Baltics was in Latvia and Lithuania - Estonia had a very small Jewish population, IIRC.

As for the slaughter of Jews in the Baltics, a large number of these were not "national" Jews because the Germans shipped many Jews from all over Eastern Europe to Baltic camps for extermination. Vaivara, for instance, housed thousands of Jews from all over the Baltics in Estonia, and thousands of Czech Jews were shot at Kalevi-Liiva (US HHM website).
Thanks for the link Tequila! It was to say the least, strange and even my Estonian better half (at nearly 50) remains skeptical over the sheer numbers in the article. We were coincidentally in Vaivera County for a friends wedding last year. Stranger yet is the County's far eastern location to the Russian border (most of the German camps were not directly on the land borders with Russia - at least not long lived camps). There are Estonian articles referring to the UK Guardian's reports on Kalev-Liiva in 2008, but darn little evidence that would substantiate the numbers (even Wiki has but 1,000 deaths).

Back to the thread I guess !