The Holocaust in Estonia, remembrance and research

The Estonian History Museum just restored the Klooga Holocaust Memorial. The opening of the renovated memorial took place on 16 September 2013. President of the Riigikogu Ene Ergma, Minister of Culture Rein Lang, and Member of Israel’s Knesset Rina Frenkel participated in the opening. The opening of the memorial was followed by a Holocaust-themed roundtable organized by the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute.

During the German occupation, the Nazis murdered close to a thousand local Jews on Estonian territory – those who had not yet managed, were not able or did not wish to flee from the occupation to the Soviet Union. In addition, nearly 12 500 Jews from other European countries occupied by Nazi Germany were brought to Estonia, of whom 7500 to 8000 died or were killed here. The rest were evacuated from Estonia and in September 1944, when the Red Army once again occupied Estonia, it found only the few hundred survivors in the Klooga camp.

On the initiative of President Lennart Meri, the International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity was created in 1998. The commission, which was chaired by the internationally respected retired Finnish diplomat Max Jacobson, was summoned together by Lennart Meri and consisted of Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Paul Goble, Nicholas Lane, Peter Reddaway, Arseny Roginsky, and Baron Wolfgang von Stetten. The goal of the commission was to investigate the crimes against humanity that were committed on the territory of the Republic of Estonia during the Nazi and Soviet occupations.

In its conclusions, the commission wrote that the general responsibility for most, though not all, of the criminal episodes addressed in the report fell on the German military and civilian occupation authorities. This was established during the Nuremberg trials and has been confirmed through many other connections. Another goal of the commission was to confirm the identities of the Estonians that are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide or war crimes as a result of their official positions or activities. The results of the commission’s investigations are available to the public at http://www.historycommission.ee/. The Max Jakobson Commission completed its work in 2008; related work is being continued by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.

Estonia has repeatedly and on a high level condemned the crimes committed against the Jewish people on occupied Estonian territory by foreign powers as well as local collaborators.

On 27 January 2003, Estonia observed Holocaust Remembrance Day for the first time. On Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2012, a Gallery of Memory was opened in the Estonian Jewish Community Centre that bears the names of the 974 Estonian Jews that were murdered on Estonia’s territory during World War II. The sites of the detention and execution of Jews in Tallinn, Klooga, Kalevi-Liiva, Vaivara, Ereda, Kiviõli, and elsewhere in Estonia have been designated with memorial markers.

In 1993 the Estonian History Museum gave the Yad Vashem Centre in Jerusalem a collection of items and photographs that had belonged to the Jews killed in the Klooga concentration camp. In March of 2005, then-Minister of Education and Research Toivo Maimets participated in the opening of a new permanent exhibit at Yad Vashem, as a significant part of the exhibit is made up of the items and photos from Klooga. In response to an invitation to participate in the opening ceremony of the Klooga Holocaust Memorial in September 2013, the president of Yad Vashem, Ayner Shalev, responded with a letter to Minister of Culture Rein Lang in which he expressed his thanks for Estonia’s erstwhile contribution to Yad Vashem’s exposition. On the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, a tree has been planted in the memory of Estonian theologian, poet and philosopher Uku Masing and his wife Eha. The Masings concealed a Jewish student in their home during the German occupation, saving the student’s life.

Estonia is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has the goal of gaining the support of political leaders and social movements for Holocaust education and the commemoration and study of the Holocaust on both the national and international level.

In Estonian schools, the Holocaust is addressed in connection with the events of World War II. The subject is taught in grades five and nine and is addressed in more detail in secondary school, primarily in the 12th grade.

Estonian teachers regularly participate in courses on Jewish history and the Holocaust in the Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies. The project is funded by the Estonian government and Yad Vashem. The most recent course took place in July 2012. The programme includes an overview of Jewish culture, history, Zionism, Nazism, Judaism in past eras, the life of contemporary Jews before the Holocaust, the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and Europe, and tips for how to address the topic of the Holocaust in school lessons.