The place of the tragedy in the history of Latvia is still unclear

The desperate and idealistic military resistance of the Kurelean Lieutenant Robert Ruben's battalion to the German 16th Army units, SD and SS units lasted from November 14 to December 9, 1944 in Ugāle, Usma, Renda and Zlēku parishes and on December 9 and 10, 1944. ended with tragic events in Zlēku Parish, Ventspils District.
During these two days, in a fight with the national and Soviet partisans, the Germans decided to punish the locals who supported them - they drew a circle around the map and surrounded it. Everyone in it was killed and all eight houses in the demarcated area were set on fire. Most of the killers were refugees from completely different parts of Latvia, many of whom had arrived very recently.

We have not yet sufficiently understood and appreciated the significance of the Zlēku tragedy in the history of the Latvian state, including a conversation with a member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, physicist Oļģerts Lielausi. He chaired the initiative group of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, established ten years ago, whose task was to preserve the brightest testimonies to the history and popular memory of the Latvian resistance movement during the Second World War and its victims.

The big ear was 14 years and three months old in December 1944 and can still tell about what happened at that time, as well as remembers several vivid episodes.

"[Reuben's battalion] infantry walked along the Abava, but the transporters walked through Cirkala. There was a road. I remember Cirkale was full of refugees. The soldiers entered a larger building that no longer survives. infantry, or other armament.People said that the wounded Lieutenant Ruben was being carried in a chariot.

Near Cirkale there are houses that [the Germans burned down between December 7 and 10, 1944] - "Grauči", next to "Grauči" is "Jaunarāji", where my relatives lived, who were all shot. A total of eight houses were burned. Jekeln, the top German SS and police official in Ostland, allegedly put an even bigger circle on the map, including Cirkali, where punishment had to be carried out, but it was protested.

The biggest injustice is that around 160 people were shot here. Mostly everyone is talking about soldier heroism, but how to link it to the tragic? Even at the Academy of Sciences, a special commission was set up to preserve the evidence of the Zlēku tragedy, but this case has faltered and so far there has been no serious move. "

Wartime chaos and curiosity

Asked whether this was not the biggest battle, where Latvians had a very serious clash with the Germans, Lielauss points out that in some places there were no Germans. "Russians were cursing near Abriņi, over Abava, because there were Vlasovians, but on this side there were Latgalians. At that time it was fashionable that the most typical men shot with a heavy Russian machine gun" Maksim "from the shoulder. And one of them Latgalians , in front of him from the other shore also sounded llamas in Russian. "

"My aunt and her husband, a forester, lived in Cirkala. I stayed with them in the summer. The German" Jagdverband "unit, which was under the command of the SD, lived in Cirkale. It had about 40 to 50 people. The Germans commanded them, and this unit called the "Red Arrow" [Soviet partisans].

Another episode - in Cirkale, where there was a German unit, two Latvian soldiers were captured and imprisoned in one large barn. They were also protected by Latvians. I remember one of them saying, "Janson, go tell the freaks that one came out." The guards found that the window grilles had been moved and one of the detainees, the Ugalist, had gone, while the other detainee had a leave certificate, which was a secure document, and although he could flee, he did not.

The boss of the guard, and the Terrier, an Austrian who was a handsome guy and liked the daughters, arrived. He came out and, in that upset, in the presence of civilian refugees, shot the detainee with a leave certificate that had not fled. The confusion remained even greater, the shooter was confused, because the accident in his change of guard confused everyone present. The Germans immediately removed the shooting…

Another episode in Cirkale - my father had turned on the radio to listen to English news. Once he listened to them in one room and a German commander came behind him. His father thought there would be a big smell, but no, the German comforted him and inquired about where the front is now in the West. He had a family somewhere in Germany, and he wondered if English, French or American had come there.

The situation was such that the Germans did not know what was going on in their homes. It was in Cirkale at that time.

Memorial to the Zlēku tragedy

"In Russian times it was accepted: every republic had to have a high-rise building, we have such an academy of sciences, and it was accepted: in every republic, as a rule, German dangerous works are needed. In Belarus, Ukraine .

Until recently, we judged at the Academy of Sciences that the largest war crime in the territory of Latvia has been committed in Zlēka, which has been forgotten so far. Academician Willis Samson, who had fought in the Soviet partisans, investigated the tragedy of Zlēku during the Soviet era.

At the end of the war, many residents of Zlēku Parish provided assistance to Soviet partisans and scouts, and supported the deserters of the German fascist army. Outraged by the failure to fight the guerrillas, the punitive expedition led by General Friedrich Jekeln retaliated vehemently against the locals.

But the Soviet partisans had not angered Jekeln - the "Red Arrow" was sitting in the bushes near Zlēka and watching what was happening. Jekeln was furious with the Kurelian struggle and the Rubenian military resistance, and paid for it with the lives of about 160 innocent people, large and small, local and refugees, who had stayed well in the military for a week. "

Today in Zlēka there is Karātavkalns. There are reburied part of those killed. Around twenty boulders form a circle with the names of the people killed, but in the center is a black marble obelisk about three meters high. It is supposedly taken from the old "Jewish cemetery" in the suburbs of Moscow, Riga.

Wouldn't it be time to bring it back and install a Latvian boulder with today's inscription and cross sign instead? I think that the victims of the Zlēku tragedy should be shown due honor and the place of giving this honor would be symbolically Karātavkalns in Zlēka. 160 people were killed for the Kurelians' struggle for the restoration of Latvia's independence, and these fighters did not fit into the German or Soviet occupation. "