Israel Slams Latvian Show Celebrating Life of Alleged Nazi War Criminal
Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the production in Latvia of a show celebrating the life of alleged Nazi war criminal Herbert Cukurs.
Titled “Cukurs, Herbert Cukurs,” the musical premiered earlier this month. The play is based on the life of the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando force that participated in the near annihilation of Latvian Jewry after the Nazis invaded Latvia. Israel’s Mossad spy agency reportedly killed Cukurs in South America.
The Latvian government has criticized but not banned the privately produced work.
“Israel strongly condemns the production in Latvia of a musical that honors the memory of Latvian Nazi war criminal Herberts Cukurs,” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which rarely comments on artistic endeavors that are not about Israel, said in a statement Thursday.
Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said: “This is the first time in years that Israel has denounced the attempt to whitewash crimes against humanity in the Baltics, and it is a welcome step.”
According to Holocaust survivors’ testimonies, Cukurs personally killed and tortured Jews, he added.
Many in the Baltic nations today view Nazi collaborators as national heroes because they fought the Russian army and Moscow’s grip on the region before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO