The first victim

The Museum of Occupation in Riga – which is characteristically located on Riga’s main square, just as 20th-century terror plays a central role in Latvia’s history and identity – evokes with cruelly many photographs and documents the Russian, German and again Russian occupation of the country between 1940 and 1944, the extermination of the Jews, the deportation of Latvians and their conscription into the armies of both sides to then fight against each other, the escape of survivors, the struggle of forced laborers and prisoners of war in Germany and those taken to the Gulag, the emigration, the repression in Soviet Latvia, the executions, the destruction of villages and of Latvian agriculture, the twelve-year anti-Soviet partisan war and its cruel crushing. I don’t want to post any more pictures about this than this one, the first victim of the Soviet occupation of independent Latvia in 1940, the twenty-seven-year-old border guard Jānis Macītis, who was massacred along with his wife and young son by Soviet squads that attacked without a declaration of war, only to accuse Latvia the next day of violating the border and to demand the resignation of the government and the admission of the Red Army within 9 hours.

With such a history, it is no coincidence that Latvians know exactly which side to stand on and what to expect if their former oppressors prevail again.