A fact from War crimes trials in Soviet Estonia appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 June 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:
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Petri, I asked what is wrong with title (
Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia, 1961), I did not question if it is show trial, if they were actualy guilty, if estonia was occupied then trial took place or anything else unrelated. Also that The word "holocaust" was unknown in 1961 is not an argument as it was also not known in 1939-1945 but we still have article
The Holocaust.--
Staberinde13:58, 10 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Petri Krohn's apparently complicated preferences for article title wordings can be explained by
Occam's razor: He does not particularly care whether the victims were Jews or not, he denies the Soviet occupation of Estonia, and his Wikipedia record clearly indicates that he hates Estonians. Hence he did not particularly want the words 'Holocaust' and 'Soviet' to be used here, and would vehemently stick to an article title insinuating that these were not so much 'Nazi crimes', or 'crimes of Estonian collaborators', but 'Estonian crimes'. Cheap and transparent.--
Klamber20:11, 10 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Furthermore, it probably deserves mention that trials like this, as well as other -- less publicised --
NKVD/
KGB executions, were a main factor in there being so little Nazi criminals left to try in post-Soviet Estonia, which
Simon Wiesenthal Center regularly points out.
Digwuren14:06, 10 June 2007 (UTC)reply
It stems from
Petri Krohn's inability to tell apart the real world from his private fantasies. Consequently, when he says 'Holocaust denial', the actual semantic content is 'You're disagreeing with me on a Holocaust-related subject!'. In this case, he appears to have gotten the idea that 'war crimes' is the One True Classification of the atrocity described, and, perhaps out of a "theory" that 'war crimes' is a harsher description than 'participation in Holocaust', sees reclassification of this Holocaust event as a Holocaust event as "reducing the significance of Holocaust".
This article specifically describes the trials held in Soviet Estonia over crimes committed against Jews during WW2.
Martintg22:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)reply
No - There is no precedent for this selection of words.
Google hits:
"war crimes trial": 935 000
"Holocaust trial": 753 (first hit: "Holocaust Denial On Trial")
"Estonian SSR": 61 800
"Soviet Estonia": 24 500 (most links to "post-Soviet Estonia")
Yes. Current title is not adequate, as they were Holocaust trials - and they certainly happened in Soviet Estonia. Perhaps
Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia, like has been recommended before. That gives all location, incident and time frame.
DLX15:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Yes, Petri has provided no serious argumentation aganist renaming. Also attempt to use very poorly conducted google search as agument is ridiculous, as Klamber demonstrated: "Estonian war crimes trials" = 0. Proposed
Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia is a lot more accurate.--
Staberinde16:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Yes. The suggested alternative title is much less ambiguous. Current title is logically inconsistent wordplay by a certain user with a vociferous record of denying the 1940-1941/1944-1991 Soviet occupation of Estonia. Inconsistent because, according to such "logic" of Soviet occupation denial, Estonian state did not exist in 1942, Kalevi-Liiva was on Soviet territory, and Gerrets, Mere and other criminals were Soviet citizens, which would make the subject of this article really "Soviet war crimes", not "Estonian war crimes"... Disclaimer: In case anyone suspects me of being the puppeteer of DLX and Klamber, please do not count this vote. Cheers, --
3 Löwi08:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)reply
And how exactly do we want to dismiss those trials? By trying to fix the title that doesn't cover the topic accurately? Are you sure we have the "atitude"?
DLX15:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Petri, your attempts to picture trials over holocaust perperators as trials over simple war criminals can be considered
holocaust denial. Secondly Soviet Estonia was place there trials took place, that if they were neutral or not can be decided by reader. Finally, please no statements in style "you are bad for reason x and this is common attidute among Estonians".--
Staberinde20:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)reply
There is clearly no consensus to move. The weaselizing move poll is not valid, and voting is evil. One might have asked me in advance who will vote to expurgate the word "Holocaust" from the title, and my prediction would have been accurate. Wikipedia does not welcome the votes of one-purpose meatpuppets. What about some comments from a neutral observer? Have you listed the page on
WP:RM? --
Ghirla-трёп-11:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)reply
I have found a retrospective
crystal ball in a box of old junk. Guess what? It postdicts that the only one to vote for expurgation of 'Holocaust' from the title was
Petri Krohn. Can your predictions match my awesome postdiction power? I doubt it.
Digwuren12:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)reply
The page has been
listed for four days, which you would have undubitably seen if you would have just checked your own link of
WP:RM. However, if you would have so done, you would also have seen that the policy does not require such listing.
Digwuren13:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)reply
The article is specifically about
Holocaust crimes. The articles you cite also concern
war crimes commited by states such as, for example
Forcing occupied people to serve in the forces of a hostile power
Deportation of inhabitants of occupied territory
Settlement of occupied territory
which Germany, Italy and Japan were guilty of, but certainly not Estonia. --
Martintg
Closing words of Gerrets
I remember reading from somewhere, that detailed conscript of trial's closing/final statement (probably wrong wording, I don't know what is correct) by Gerrets were released to the newspapers before he made that statement. I couldn't find the source, but it would be good to have that in the article.
DLX16:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)reply
The term show trial describes a type of public
trial in which the
judicial authorities have already determined the
guilt of the
defendant: the actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as an impressive example and as a warning. It tends to be
retributive rather than
correctionaljustice. Most of the time it involves a 'sin' and a 'planting of evidence'.
”
There has not been any proof or references presented to show that this trial would satisfy any of the criteria listed. It has been tagged for sources almost two days. I am removing the claim of
show trial. --
Petri Krohn18:11, 11 June 2007 (UTC)reply
All public Soviet political trials were show trials, and this is common knowledge.
About showrtrialness. The "trial" was held in a public theatre with thousands as audience. The "trial" was broadcast in TV and radio. There was no real defence process involved -- it consisted of the accused reading their confessions from paper and then declaring the guilt. You can't get more show trial than that. Also some people who have watched/listened the recordings have admitted that the accused probably heard some of the accusations first time...
So, the show factor of this trial should be definitely marked in the intro. Nobody can claim that this was not intended as show and propaganda, regardless of the validity of the accusations.
Suva05:31, 20 June 2007 (UTC)reply
You may have failed to notice that, within an hour or two, I sourced the entire article which you flooded with a dozen bad-faith requests for citations. It's no wonder that mistakes happen when one works in haste. My actions made the article eligible for DYK, while the abuse of {fact} tags was previously qualified by ArbCom as "tag trolling". Don't you see the difference between our behaviour? In this particular case, the former was constructive, while the latter was disruptive. Please don't troll again, and there will be no more mistakes. --
Ghirla-трёп-16:25, 19 June 2007 (UTC)reply
You may have failed to notice that, but I appeared here for the first time on June 13, 19:01, while this edit was done on June 10, 15:05, more than three days before. Only you can figure out how I could have made "a dozen bad-faith requests for citations" by June 10.
Colchicum16:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)reply
What is
this? As I have repeated ad nauseum, I don't make a clear distinction between you, Digwuren, DLX, Alexia, etc. Your style of editing is suspiciously similar; you pop up within minutes to second each other's opinion, and RCU has so far been inconclusive. Until the contrary is proved, I should be excused in feeling that foul play is involved here. --
Ghirla-трёп-16:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)reply
This is a fact-tag posted on June 19 (cf. a dozen by June 10). I have never been subject to RCU. You may try if you wish. I don't care of your suspicions and feelings. This article and many others is now on my Watchlist, so it is hardly surprising that I follow edits here.
Colchicum16:43, 19 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Ghirla, what abuse of {fact} tags? References of earlier version of article included German wikipedia, broken link and forum. I assume that you know such things are not really reliable, especially with controversial stuff like here. As Petri had written article at same day I expected him to have all reliable references at hand and expeted it to be only short formality for him to solve the problem by adding references.--
Staberinde18:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Notability of people mentioned
I checked the
WP:NOTE and
WP:BIO and I would dare to say that those people mentioned in this article are not all notable enough to have their own articles. The problem relates to some other New Wave of Estonian Articles aswell.
Suva07:53, 20 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Here are the names of some of the witnesses who have given testimony at the trial or against
Aleksander Laak in Canada. Also included are their ages at the time of the trial. I will try to update the list. --
Petri Krohn (
talk)
08:33, 17 August 2010 (UTC)reply
Susan Spalter, 40 (Czech - New York)
Gisela Danziger Herzl, 40 (Czech - New York)
Hanna Klenkova
Eva Meisnerova, 35
Markita Marseva, 40
Ruth Krepshkova, 33
Misleading title
The article should be renamed/moved since the current title is misleading. Whereas the 1961 trials, described in the first half of the article, relate mostly to
the Holocaust, the Tartu trials of 1962 are unrelated to the extermination of Jews. A more appropriate title for the entire article would perhaps be "War crimes trials in Soviet Estonia" where the "Holocaust trial" is a subsection. The current title refers exclusively to the roughly 10,000 Jewish victims of the Vaivara concentration camp system, but it does injustice to the roughly 12,000 non-Jewish victims of Tartu (POWs, political prisoners, etc.). An alternative would be to divide it into two separate articles. --
Vihelik (
talk)
20:43, 20 July 2011 (UTC)reply
I've done some further reading which suggests that some of the 12,000 killed in Tartu were Jewish. So I have moved the article back until it can be cleared up. --
Martin Tammsalu (
talk)
00:01, 21 July 2011 (UTC)reply
According to the findings of the
Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 53 people were executed in Tartu for being Jewish. Of course, there may have been occasional but unidentified Jews among the POWs and political prisoners who were executed for "crimes" other than their ethnicity. There were also 80 Jews of Polish and Czech origin, brought from Narva conz. camp in 1943 to erase any evidence of earlier executions, who were eventually killed once their task was completed. Nevertheless, the percentage of Jewish victims in this particular case was so small and in proportion to their number in the general population as not to justify the labeling of Tartu 1961 trials as "Holocaust trials". Again, the article should either be renamed or split in two. --
Vihelik (
talk)
21:29, 23 July 2011 (UTC)reply
Requested move 6 November 2017
The following is a closed discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Oppose War crimes suggests war crimes, Holocaust suggests the ethnic genocide of the Jewish population. Lutheran women and child weren't rounded up and killed by the Estonian Nazis, it was Jews for being Jewish, unrelated to any potential military threat from these women and children.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
12:47, 6 November 2017 (UTC)reply
War crimes are normally horrific acts against unarmed civilians during wartime. There is nothing ambiguous about the definition, the nazi leaders were tried and executed specifically for war crimes against the jews. From
Nuremberg trials, " ...leadership of
Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in
the Holocaust and other
war crimes. ", also see:
War_crime#London_Charter_.2F_Nuremberg_Trials_1945 and
War crime. However the point really is that the Russians at this time were basically Holocaust deniers, and the holocaust as we think of it (the genocide) did not feature in these trials. All the crimes prosecuted here happened during wartime and were tried as war crimes, clearly labeled as such in court papers. If the holocaust did not feature in the trials, why are we including it? Its an obvious case of mistaken labelling.
Dysklyver21:11, 6 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Because per
WP:CRITERIA we are labelling in English for modern English-speaking readers of Wikipedia. If the article had a capitalized Official Title, we might want to translate the official title, but as it is we are only putting an English name on the article allowing readers to identify content.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
21:40, 6 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Nom's comment -- “Holocaust trials” is not the common name for the trials in 1960s conducted in Soviet Estonia, as I noted in the nom; “War crimes trials” is. In addition, the accused were charged with crimes against communists, soviet guerillas, and other non-Jews. Here are more examples, in addition to Weiss-Wendt:
The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trialsm p. 252: “Two particularly prominent trials (…) were held in Estonia. In 1961, a prosecution was mounted against Ain-Ervin Mere (commander of the Estonian Security Police under the Self-Administration set up under …”
Contested and Shared Places of Memory: History and politics in North ..., by Jorg Hackmann, Marko Lehti (2013): “The Estonian Security Police had a mostly bureaucratic mode of operation, and for this reason it drew only limited ... In the open war-crimes trials that were staged throughout the Baltic region during the 1960s, however, mass murder of Jews ...”
These sources deal with the topic of the trials directly and do not refer to the proceedings as “Holocaust trials”. They use “war crimes convictions” and “war crimes trials”. In another example, a search for [Holocaust trial Estonia 1961] produces this
Google books preview:
“Records Relating to War Crimes Investigations and Trials in Estonia” – that’s the official Soviet name
An exception that I found is:
Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing: “… the head of the Nazi Estonian security police, the Sicherheitspolizei, created in 1942. In 1961 he was condemned to death in the first Soviet Holocaust trials…” but it generally confirms the rule.
In short, “Holocaust trials” in not the
WP:COMMON name. The name “Holocaust trials” as it pertains to Soviet Estonia appears to be the resulf of editorial synthesis, as in: the accused were charged with crimes in which Jews were murdered, so we are going to call them “Holocaust trials”. This is contradicted by the fact that the term does not appear in the bulk of the scholarly literature on the topic.
K.e.coffman (
talk)
22:31, 6 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Comment: This would reverse the previous move 23:57, 20 July 2011 Nug (talk | contribs | block) . . (48 bytes) (+48) . . (moved War crimes trials in Soviet Estonia to Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia over redirect: Checked some sources and the original title is correct), so there have been at least two previous moves to-and-fro (see also discussion above).
Andrewa (
talk)
06:38, 13 November 2017 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a
move review. No further edits should be made to this section.