"Under the Sign of Scorpion" by Juri - Gnostic Liberation Front

crimcs. He was responsible for the cruel mass deportations of Latvians to
Siberia. Many of them did not survive in the punishment camps. Noviks
was named chief of the NKVD in Daugavpils in 1940. He fled to the
Soviet Union before the German troops marched in, but returned in 1945.
He was then named commissary of internal affairs and chief of the NKVD
in Latvia. Noviks was accused of genocide, since he had organised the
awful reign of terror and many of the executions in Latvia. Novik's usual
method, according to surviving witnesses, was to torture and beat
prisoners to squeeze "confessions" out of them. He was now described as
"the people's executioner" in the Latvian newspapers. The case was
investigated by a special government commission for the investigation of
political crimes committed in Latvia during the years of the occupation.
The NKVD began executing Latvian patriots immediately after the
Soviet take-over. Lists of 978 such people were discovered after the
Bolshcviks' retreat in July of 1941. A document which the Chekists had
not had time to destroy was found. It was an order by Simon Shustin to
shoot 74 people, including six women. Quartered bodies of the victims of
the Red terror were found buried in the courtyard of the Central Prison in
Riga. Simon Shustin had signed this execution order on June 26, 1941 and
added the following with red ink: "Considering the public danger they
constitute, they should all be shot." It was no coincidence that he was
called "Latvia's executioner".
Why were these victims so dangerous? J. Krischmanis had spoken in
favour of a free Latvia and Estonia. Viktor Somovits had sung Latvian
folk songs. Others had criticised the Soviet regime... Those martyrs had
endurcd torture and indescribable, terrible sufferings before their lives
were ended with a pistol shot in the neck. Many bodies had been mutilated
beyond recognition.
Is it strange then, considering all those horrible crimes against huma-
nity, that an anti-Semitic attitude surfaced in Latvia, where 95 000 Jews
lived? This would have happened in Sweden or any other country as well.
There were Jewish, ostensibly non-Communist members of the Latvian
Parliament. There was Rabbi Nurok, who was deported to the Soviet
Union on the 14th of June 1941. He survived, strangely enough, and later
became a member of the Israeli Knesset. (Expressen, 24th of March 1969.)
The Jewish terror (Bernson, Gorlitsky and others) against the Lithua-
nian people was exceptionally cruel. 34 000 women and children
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