" 
 ::: Who has whitewashed anything? The collaboration of Latvian SD units in the Holocaust have been fully acknowledged. Ezergailis' research and book on the Holocaust (supported by a grant from the United States Holocaust Museum) paints that picture in all its tragic detail. 
 :::    What the Russian government trumpets about the Latvians parading every year to glorify the convicted-at-Nuremberg Latvian SS is a plain and simple lie. The Waffen SS units were formed in 1943, were in fact illegally conscripted (or given choices to ""volunteer"" for duty which included choices known to have an even shorter life expectancy than duty in the Waffen SS), did not pledge any allegiance to the Reich except for the first 300 forced to do so, and fought on the Eastern Front. If the Waffen SS were the ""colllaborators"" that Russia paints them to be, then how did it come that (at that point former) Latvian Waffen SS were posted as guards by the Allies (rather odd, weren't the Soviets Allies?) at Nuremburg? 
 :::    The template simply mentions propaganda and the need for an open mind. My family's experience of the Nazis in Latvia includes my father-in-law (a teen at the time) finding their family's best friend, Jewish, decapitatedthat after running over fields strewn with corpses to try to get to her to warn her. That you're reading an utterly reprehensible agenda of whitewashing Nazi crimes into the template is you, the template is merely your excuse to make your accusations. Don't presume to tar me with whatever brush you have handy for whatever ""whitewashing"" you think I'm part of.         "