The British and Their Latvian SS Prisoners: Zedelgem 1945–1946

Abstract

The controversy over the memorial erected by the Belgian municipality of Zedelgem in 2018 to honor the Latvians held as prisoners of the British between 1945 and 1946 has shone a light on the increasing divergence between the Latvian nationalist narrative attached to its ‘freedom fighters’ and that espoused by the West. The purpose of this article is to examine the background of the Latvians’ presence in Belgium in the immediate postwar period, the problems their presence created, how they were treated by their British captors, and how they were ultimately dispersed into civilian life. Far from being the victims of indifference, the Latvians in SS uniforms, as well as their Baltic counterparts, were the beneficiaries of increasing early Cold War animosities and systematically protected by the British from Soviet demands for their repatriation, as this would amount to de facto recognition of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States.