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Surviving Nazis all over world may receive secure Estonia citizenship

When Gorshkov’s war crimes were made known, he was deprived of the US citizenship and returned to Estonia where he received a so desirable passport

MOSCOW, October 30 (Itar-Tass) — Surviving Nazis all over the world may receive secure citizenship of Estonia, a member of the European Union, said on Sunday head of the Federation Council International Affairs Committee Mikhail Margelov in an interview with Itar-Tass, commenting on a decision of the Prosecutor-General’s Office of that country to stop the investigation of the case of Mikhail Gorshkov, charged with committing heinous crimes in Belarus during World War II.

“Whitewashing of Nazism in Estonia has become so routine that another closure of the case on Gestapo underling Gorshkov has not even evoked any surprise,” the senator stated. “It is evident that the aged and physically fit Nazis from all over the world may leave their holes and receive a citizenship (secure for fascists) in Estonia, a member of the European Union,” he underlined, noting that “Brussels and Strasbourg stubbornly pay no attention to these Estonian pranks”.

“It turns out that a butcher may not be a US citizen, but he may be one in the European Union, in direct proximity to places of his crimes,” Margelov says in puzzlement. “Of course it can be said that operetta “provincial Nazism” blossoms in Estonia,” he continued. But, regrettably, this sinister phenomenon cannot be either a laughing stock or provincial”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry appraised the stand of Estonian investigative bodies with respect to one of the main, according to data of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Nazi criminals as “humiliation of the memory of Nazi victims and a direct challenge to the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, making up an inseparable part of the modern world legal space”.

According to information from the Centre, engaged in studying the Holocaust, Gorshkov had served at the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation of Estonia. According to information of US authorities and Jewish human rights organisations, Gorshkov directly participated in massacres of 3,000 Jews at the Slutsk ghetto, while serving as an interpreter and investigator at the Gestapo headquarters in Belarus.

Following the war end, he fled overseas where he was in hiding till 2002. According to US laws, the entry to the country is forbidden to those who participated in killings and cooperated with Nazis. When Gorshkov’s war crimes were made known, he was deprived of the US citizenship and returned to Estonia where he received a so desirable passport.