Sunday, 9 January 2000

"For Fatherland and Freedom"  Latvian Link
  News
  Sports
  Picture Album

Link, News, Pictures and Lat Chat for Sunday, January 9th
Date: 1/9/00
File: D:\_WWWLA~1.COM\NOV92\PICTS\R02-27~1.JPG (75787 bytes)
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It's been a busy week for us (including a 25th wedding anniversary to attend yesterday)—our apologies for getting the mailer out under the wire!

Lat Chat will happen as usual... starting 9:00/9:30 Eastern Time, follow this link on AOL: Town Square - Latvian chat
This week's link, from Gunars (Zulis@aol.com) is about Baltic coins.

In the news,

  • art nouveau architecture is the best there is (!)
  • Prosecutor General resigns
  • Suspected war criminal Konrad Kalejs continues to dominate the news, witness' account featured
  • Russian lawmaker urges U.S. to abandon Chechnya criticism, adds that if the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia fulfill their goal of joining NATO, "it would precipitate a major crisis" in U.S.-Russian relations

In sports,

  • There are five Latvian (or Latvia-born) players on this year's National Hockey League rosters
  • The English governmnet turns down working papers for one of Skonto's players to play in England

Finally, this week's picture, in keeping with last week's "twilight theme," is the Pulvertornis in Riga, taken on Peters' first trip in November 1992.

(We understand that some folks have trouble reading "progressively encoded" JPGs--this week's picture is saved in standard JPG format. Please let us know of any other issues or problems reading the mailer, especially non-AOL users.)

Silvija Peters

  Latvian Link

A site maintained by a very knowledgable coin-collector from Liepaja. This site is equally fascinating for coin collectors and baltic historians—coins are his vehicle to the past. —Gunars

Coins and Paper Money of Baltic Countries 
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5539/coins.html 

  News

       Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
      RIGA'S REWARD: When it comes to art nouveau, Latvia is the place to go
      By STEVEN C. JOHNSON
      Associated Press Writer

      RIGA, Latvia (AP) —When Janis Krastins lectures his students on Greco-Roman palaces or baroque churches, he turns to photographs and textbooks.
      When he talks about art nouveau, he just has them step outside.
      "In Brussels, you have to walk for blocks and blocks to find one example of art nouveau," says the professor at Riga Technical University, referring to Belgium's graceful capital, which also is known for the style.
      "Here, you just look up. They are on every corner," Krastins adds, pointing for emphasis at a grid of downtown Riga blanketed with red dots, each representing the twisted curves and soft colors of an art nouveau building.
      The architecture style developed in Germany, where it is called Jugendstil, and left its mark on cities from Paris to St. Petersburg. Buildings are characterized by their ornamentation: floral patterns, mythical figures, painting, human faces and, as Krastins put it in one of his books, their "whiplash curves."
      Riga had the good fortune to have a building boom at the turn of the last century, when the style was fashionable. Its Baltic Sea port was one of the most important in the Russian empire. The population grew from 270,000 in 1898 to more than 500,000 on the eve of World War I.
      Since regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has struggled to restore its architectural treasures to their former glory. More than 40 percent of the buildings in the capital are art nouveau, part of the reason the city was listed in 1997 as a UNESCO world heritage site.
      "Visually, this is where it's at," says Martins Ritins, head chef at Vincents, a restaurant nestled in the heart of Riga's finest art nouveau district.
      Around the corner is Alberta Street, a must-see for tourists and residents alike for its exquisite buildings featuring elegant balconies, sweeping bay windows and decorative figures.
      "I don't know one foreigner who doesn't think that street is one of the most interesting streets in all of Europe," says Karlis Cerbulis, director of Domuss, a developer and property management firm in Riga.
      Since 1996, Domuss has invested $40 million in commercial and residential real estate. Their renovated condominiums can sell for as much as $340,000. Foreign businessmen are the target market. In a country where the average monthly wage is $200, prices are far out of reach for most Latvians.
      Buildings have been converted into restaurants and shops, apartments and condominiums. Many more are still in the hands of individuals who acquired them according to post-independence laws that returned property nationalized by the Communists to their pre-1940s owners.
      Most of these remain run-down, even on Alberta Street, where chic apartments with stoic stone sphinxes guarding the door stand alongside others with cracked facades and chipping paint.
      Their owners can't afford the badly needed renovations. Some are tempted to sell, but feel obliged to adhere to the wishes of dying relatives who wanted the property to remain in the family.
      "It's not a typical real estate market," says Edgars Sins, director of the Latio real estate company. "To a lot of people, buildings are not just bricks, glass and steel. They are memories, passed down from an older generation."
      The jewel in Alberta Street's crown is one fully renovated apartment house in the middle of a long row of dilapidated buildings. It suffers from an additional indignity: Years after its restoration, "to let" signs still hang in the windows.
      "In Soviet times, things cost almost nothing," Krastins says. "But with rent so high, few can afford these luxuries now. It will take time."
—————
IF YOU GO: For more information call the Riga Tourist Information Bureau at (371) 7221-731 or (371) 7207-800. Fax: (371) 7227-680. The Web site of the Latvian national tourist agency is www.latviatravel.com.


      Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
      RIGA, Jan 3 (Reuters) —Latvian Prosecutor General Janis Skrastinsh, recently criticised by MPs who claim he mishandled the investigation of an alleged paedophile ring, resigned on Monday, the supreme court said.
      "Prosecutor General Janis Skrastinsh has submitted his resignation to both the Supreme Court and the parliament, without giving additional explanation," Supreme Court spokesman Leonards Pavils told Reuters.
      "It is difficult to say whether this step is linked to a recent campaign by a group of MPs to have Skrastinsh replaced," he added.
      The Supreme Court had earlier turned down a petition by a group of 52 of parliament's 100 members calling for Skrastinsh to be replaced after his investigation into allegations of a widespread paedophile ring allegedly involving leading officials and businessmen produced no results.
      The MPs said last month Skrastinsh was late in reporting to a special parliamentary commission looking into the paedophile case and that he had not made full use of evidence to detain leading suspects in the case.
      The Supreme Court now has three months to nominate a new candidate for the post, the spokesman said. Skrastinsh is expected to continue in his post until then.


      Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
      By Megan Goldin

      JERUSALEM (Reuters) —Suspected war criminal Konrad Kalejs has been running for much of his life. Among his pursuers is an elderly Holocaust survivor who lives in a modest flat in Israel surrounded by faded photographs and bitter memories.
      Zelda Chait, 79, fears that Kalejs, who is expected to find shelter in Australia now that Britain plans to expel him, will escape punishment for what Nazi hunters say was complicity in the Nazi killings of thousands of Latvians, most of them Jews.
      Chait's testimony once helped the United States to expel Kalejs. The decision sent the alleged Latvian fascist police commander roaming the world in a 15-year search for a safe haven.
      Chait said Monday Kalejs should stand trial, regardless of his 86 years.
      "I think if a person has killed so many people, and he was involved in all the actions (massacres), he should not be left in peace," she told Reuters. "He should die in jail."
      Kalejs has most recently been living in an old age home in Britain where the British Home Office Monday told him it planned to deport him.
      Nazi hunters say he was an officer in the notorious Arajs Commando, a Latvian police unit suspected of aiding wartime Nazi occupation forces kill thousands of civilians.
      As a young woman, Chait was hidden in a house visited by Kalejs, who, she said, came to get drunk and swap stories with fellow members of the Commando after a day of liquidating the Jews of the Riga ghetto, including Chait's own family.
      ESCAPE FROM GHETTO
      With her blond coloring and fluent Latvian, few suspected Chait was a Jew.
      She escaped from the ghetto shortly before the Nazis and their Latvian collaborators began to clear it out in 1941, marching thousands of Jews into the forests and shooting them.
      Chait was hidden by an old friend who became her first husband, Yanis Vabulis. His house was a frequent meeting place for his old school friend Kalejs and Kalejs's Arajs comrades.
      "I was in a separate room. I was in hiding. I have never seen him (Kalejs), but I heard him and the others who took part boast about their 'heroic' deeds," she said.
      "I was terribly scared. There was no chance for him to open the door—it was locked—but I thought (Kalejs) would become suspicious. I was more afraid about him than the others."
      She said Vabulis once showed her a photograph of Kalejs: "He was very handsome."
      About 20 years ago, after moving to Israel, Chait began looking for Kalejs, eventually tracing him to the United States.
      "I knew who that man was. I knew he was a war criminal and I heard that he was alive," she said.
      Her testimony helped convince the U.S. Justice Department to deport Kalejs to Canada, which later banished him to Australia.
      He then left of his own will for Britain, which Monday decided to deport him back to Australia for "the public good."
      Australia has already decided not to put Kalejs on trial.
      "Australia's really the safest place for him," said Nazi hunter Ephraim Zuroff, who has been urging the Australian government for years to reopen its war crimes unit and prosecute dozens of former Nazi war criminals he says are hiding there.


      Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
      WASHINGTON (AP) —The United States should abandon all public criticism of the Russian war against separatist rebels in Chechnya and instead use private channels to air its concerns, a Russian lawmaker said Friday.
      Alexei Arbatov, a member of the liberal Yabloko Party, said the more Russia is pressured by the Clinton administration to negotiate a political settlement, the less likely Moscow is to follow Washington's advice.
      Arbatov, whose party won just under 6 percent of the vote in recent parliamentary elections, spoke to a gathering sponsored by the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO group.
      Almost daily for the past few months, the Clinton administration has decried the heavy loss of civilian life resulting from Russian offensives in Chechnya and has been urging a negotiated settlement.
      Arbatov suggested that the United States and other NATO countries lack the moral authority to criticize Russian military tactics in Chechnya, saying NATO's action in Kosovo was similar to what Russian is doing in Chechnya.
      If NATO assumed a self-proclaimed right to intervene in an internal conflict in Yugoslavia, Russia has "all the more right to use force in its domestic affairs," Arbatov said.
      Arbatov, whose own party favors a negotiated settlement, said a U.S. shift to quiet diplomacy is just one of several ways the Clinton administration could improve ties with Moscow.
      He said the administration also should start taking Russian views more into consideration on nuclear arms reduction issues and on U.S. proposals for modifying the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The administration is weighing the possibility of a modification because of concern over a missile attack by Iraq or other adversary states. Russia insists that any changes in the treaty would be destabilizing.
      Arbatov cautioned that if the two countries diverge too far on security issues, "Russia will find the resources to strengthen its strategic position."
      On another sensitive issue, Arbatov said that if Ukraine were to follow the lead of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and become NATO members, Moscow would view that as "the No. 1 threat to Russian national security." Ukraine, which borders Russia to the west, has cooperative relations with NATO but has disavowed any intention of joining a military alliance.
      Arbatov added that if the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia fulfill their goal of joining NATO, "it would precipitate a major crisis" in U.S.-Russian relations.

  Sports


      Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
      
NHL Rosters (excerpted)
    Nashville Predators
       3 Skrastins, Karlis    D 6-1 196 07-09-1974 Riga, Latvia
       8 Ozolinsh, Sandis     D 6-3 205 08-03-1972 Riga, Latvia
       1 Skudra, Peter        G 6-1 182 04-24-1973 Riga, Latvia
    Montreal Canadiens
       34 Zholtok, Sergei     C 6-0 195 12-02-1972 Riga, Latvia
    Carolina Hurricanes
       1 Irbe, Arturs         G 5-8 175 02-02-1967 Riga, Latvia

      Soccer-Southampton to appeal after Latvian refused permit
      LONDON, Dec 20 (Reuters) —English premier league Southampton said on Thursday they would appeal against a government decision to refuse a work permit for Latvian midfielder Imants Bleidelis.
      Southampton, who signed a 3-1/2 year contract with Bleidelis in December, have been told Latvia ranks too low in FIFA's national rankings for a work permit to be granted.
      Latvian striker Marians Pahars, who joined Southampton in March in a one million pound ($1.61 million) deal, was also refused a permit. It was finally granted after two appeals.
      "One has to remember that Pahars' road to England was not easy either. So it is too early to despair," Bleidelis said.
      "I hope we will score a victory over red tape," he added.
      Both players came from Latvian champions Skonto.

  Picture Album

A view by twilight of Old Riga's Pulvertornis (Powder Tower), in November, 1992.

Pulvertornis, 1992
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