TSOMAYA H. F. Features of the solution to the "Jewish question" in Estonia.

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    The article begins with the assertion that the "final solution of the Jewish question" began with the Wannsee Conference and the vast majority of concentration camps and death camps were built as a result of the aforesaid Conference.

    The article describes characteristic features of resolving of the «Jewish question» in Estonia. Main goal of the work is objective study and reveal of reasons of establishment of the “Judenfrei” idea in regard to an entire country. The peculiarity of this concept lies in the fact that most of the aforesaid term previously applied to cities and regions and for the first and only time the term "Judenfrei" was used in relation to the state.

    With the invasion of the Baltic States, it was the intention of the Nazi government to use the Baltics countries as their main area of mass genocide. Consequently, Jews from countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be killed and an estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Nazi regime also established 22 concentration and labor camps on occupied Estonian territory for foreign Jews to be used as slave labor. The largest,Vaivara concentration camp served as a transit camp and processed 20,000 Jews from Latvia and the Lithuanian ghettos. Usually able bodied men were selected to work on the oil shale mines in northeastern Estonia. Women, children, and old people would be executed on arrival. At least two train loads of Central European Jews were imported to Estonia for immediate extermination, killed at the Kalevi-Liiva site near the Jägala concentration camp.

    The article also describes activities of Nazi security services, which were in duty for resolving of the “Jewish question” in Estonia. Defines the role of the Einsatzgruppen, operating in the occupied Baltic states. Also, the article states the fact of the expulsion of the Jews by the Soviets (after the Baltic republics became part of the Soviet Union). In addition, attention is paid to actions of the Estonian collaborationist units, who also participated in extermination of Jews.

      The article does not refer to sequence of Holocaust in other countries, as circumstances of extermination of Jews in Estonia absolutely differ from the circumstances of extermination of Jews in other occupied countries. The article also notes the fact of complete absence of anti-Semitism in Estonia, which was a unique phenomenon in Europe in the beginning of XX century. In turn, this has played a role in the absence of anti-Jewish pogroms, what to look for leaders head Einsatzgruppen, which operated in the Baltic States. Also describes some collaborationist formations involved in the extermination of the Jews.

Keywords: "solution of the Jewish question" Wannsee Conference, "Judenfrei" Estonia, Tallinn, Revel, Tartu, Dorpat, Narva, Pärnu, Einsatzgruppen, Walter Shkaler, Klooga, Central jails, the Holocaust, Omakaitse