The Keys ep21 The Cemetery War. Ideological battle witdh corpses
Monument wars are as old as the human history. This particular one engulfed not only city streets and
squares, but also cemeteries. And, it turns out, was started not by villainous outsiders, but by us, Latvians.
The thriller that is the subject of this week’s episode began in May 1929 when a memorial ensemble was
unveiled in Riga Forest Cemetery, dedicated to the fallen liberators of the city – German Landwehr soldiers.
Soon, the monument became the victim of complicated history and fraught relations of ethnic groups -
unknown terrorists blew it up. Although the memorial was restored and the flames of hatred momentarily
died down, a few years later Latvians erected a monument to the first president of Latvia directly in front of
it. Then came the Soviet occupiers whose ideology spurned everything that had come before… And the
ideological battle in a 600-meters-long cemetery lane went on for 60 years.
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