Gustavs Celmiņš

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Gustavs Celmiņš
Born
Gustavs Celmiņš

April 1, 1899
Riga, Russian Empire
DiedApril 10, 1968(1968-04-10) (aged 69)
San Antonio, Texas, United States
Occupation(s)Politician, activist, dissident
Years active1918–1968

Gustavs Celmiņš (April 1, 1899 – April 10, 1968) was a Latvian politician, who was the founder of the Pērkonkrusts.

Biography

He was educated at the commerce school of the

Riga Polytechnical Institute which had been evacuated to Moscow. After the October Revolution
, he returned to Latvia.

In 1918, Celmiņš enlisted into the newly created

Latvian Army, and was promoted to lieutenant the following year, and was then appointed Latvian military attaché in Poland. In 1921, he was awarded the Order of Lāčplēsis
.

Retired from army in 1924, he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1925 to 1927. Celmiņš became the secretary of Minister of Foreign Affairs, and subsequently worked in the Finance Ministry. On 24 January 1932, the Latvian nationalist group Ugunskrusts [lv] was founded, and Gustavs Celmiņš was elected as its leader. After Ugunskrusts was banned, he founded the ultranationalistic organization Pērkonkrusts. Common for both organisations was that they advocated a national revolution for a radical re-organisation of society, politics, and the economy in Latvia. Following the 1934 Latvian coup d'état, Celmiņš was arrested and imprisoned for three years.

He was exiled from Latvia in 1937. Celmiņš moved to Italy, then Switzerland. While in Zürich, he was arrested and then banished from Switzerland. He later lived in Romania, where he had contacts with the Iron Guard, and then moved to Finland. In 1938, he became the leader of Pērkonkrusts' "foreign contacts office". After the Soviet Union invaded Finland, Celmiņš enrolled as a volunteer on the Finnish side. When the conflict ended, he moved to Nazi Germany.

In July 1941, after

anti-partisan operations Latvia and Belarus that included the massacres of rural Jews and other civilians.[3]
This situation was not what Celmiņš had hoped for, and so he began to sabotage the recruitment efforts. Because of this, he was later transferred to a job as a minor clerk within the occupation administration.

Pērkonkrusts members working within the SD apparatus in occupied Latvia would feed Celmiņš information, some of which he would include in his underground, anti-German publication Brīvā Latvija. This eventually led to Celmiņš and his associates being arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, with Celmiņš ending up imprisoned in Flossenbürg concentration camp.[4]

In late April 1945, he was, together with other prominent concentration camp inmates,

Fifth U.S. Army
on 5 May 1945.

After World War II, he lived in Italy, where he published the newspaper Brīvā Latvija. In 1947, he published the autobiographic book Eiropas krustceļos ("At the Crossroads of Europe").

In 1949, he emigrated to the

San Antonio, Texas. In 1959 he became a professor of Russian studies at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. He died on April 10, 1968, in San Antonio, Texas.[5]

Quotes

In a Latvian Latvia the question of minorities will not exist. ... This means that once and for all we renounce unreservedly bourgeois-liberal prejudice on the national question, we renounce historical, humanistic, or other constraints in pursuit of our one true aim—the good of the Latvian nation. Our God, our belief, our life's meaning, our goal is the Latvian nation: whoever is against its welfare is our enemy. ...

We assume that the only place in the world where Latvians can settle is Latvia. Other peoples have their own countries. ...

In one word—in a Latvian Latvia there will only be Latvians.

— Gustavs Celmiņš, "A Latvian Latvia", p. 218

See also

Bibliography

  • Celmiņš, Gustavs (1947). Eiropas krustceļos (in Latvian). Esslingen: Dzintarzeme.
    OCLC 4511464
    .
  • Celmiņš, Gustavs (1995) [1933-09-17]. "A Latvian Latvia". In
    OCLC 31606309
    .

References

  1. OCLC 41347251
    .
  2. OCLC 48959631
    .
  3. OCLC 56982341
    .
  4. ISSN 1407-6330
    .
  5. ^ Celmiņš, Gustavs (01.04.1899.-10.04.1968.) Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine
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