RIGA - President Vaira Vike-Freiberga presented history professor and Holocaust researcher Andrievs Ezergailis with Latvia's most distinguished national decoration, the Tristar Order, on July 4, the day commemorating Holocaust victims.
Ezergailis "has earned this order for years of hard work trying to reveal the truth on various aspects of Latvia's history, either unknown or veiled beneath lies and propaganda," the president said during her dedicatory speech.
She emphasized that Latvia would follow his example and strive to abolish intolerance and racism among nations.
Ezergailis, born in Latvia in 1930, is one of the nation's most outstanding Holocaust researchers. His family fled Latvia in World War II, and after settling in Germany, later emigrated to the United States.
The Latvian received his Ph.D. from New York University, and has been a professor of history at Ithaca College since 1971.
The president also drew attention to Riga's Gogol Street Synagogue, which the Nazis torched in 1941. Although sources vary, it is believed that anywhere from 100 to 2,000 Jews were burned alive inside the synagogue.
The incident, Vike-Freiberga said, is a symbol of "the inhumanity that literally destroyed Latvia's Jewish community."
"We do not want to live through something like that ever again; therefore we are doing and will do everything to ensure that, in a democratic and independent Latvia, each person will have equal rights."
During the years of the Nazi occupation, more than 70,000 of Latvia's Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
