Soviet Court in Riga Sentences Two Latvians for Killing Jews and Non-jews Under Nazis

Two Latvians were convicted of war crimes in the Soviet Latvian High Court at Riga, one of them sentenced to death, the other given a 15-year prison term, according to the Soviet newspapers here today.

Jan Ladzins and Felix Ulpe were convicted of having killed “a number” of Jews and non-Jews in several provincial Latvian towns in 1941. They were also charged with torturing partisans who had fallen into their hands. Ladzins was given the death sentence, while Ulpe’s sentence called for imprisonment at hard labor.

It was noted here that, in the Soviet press, the Jewish victims of the two Nazi collaborators were identified only as “Soviet citizens,” while the non-Jews were identified as Latvians.