ABSTRACT
In summer 1936 two twelve-year-old boys left the volleyball court of the second Latvian primary school in Daugavpils; their names were Iosif Šteiman and Freds Blùzmanis. Despite the camaraderie of the sports field and happy memories of singing Latvian folk songs, these two boys were to have very different fates.1 Iosif was the son of a left-wing teacher who had been dismissed from his job two years earlier for his membership of a Jewish teachers’ union. Although Iosif was happy in his Latvian school, as he grew older he became interested in politics, more aware of the unequal treatment of the nationalities in 1930s Latvia, and began to associate with those linked to the communist-led Latvian League of Working Youth. By the time the Red Army occupied Latvia in June 1940, Iosif was committed to the communist cause and went on to become an active supporter of the Soviet regime. Freds was the son of a café owner on the main street in Daugavpils, Rainis Street. His father, Roberts Blùzmanis, had fascist sympathies, but until June 1941 kept his ideas to himself. When the Nazi occupation of Daugavpils began, he was among the first to come forward. His active involvement in the massacre of Jews was such that even the German authorities decided he should be put under arrest.
