Haralds Puntulis

Haralds Puntulis
Born
Haralds Petrovich Puntulis or
Horald Petrovich Puntulis

(1909-05-14)14 May 1909
Yaroslav, Latvia
Died4 July 1982(1982-07-04) (aged 73)
Toronto, Canada
Other namesHarry Puntulis
Known forNazi collaborator; leading a firing squad that carried out mass murders in Maltā and the Audrini massacre, during World War II
SpouseAnna Puntulis
Police career
CountryLatvia
AllegianceNazi Germany
DepartmentDistrict of Rezekne
BranchMilitia police
Rank
  • Platoon commander[1]: 17 
  • Head of the 4th Police Precinct (July 27, 1941—May 20, 1944)[2][1]: 21 
AwardsIron Cross (2nd class)
Other workBuilding contractor (Canada)
Criminal information
Motive
ConvictionMurder (in absentia)
Criminal penaltyDeath
Accomplices
EscapedTo Canada in 1948
CommentsTried in absentia by the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (1965)[a]
Details
Span of crimes
August 1941 – January 4, 1942
CountryLatvia
LocationsMaltā and Audrini, Rēzekne
TargetsLatvian Jews, gypsies, and communists
Killed750 people[5]

Haralds Puntulis (14 May 1909 – 4 July 1982), known locally in Canada as Harry Puntulis,[2] was a Latvian police officer and Nazi collaborator.

In World War II Puntulis served as the chief of the 4th Maltā police precinct during the German occupation of Latvia. Puntulis directed the execution of Latvian Jews, gypsies, and communists, and was awarded the Iron Cross for service to the Reichskommissariat Ostland.[2] After the war, Puntulis escaped to Canada and requests to extradite him to Latvia to face criminal charges were refused by the Canadian government. He was tried in absentia, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to death.[1]: 19 [b]

A retired building contractor, Puntulis died of natural causes in Toronto, aged 73 years, 17 years after being sentenced to death.

Biography

Haralds Petrovich Puntulis (or Horald Petrovich Puntulis[1]: 23 ) was born on May 14, 1909[2] in Yaroslav, Latvia.

Serving as the Head of the 4th Police Precinct of the Militia Police of the District of Rēzekne, Puntulis reported to Alberts Eichelis[c] and served alongside Boļeslavs Maikovskis. Puntulis was the leader of a special firing squad that carried out mass murders in Maltā and the Audrini massacre, executing the entire population of the village, including the public execution of 30 villagers in the public square of Rēzekne.[1][d][e][f]

Following WWII, Puntulis fled to Canada via Sweden, arriving in Quebec City aboard the Empress of Canada on October 13, 1948. He moved to Toronto, worked as a building contractor and married, living in relative obscurity, and became a Canadian citizen. A minor protest by Jews occurred outside his Willowdale home in 1979.[2]

In 1965, the USSR requested that Puntulis be extradited in order to face trial for war crimes.[1]: 10 [g] However, Canada and the USSR did not have an extradition treaty and the Canadian government refused.[6] Between 1965 and his death in 1982, the Canadian government did not prosecute Puntulis in Canada or establish an extradition treaty with the USSR.[6][7][8]

The Canadian Department of External Affairs took the position in a 1965 memo that: " [Puntulis], regardless of anything else he may or may not have been doing, was in a state of armed revolt against the Soviet Union", and that his acts during this time " …may equally well be considered to have been acts of civil war… and can be considered to be political offences and therefore not extraditable", a position that may have been informed by the fact that many accused Nazi war criminals from Eastern Europe were also anti-communists.[9][10]

Tried in absentia in a Riga court, Puntulis was convicted of the murder of 713 Jews, 28 gypsies, and nine communists.[2] During the trial, that concluded on 30 October 1965,[3] Puntulis was named as having personally shot an 11-year-old Jewish boy in the head after a subordinate failed at the task.[2]

Following a tip from Simon Wiesenthal, Jeff Ansell, a Canadian investigative journalist, and fellow reporter, Paul Appleby, conducted a year-long investigation into Puntulis and Helmut Rauca, another Nazi war criminal also living in Canada.[11] On 28 August 1982, in an exposé published in TODAY Magazine, a supplement in 18 Canadian newspapers, Puntulis was, for the first time, publicly identified as a war criminal living in Canada.[12] Sensationally, the exposé article was emblazoned with a maple leaf and a swastika. Puntulis died seven weeks before the exposé was published.

David Levy, the Moscow correspondent for CBC News, who was in Riga for Puntulis' 1965 trial, described, in 1982, the trial as a "...show trial, but [with] no inquisitorial atmosphere.  The fact is, they had evidence."[2]

According to Ansell, the United States Office of Special Investigations had files on Puntulis as a part of its work to locate and bring to justice Nazi war criminals, but the Canadian government did not request these files or demonstrate an interest in investigating Puntulis.[13] Ansell claimed that, in 1980, Puntulis made a sealed deposition before the Ontario Supreme Court and testified in the West German trial of Eichelis.[2] Historian Atli Rodal, author of the Rodal Report for the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, wrote that an interdepartmental meeting of the Canadian government concluded that there was "substantial evidence against Puntulis, and that revocation of citizenship seemed possible", but that then-Minister of Justice Pierre Elliott Trudeau dismissed the possibility, concerned about domestic political considerations with Eastern European communities in Canada.[14]

The Canadian government began denaturalization proceedings against Nazi war criminals in the mid-1990s, after Puntulis' death.[14]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Sources vary on the date of the trial, with some claiming it was held during October 1965;[1][3] and other sources claim that the trial was held in 1982.[4] However, reference to the 1982 date is most likely the date of the TODAY Magazine exposé, or the date of Puntulis' death.
  2. ^ The FBI note reads: "Those given the death sentence in absentia were Boleslavs Maikovskis, now living in Mineola, L.I.; Harold Puntilis (sic.) of Willowdale, Ont., Canada, and Albert Eichelis of Karlsruhe, West Germany… All the accused were former Latvian police officials.[1]: 19 
  3. ^ Also known as Albert Eihelis, Alberts Eihelis, Albert Yanovich Eichelis, and other variations.
  4. ^ The FBI note reads: "And why should Heralds Puntulis sit on the accused bench? He was the man who was at the head of a man-shooting commando, specially organized from 20 policeman, which, systematically and on a mass scale, murdered peaceful inhabitants in the Rezekne and Ludza Districts. Sadists subservient to them completed their bloody deed in the Ancupani hills; at his command, rifle salvos caused the Audrini people to collapse in the market square of Rezekne."[1]: 12 
  5. ^ The FBI note reads: "Puntilis commanded the fourth Rezenke police precinct, according to occupation documents. One police report says that 713 Jews were executed by the police of this precinct. And witnesses testified that Puntilis gave the firing signal at nearly all mass executions in the district."[1]: 17 
  6. ^ The FBI note reads: "He [Puntilis] was the stooge of Alberts Eihelis, Chief of the Militia Police of the District of Rezekne, and, as such, he was the Head of the 4th Police Precinct from July 27, 1941 until May 1944; he was also the leader of a special firing squad... The public murder of the 30 audrinites on the market place in Rezekne was done by the Puntulis-led firing squad. In July 1941, thus very soon after the Hitler invasion, Puntulis and his firing squad killed, in the forest of Balda, all of the Jewish inhabitants of the village of Silmala. Shortly afterwards, the brutes invaded the village of Riebini. Puntulis gave us instructions for the forthcoming action, testified [another co-]accused J. Basankovics; 'He said that all Jews living in Riebini would be shot'. Very soon, several hundreds of unfortunate men, women, and children were taken to the forest and shot. After that, in the pastor's residence in Riebini, there took place a drinking party, 'in honor of the completed action', where [co-accused] Basankovics saw Puntulis and other leading police functionaries.[1]: 21–22 
  7. ^ The FBI note reads: ""Laiks," a anti-Communist Latvian language newspaper, published in Brooklyn, New York, Volume 17, Number 48.(1574), dated June 16, 1965, contains an article on Page 5, Column 4 entitled, "A New Soviet ..attack." This article refers to a "Tass" report informing that the Soviet Government has requested extradition of three Latvian nationals accused of war crimes during the German occupation of Latvia. The alleged "war criminals" are Boleslavs Maikovskis of Mineola, Long Island, New York, Harolds Puntulis of Toronto, and Eichels in Karlsmuke, West Germany. The "Tass" report informs that the extradition requests have been submitted to the American, Canadian, and West Germany Embassies in Moscow."[1]: 10 

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Boleslavs Maikovskis" (DECLASSIFIED AND RELEASED BY THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY SOURCES METHODS EXEMPT I ON3821i. NAZI WAR CRIMES DISCLOSURE ACT DATE 2003-2006 - DBB 45286). Federal Bureau of Investigation. New York, NY: U.S. Department of Justice. 19 April 1966. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Ansell, Jeff; Appleby, Paul (28 August 1982). "The War Criminals". TODAY Magazine. pp. 9–14. Retrieved 22 February 2026 – via jeffansell.com.
  3. ^ a b Clayton, James (11 February 2024). "Long suppressed report sheds light on Canada's "Open Door Policy" for Nazi war criminals". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
  4. ^ Sanders, Richard J. (Spring 2021). "Latvian National Federation in Canada". Press for Conversion!. pp. 38–39. Retrieved 21 February 2026 – via Academia.
  5. ^ Ansell, Jeff; Appleby, Paul (28 August 1982). "War Criminal". Calgary Herald. p. 120. Retrieved 2 January 2026 – via Newspapers.com. …Puntulis, along with five other people,… was found guilty of the slaughter of 713 Jews, 28 gypsies, and nine Communists.
  6. ^ a b Hamalengwa, Munyonzwe (June 2001). "3: The Politics of Legislation: War Crimes Legislation Short of Danger to the Public ". Danger to the Public in Canada Under the Criminal Code and Immigration Act of Canada (L.L.M thesis). Osgoode Hall Law School. pp. 47–. Retrieved 22 February 2026 – via hamalengwa.ca.
  7. ^ Hamalengwa, Munyonzwe (2013). The case for the Prosecution of Apartheid Criminals in Canada (PhD (Law) thesis). York University, Toronto. pp. 153–4. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  8. ^ "Regarding the Situation with the Glorification of Nazism and the Spread of Neo-Nazism and Other Practices That Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Report)" (PDF). Moscow, Russia: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. 11 September 2024. p. 342. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
  9. ^ Rodal, Alti (September 1986). "Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present". pp. 315, 529.
  10. ^ Matas, David; Charendoff, Susan (1987). Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada. Toronto: Summerhill Press. p. 143.
  11. ^ Csillag, Ron (24 February 2021). "Jeff Ansell Offered Media Training 'to Deal With People Like Me'". Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  12. ^ Troper, Harold; Weinfeld, Morton (1987). "Jewish-Ukrainian Relations in Canada Since World War II and the Emergence of the Nazi War Criminal Issue". American Jewish History. 77 (1): 106–134. ISSN 0164-0178.
  13. ^ Ansell, Jeff (16 January 2023). Who I Am After All. FriesenPress. ISBN 978-1-0391-0845-5.
  14. ^ a b Levy, Margot, ed. (2001). "How Perpetrators of Genocidal Crimes Evaded Justice: The Canadian Story". Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Palgrave. pp. 715–716.

Further reading

  • Daugavas vanagi. Who are they?. Рига: Латвийское государственное издательство. 1961.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.