Bangerskis, Rudolf Karls.

Bangerskis, Rudolf Karls, born, 21-07-1878 in Taurupe, Lettland; the son of the agricultural couple Karl and Ilse Bangerskis. Rudolf came from a family of eight children. Between 1884 and 1890 he attended school in Jaunpils. After this, Bangerskis went to the Russian district school in Friedrichstadt for a semester. In 1895 he graduated from the city school in Jaunjelgava. After this, Bangerskis entered the service of the Imperial Russian Army, and was trained as a non-commissioned officer in the Riga battalion at the Vladimir Military School in Saint Petersburg. From August 1897 he was placed in the 145th Novocherkassk Infantry Regiment “Emperor Alexander III”) stationed in Saint Petersburg. In the fall of 1899, Bangerskis was ordered to the Vladimir Military Academy in St. Petersburg. While attending the military academy, he was promoted to Praporshchik (sergeant major) on 03-08-1901. This was followed by his placement at the 93rd Irkutsk Infantry Regiment “His Royal Highness Grand Prince Michael Alexandrovich of Russia”) stationed in Pleskau. On 25-11-1901 he was promoted to Praporshchik (second lieutenant).

Rudolf was from 1901 to 1945 in military service, after the completion of several military schools, including in St. Petersburg, Bangerskis served in the Tsarist Russian army,  participated in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), was during the First World War, commander of the 1st Dünamünder Latvian battalion  of the Latvian gunmen. In the service of the White Army Bangerskis participated in various campaigns from August 1918 to November 1921, including in the Far East.

 

After Bangerskis had returned to Latvia on 10-11-1921,

  he was appointed in 1924 in the Latvian Army as commander of the 1st Kurland Division. As a member of the Latvian Government, he held the post of Minister of War from December 1924 to December 1925 and repeatedly from December 1926 to December 1928. Subsequently, he again exercised executive functions in the ranks of the Latvian army. On 16-03-1937, he retired from the army due to his age, 58, to then operate in the economy. 

The period of the Soviet occupation of Latvia from 1940 to 1941 survived Bangerskis without repression. Rudolf Bangersky celebrates the Midsummer of 1943 with the 32nd Grenadier Regiment, to the left of his regiment, commander Colonel Arvid Kreepen, officer of the Lethian forces and of the Lethian Legioen   who died on 20-08-1968 in Sydney. Under German occupation Bangerskis was appointed on 09-03-1943 SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of the Waffen-SS and on 10-04-1943 as General Inspector of the Latvian Legion  used. This role was his responsibility until 20-05-1945. Under his responsibility, it should have come to the destruction of about 50,000 Latvian Jews. Beheaded and burned alive. Latvian SS men were not punished for their crimes  In early 1945, Bangerskis engaged in the Latvian national movement. On  20-02-1945, he was elected in Potsdam as President of the “Latvian National Committee”.

Death and burial ground of Bangerskis, Rudolf Karls.

   

On 20-06-1945, he was interned by the British armed forces to investigate his SS past on the site of the former concentration camp Fallingbostel. On 17-12-1946 Bangerskis was released from the internment. Bangerskis was then recorded as a displaced person in the DP camp Ohmstede,  the so-called “Latvian camp”. The camp Ohmstede was dissolved in 1958 and rebuilt as a housing estate under the name “race course settlement” on the outskirts of Oldenburg and rented mainly to the camp inmates. There he died from the consequences of a car accident on the night of February 24 to 25, 1958 leaving a bus, age 79..

On 16-03-1995, his body was reburied on the Brothers Cemetery (Riga). A to be found on the Internet to the contrary assertion that Bangerskis had been reburied to the Freedom Monument (Riga), does not correspond to the facts.