The best-known trial was brought in 1961, by the Soviet authorities against local collaborators who had participated in the Holocaust during the German occupation (1941–1944).
The public trial by the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR was held in the auditorium of the Navy Officers Club in Tallinn[1] and attended by a mass audience.
While the accused may have been involved in other crimes against humanity during the German occupation of Estonia, the trial focused on the events of September 1942.
In the case Be 1.9.1942 however, the only ones chosen for labor and to survive the war were a small group of young women who were taken through concentration camps in Estonia, Poland and Germany to Bergen- Belsen, where they were liberated.
The final acts of liquidating the camps, such as Klooga, which involved the mass-shooting of roughly 2,000 prisoners, were committed by Estonians under German command, that is by units of the 20.SS-Division and (presumably) the Schutzmannschaftsbataillon of the KdS.
Survivors report that, during this period when Jewish slave labourers were visible, the Estonian population in part attempted to help the Jews by providing food and so on.
[10] The accused Mere, Gerrets and Viik actively participated in crimes and mass killings that were perpetrated by the Nazi invaders on the territory of the Estonian SSR.
[16] By the early 1960s, the Soviet government was pursuing Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas and Ervin Viks, who were accused of murdering 12,000 people in the Tartu concentration camp.
[17] According to an official Soviet account: "the main culprit, Ervin Viks, fled the ire of the people and now lives in Australia, whereas Linnas found shelter in the USA".
[18] In January 1962, a show trial was conducted with the three accused [Jüriste present and Linnas and Viks absent] men tried in absentia in Tartu and sentenced to death.
During the trials in Tallinn and Tartu several witnesses pointed out Heinrich Bergmann as the key figure behind the extermination of Estonian Romani people.