Aleksander Laak

Who is Aleksander Laak?

Aleksander Laak was a lieutenant and the commander of the Jägala concentration camp during the German occupation of Estonia.

The estimates for the number of killed at Jägala concentration camp vary widely. The Soviet investigators reached the conclusion that 2,000–3,000 were killed in Jägala and Kalevi-Liiva taken together, but the number 5,000 was written into the verdict

In modern sources, the number 10,000 occurs. Some commentators have also given figures ranging from 100,000 to 125,000 to 300,000, however, such figures contradict the findings of the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity and also the estimates of scholars who place the number of total Jewish victims for the Estonia of 1941–1944 at 8,500.

Aleksander Laak was also known to have arranged drunken orgies with inmates.

He emigrated to Canada after World War II, in 1948. In 1960 he was implicated in the Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia, and exposed as living as a naturalized Canadian citizen under the name of Alex Laak in suburban Winnipeg, Canada by the Soviet news agency TASS and Canadian journalists.