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The SS and its ethnic Latvian allies virtually wiped out Latvia's 70,000 Jews. About 15,000 Jews now live in the Baltic nation.

"I saw people who could have been my murderers," said Effraim Meydan, who works at the Riga office of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

To a small group of Jewish protesters wearing yellow stars, the march had dire overtones.

"This commemoration glorifies the Nazi army and is clearly a manifestation of an existing fascist movement in Latvia, despite the absence of anti-Jewish or other Nazi slogans during the march," said Grigory Bikson, a Jewish activist in Riga.