Two Latvian men give the Nazi salute in a photo posted on a Latvian far-right website. Despite the headlines, actual neo-Nazi groups in Latvia remain marginal politically, as the Thursday procession's small number of participants attests.

RIGA — Latvia is set to become the first country to hold a publicly-sanctioned parade honoring its invasion by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The Administrative District Court overturned a Riga municipal ban on the event, to be held Thursday, an embarrassment for the country ahead of a July 4 visit by the Israeli foreign minister. An estimated 30 people are expected to participate in a procession that will start at the occupation museum. It’s unclear if Nazi symbols will be on display.

Both Latvia’s prime minister and foreign ministry issued a joint statement condemning the parade and court’s decision.

“Hitler and Stalin’s propaganda and beliefs are degrading to our people and country. The Latvian government respects the human rights guaranteed by the constitution and the court’s independence, but freedom of expression can not relate to Nazi propaganda,” it reads.

Indeed, Latvia is a place where the painful past that much of Europe has put behind it seems to live on, exacerbating latent ethnic tensions. The annual Waffen-SS veterans procession in Riga, which commemorates the Latvians conscripted to fight for the Nazis, always proves controversial as does the Soviet Victory celebrations that the country’s ethnic Russians honor each year. The person who filed the winning court appeal, Uldis Freimanis, told the press that Thursday’s procession is intended as a countermeasure to the May 9 events, which drew 100,000 in Riga this year.

Some Latvians saw the Nazis as liberators against the Soviet Union which had occupied the country a year earlier under the auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and despite the historical facts that the Nazi occupation caused the slaughter of the country’s Jewish population and Hitler’s eventual plan was to expel and kill the ethnic Latvians and Russians in Latvia under Generalplan Ost which would have turned much of Eastern Europe into a Greater Germany, Freimanis and his group are set to honor this.

Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem issued a statement condemning Thursday’s march, as did Latvia’s former foreign minister Artis Pabriks whose grandfather was killed by Nazi soldiers.

Interior minister Linda Mūrniece said police would be on hand for Thursday’s event and that police are not expecting any violence or riotous behavior on the part of participants.

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