 By December 1941 the division had 10,348 personnel, of whom 51% were ethnic Latvians, 26% ethnic Russians, 17% Jews and 6% others.This caused some problems since most Jews spoke Yiddish only, and the Latvians published the divisional paper "Latvijas strēlnieks" ("Latvian Rifleman") in Latvian.At least 70 Jewish members of the division were members of the Zionist Beitar organisation that had been training members for travel to the then Palestine to defend Jewish settlements there before Latvia was annexed by Soviet Union.