Arajs Commando
Encyclopedia
Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...
Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs was a Latvian collaborator and Nazi SS officer, who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arājs Kommando...
, was a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police
Latvian Auxiliary Police
Latvian Auxiliary Police was a paramilitary force created from Latvian volunteers by the Nazi German authorities who occupied the country in June 1941. Composed of local fascists, rightist members of the former military and police, and nationalist students, the organization participated in the...
subordinated to the Nazi SD
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
. It was one of the more well-known and notorious killing units during the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
This group, composed of Latvian men, made contact with the leader of Einsatzgruppe A, Walter Stahlecker
Franz Walter Stahlecker
Franz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...
, in early July 1941, immediately following the German capture of Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
. All of the Arajs Kommando members were volunteers, and free to leave at any time.
The Arajs Kommando unit actively participated in a variety of Nazi atrocities, including the killing of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, Roma, and mental patients, as well as punitive actions and massacres of civilians along Latvia's eastern border with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The Kommando killed around 26,000 Jews in total. Most notably, the unit took part in the mass execution of Jews from the Riga ghetto
Riga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the...
, and several thousand Jews deported from Germany, at Rumbula
Rumbula
Rumbula is a pine forest enclave in Riga, Latvia, in which Jews were massacred during the Holocaust. For the air base at Rumbula, see Rumbula ....
on November 30 and December 8, 1941.
Some of Arājs's men also served as guards at the Salaspils concentration camp
Salaspils concentration camp
Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km southeast of Riga . The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp...
.
As can be seen in contemporary Nazi newsreels, part of a documentation campaign to create the image that the Holocaust in the Baltics was a local, and not Nazi-directed activity, the Arajs Kommando figured prominently in the burning of Riga's Great (Choral) Synagogue on 4 July 1941. Commemoration of this event has been chosen for marking Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day or Holocaust Remembrance Day may refer to one of several commemorations of the Holocaust.-See also:* United Nations Holocaust Memorial* List of Holocaust memorials and museums...
in present-day Latvia.
The unit numbered about 300-500 men during the period that it participated in the killing of the Latvian Jewish population, and reached up to 1,500 members at its peak at the height of its involvement in anti-partisan operations in 1942.
In the final phases of the war, the unit was disbanded and its personnel transferred to the Latvian Legion.
After successfully hiding in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
for several decades after the war, Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs was a Latvian collaborator and Nazi SS officer, who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arājs Kommando...
was eventually arrested, tried, and imprisoned for his crimes. More recently, the governments of Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
were involved in the attempt to extradite Konrāds Kalējs
Konrads Kalejs
Konrāds Kalējs was a Latvian soldier who was Nazi collaborator and an alleged war criminal during World War II. He gained notoriety for evading calls for his prosecution across four countries, more than once under the threat of deportation...
, a former officer of the Arājs Kommando, to Latvia for trial on charges of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
. Kalējs died in Australia before the extradition could proceed, maintaining his innocence to the end, that he was fighting Russia on the eastern front or studying at university when the slaughter of Jews took place in 1941. Latvian Holocaust historian A. Ezergailis estimates about a third of the Arājs Kommando, 500 of a maximum of around 1,500 total members, actively participated in the killings of Jews, and claimed that one cannot be convicted of crimes against humanity based solely on membership in an organization.
Naums Lifšics, a Jewish-Latvian economist and survivor of the Stalinist deportations, suggested that NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
agents probably participated in the activities of Arajs Kommando.
See also
- Viktors ArājsViktors ArājsViktors Arājs was a Latvian collaborator and Nazi SS officer, who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arājs Kommando...
- Konrāds KalējsKonrads KalejsKonrāds Kalējs was a Latvian soldier who was Nazi collaborator and an alleged war criminal during World War II. He gained notoriety for evading calls for his prosecution across four countries, more than once under the threat of deportation...
, a a company commander in the Arajs Kommando - Herberts CukursHerberts CukursHerberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the notorious Arajs Kommando and was involved in murders of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust but he never stood trial. There are eyewitness accounts linking Cukurs to war crimes...
, another known member of the Arajs Kommado, assassinated by the MossadMossadThe Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
in 1965.