Arajs Kommando
아라이스 특공대
A paramilitary unit of Latvian volunteers under the SS Security Service (SD) in German-occupied Latvia in 1941–1943. Led by Viktors Arājs, it was one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust in Latvia and killed some 26,000 Jews.
In depth
Arājs met Walter Stahlecker of Einsatzgruppe A in Riga on 1 July 1941 and the next day was told to unleash a pogrom that would look spontaneous. Its members were volunteers from student fraternities, the disbanded Latvian army and police and the Aizsargi militia. On the night of 4 July it took part in burning Riga’s synagogues, where several hundred Jews were burned alive; at Liepāja it carried out shootings, at Rumbula it drove and guarded the victims, and it also guarded camps such as Salaspils.
From mid-1942 it was used in anti-partisan operations in Belarus and Russia and in Operation Winterzauber in 1943 executed nearly 4,000 partisans or suspected supporters. It numbered 300–500 men during the killings of Latvian Jews and up to 1,500 at its peak, and was disbanded in late 1943 and merged into the Latvian Legion. The Soviets convicted 352 of its members; Arājs was sentenced in West Germany in 1979, and his deputy Herberts Cukurs was assassinated by the Mossad in 1965.