The Arajs Kommando — Latvian collaboration in the Holocaust

When the Wehrmacht entered Riga on 1 July 1941, Latvia was emerging from a year of Soviet occupation (1940–1941) that had left deep resentment: the mass deportations of June 1941, nationalizations, executions by the NKVD. The Germans, in particular Walter Stahlecker's Einsatzgruppe A, sought to channel this rancour by recruiting local auxiliaries. Viktors Arajs, born in 1910, a former non-commissioned officer of the Latvian army and a law student, was approached by the SD.

The German aim was clear: to form a Latvian security unit, recruited from among students, members of the Aizsargi organization, and former soldiers, to carry out in Riga and then in the provinces the hunting down and elimination of Jews and Soviet officials. Such a force would operate under the control of the SD, with the means and impunity the occupier conferred.

Arajs's choice was neither coerced nor inevitable: other Latvian officers would refuse or keep their distance. Serving the occupier promised position and power at the cost of total complicity; refusing or fleeing meant giving up that advantage but preserving something else. In the aftermath of the capture of Riga, the man had to answer the SD's solicitation.