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The Arajs Kommando (; ) was a paramilitary unit of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) active in German-occupied Latvia from 1941 to 1943. It was led by SS commander and Nazi collaborator Viktors Arājs and composed of ethnic Latvians volunteers recruited by Arājs.
The Arajs Kommando was a notorious death squad and one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust in Latvia. The unit was involved in the mass killing of Jews in Latvia until 1942 when it was used in anti-partisan operations in Belarus and Russia. It was disbanded and merged into the Latvian Legion in 1943.
All members were ethnic Latvians volunteers, free to leave at any time, composed of mostly students and former policemen and soldiers recruited by Arājs. Initially they used civilian clothing, but soon began to wear Latvian Army and Aizsargi uniforms with green featuring the SD insignia. By the end of July, the size of the unit was no greater than 100 men, though it began to increase over time.
The Arajs Kommando subsequently took part in increasingly violent events such as the Liepāja massacres, as well as the liquidation of Jews from the Riga Ghetto and several thousand German Jews deported from Central Europe. They served as guards at the Rumbula massacre of 30 November and 8 December 1941, although the actual killing was carried out by 12 German Schutzpolizei personnel assigned to the operation. Some of its men also served as guards at the Jungfernhof and Salaspils concentration camps. A squad of 10 men from the Arajs Kommando served as during the Dünamünde Action in Riga on 15 and 26 March 1942.
The Arajs Kommando numbered about 300 to 500 men during the period that it participated in the killings of Latvian Jews, and up to 1,500 members at its peak at the height of its involvement in anti-partisan operations. In late 1943, the Arajs Kommando was disbanded as part of a reorganisation of the Latvian SD and its personnel transferred to the Latvian Legion, with Arajs being placed in charge of the III Battalion. It is estimated to have killed around 26,000 Jews during its existence.
| + !Sentence !Number of those sentenced | |
| Death | 44 (30 executed) |
| 25 years imprisonment with hard labor | 156 |
| 20 years imprisonment with hard labor | 36 |
| 15–18 years imprisonment with hard labor | 43 |
| 15 years imprisonment with hard labor | 10 |
| 10 years imprisonment with hard labor | 76 |
After successfully hiding in West Germany for several decades after the war under an assumed name, Viktors Arājs was eventually identified by a former colleague, arrested, tried, and imprisoned for his crimes. Arājs died in prison in 1988.
Herberts Cukurs, a deputy commander of the Arajs Kommado, was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad in 1965. While living in Brazil, Cukurs was befriended by a German-speaking Mossad agent, who lured him to Uruguay, where Cukurs was ambushed, restrained, and summarily executed.
More recently, the governments of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia were involved in attempts to extradite Konrāds Kalējs, a former officer of the Arajs Kommando, to Latvia for trial on charges of genocide. Kalējs died in 2001 in Australia before the extradition could proceed, maintaining his innocence to the end, stating that he was fighting Russia on the Eastern Front or studying at university when the slaughter of Jews took place in 1941. Historian of the Latvian Holocaust Andrew Ezergailis claimed that about a third of the Arājs Kommando, 500 out of a maximum of around 1,500 total members, actively participated in the killings of Jews, and pointed out that one cannot be convicted of crimes against humanity based solely on membership in an organization. Kalejs Not Necessarily Implicated, Reuters News Service, filed January 13, 2000, Canberra
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