In the winter of 1941, a forest outside Riga, Latvia, became the site of one of the Second World War’s most horrific atrocities. Over 24,000 Latvian Jews were marched from their homes, stripped of their belongings and clothes, and lined up in dozens at the edge of vast trenches. They were shot twice in the head. Those who did not fall into the ditches were pushed down by so-called kickers.
The men who carried out the rounding up, the stripping, and the marching were not Germans. They were Latvians. They were led by a man named Viktors Arājs, and they were known as the Arājs Commando. The group is directly responsible for approximately 26,000 deaths during the war.
Latvia had been part of the Russian Empire for almost 200 years before gaining independence in 1918. The new nation was deeply nationalistic and fiercely protective of its freedom. In 1934, former Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis, inspired by Mussolini, staged a bloodless coup and declared himself president. The country flourished under him, but his regime was repressive. The press was gagged and political parties were banned.
Latvia was not anti-Semitic at the time. In fact, it became a safe haven for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. By 1940, the Jewish population had reached about 90,000. But that year, Latvia’s world fell apart. Stalin had cut a deal with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe, and the Baltic states, including Latvia, were handed to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet occupiers imposed a regime of terror. Over 35,000 Latvians were deported to gulags. Thousands more were murdered and buried in mass graves. Less than a year later, Hitler double-crossed Stalin. Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and reached Riga by the end of the same week.
When the German army entered Riga on July 1, they were greeted by delirious crowds. The Germans were welcomed as liberators, not invaders. Even Jews waved the red and white Latvian flags.
Among the invasion forces was Walter Stahlecker, a former civil servant who reported directly to Heinrich Himmler. Stahlecker’s men began spreading rumors that all Latvian Jews were communists and responsible for Soviet atrocities. A Nazi newspaper wrote, “The Jewish Bolsheviks are thieves and murderers.”
Those words were seen by Viktors Arājs, a 31-year-old Latvian police officer. Arājs had been at school with Stahlecker’s official translator and saw an opportunity to further his career. He was ambitious and sought to align himself with the new power structure. Stahlecker saw Arājs as a willing collaborator and asked him to form an auxiliary police group.
An advertisement appeared in the newspaper calling for patriotic Latvians to take part in “the cleansing of our country of undesirable elements.” About a hundred men applied. The group was named after Viktors Arājs. It was the Arājs Commando.
Among the recruits was Herberts Cukurs, a Latvian aviation pioneer. He became Arājs’s right-hand man. Soon, anti-Semitic propaganda appeared on the streets. Jews were required to wear two yellow stars of David stitched to their clothes.
Then the reign of terror began. Telephone lines were cut, and the Arājs Commando went on a rampage in downtown Riga. They stirred up anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. Almost all places of Jewish worship were ransacked.
On July 4, 1941, the Arājs Commando slammed shut the doors of the Great Choral Synagogue and set the building alight. Some reported that Jews were herded inside beforehand. Eyewitnesses placed Viktors Arājs and Herberts Cukurs personally at the scene. There were 300 people inside. All perished in the flames.
The next target was the rest of the country. Liepāja, Latvia’s second largest port, had a vibrant Jewish community. German Einsatzgruppen squads followed the army into the city. Their task was to eradicate all enemies of Germany. A week later, they were ordered to speed up the killing. They turned to Latvian collaborators like the Arājs Commando.
On July 8, collaborators rounded up as many Jews as they could find, loaded them onto trucks, and drove them to a beach where the Nazi hit squad was waiting. A German sailor named Reinhardt Wiener was on shore leave and filmed what he saw. Up to 300 were killed that day. Over the next few days, 900 more were shot.
Attention then returned to Riga. The Nazis established a ghetto in the Moscow quarter, an area of 16 blocks chosen for its poor housing and sanitation. On October 23, the Jews of Riga were ordered to leave their homes and report for transfer. When the ghetto was sealed in mid-October, there were almost 30,000 people inside. The perimeter was guarded by Latvian police. Anyone who approached the wire was shot.
Inside the ghetto, Jews were terrorized by the Arājs Commando, who beat them by day and stole from them by night. After just five weeks, before dawn on November 30, hundreds of drunken Arājs Commando members stormed the ghetto. A thousand Jews died in the initial assault. Then 12,000 were escorted out by German soldiers and Latvian police.
The 12,000 were not taken to concentration camps. They were handed over to Lieutenant General Friedrich Jeckeln. Jeckeln had developed a system for packing bodies in mass graves by lining them up like sardines before shooting them. He called it “sardine packing.” He had perfected it at Babi Yar, where he had killed 33,000 Jews.
Jeckeln chose a location for the massacre: Rumbula, a forest 10 kilometers from the ghetto. It had loose sandy soil. Three pits were dug by Russian prisoners of war. Jeckeln handpicked a murderous gang of just 12 Germans. But he needed help with the logistics. He chose Viktors Arājs, Herberts Cukurs, and the Arājs Commando.
The Arājs Commando’s ranks had swollen to over a thousand. Students, builders, policemen, and even an accountant had volunteered. Most were under 30. Some were anti-communist, some anti-Semitic. Others were attracted by the excellent wages.
On December 8, 1941, the Arājs Commando returned to the ghetto. Jews were lined up in columns of a thousand. The commando marched them out of the city and provided the cordon, making sure no one escaped. As the columns reached Rumbula, more Arājs Commando members, drunk on vodka, forced the Jews to strip and abandon their luggage. They kicked and punched them towards the trenches.
The 12 German marksmen worked in shifts. Roughly 16 people were killed every minute. A survivor later testified that a woman begged Viktors Arājs for mercy. He told her, “Today, Jewish blood must flow.” The shooting finally stopped at 7:45 in the evening.
Known as Bloody Sunday, it was the second largest single massacre of Jews in World War II. Over two days, more than 24,000 people were killed. It took only 12 of Jeckeln’s men to shoot them. But it required 1,500 Arājs Commando members to lead them to the killing grounds and stand guard.
Jeckeln and the Arājs Commando then turned back to Liepāja. On December 13, another roundup began. Jews were locked in the women’s prison. The next day, they were marched to an old military training ground at Šķēde. Groups were manhandled towards the trenches, ordered to strip, and shot by one of three units: Germans, Arājs Commando, or Latvian police. In three days, over 2,700 Jews were killed.
The Riga ghetto was then refilled with Jews from Germany. Each time it became overcrowded, it was cleared out by the Arājs Commando. On March 15, 1942, 1,900 German Jews were asked to volunteer for transfer to a fish canning factory. It was a joke that would have appealed to Friedrich Jeckeln, the sardine packer. They were driven to a nearby forest and shot.
Walter Stahlecker kept meticulous records. He drew up a map and sent it to Berlin. It was called the coffin map. The number of dead in Latvia stood at 35,238.
The Nazis then changed their strategy. They built death camps in Poland where Jews could be gassed in massive numbers. There was no longer a need for ghettos. At the beginning of the German occupation, there were roughly 90,000 Jews in Latvia. Just over a year later, only a few thousand remained.
With no more Jews to kill, the Arājs Commando became redundant. Their numbers plummeted to 50 or 60. But there was more work to be done. On the eastern front, the Germans faced attacks from partisans. The Arājs Commando was posted to Belarus with a clear mission: anywhere a German supply convoy was attacked, the commando would go in and kill everyone in the nearest village and burn it down.
The Nazis also formed the Latvian Legion. Most Latvians had to be press-ganged into it, but not the Arājs Commando. They volunteered and spearheaded one of the Legion’s two divisions. They were told they were fighting for a renewal of Latvian independence.
The tide of the war turned. By October 1944, the Soviet army recaptured Riga. The Latvian Legion fought on for over six months, but to no avail. Germany surrendered on May 9, 1945.
At the end of the war, partisans conducted reprisals against collaborators across the Baltic states. But Viktors Arājs and Herberts Cukurs were nowhere to be found. Arājs had escaped to Copenhagen. He burned his papers, changed into civilian clothing, and surrendered to the Allied army, claiming to be an ordinary soldier.
While in a prisoner of war camp, he was recognized by other Latvians and sent to a camp for former SS members. A warrant for his arrest was issued. But he executed a baffling escape and melted away into postwar Germany.
Herberts Cukurs, known as the butcher of Riga, found his way to Brazil in 1946. He settled in São Paulo and started a business running tourist flights and boat trips. He remained undiscovered for almost 20 years.
In 1965, Cukurs took a telephone call from a new customer, an Austrian businessman who requested a sightseeing flight. The customer was actually an agent in the Israeli secret service, Mossad. The agent lured Cukurs to Montevideo, Uruguay. Waiting at a suburban house were other Mossad team members. The plan was to restrain Cukurs, hold a brief trial, and kill him.
There was a physical struggle. The gun with a silencer initially did not work. A heavy hammer was involved. Then the gun came back into action, and Cukurs was shot twice in the head. Eleven days later, police entered the house. The body had been left in a trunk. On top was a folder with a note: Sukas had been condemned to death by those who will never forget. Cukurs’s assassination remains the only state-sponsored murder ever admitted to by Israel.
Ten years later, the hunt for Viktors Arājs sprang back to life. In 1975, German police were told that Arājs had been found and assassinated by a Soviet hit squad. In fact, Arājs was found alive and well, living in Frankfurt. He had been working as an apprentice printer for 20 years.
After a four-and-a-half-year trial, Arājs was convicted of participating in the murder of at least 13,000 Jews. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but served just nine years before collapsing and dying from heart failure at age 78.
Today, Latvia is still coming to terms with its past. In 1935, the Jewish population of Latvia had been just over 90,000. By the end of 1941, 75 percent had been exterminated. Before German occupation, the Latvian people had not been known to be anti-Semitic. It took an effective, coordinated barrage of Nazi propaganda to change their views.
Memorials to the Holocaust have been built at Liepāja, Rumbula, and the Riga Ghetto. But they are hidden away and not well publicized. They have also been desecrated. Groups still gather on Latvia Day each year to pay homage to those who fought alongside the Nazis, including the Arājs Commando. The Holocaust in Latvia is still often denied and until recently was not even taught in schools. Latvia has come a long way since the dark days of World War II, but it still has far to go to fully accept its role in the Holocaust.