Viktor's Arājs

Viktors Arājs (born January 13, 1910 in Baldone near Riga , † January 13, 1988 in Kassel ) was a Latvian collaborator and SS officer who was involved as leader of the Arājs command in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus . The Arājs command murdered about half of the Latvian Jews.

Life

Viktors Arājs (German spelling Viktor Bernhard Arajs , also Victors Arājs ) was born in Baldone in the Courland Governorate , a part of Tsarist Russia. The name Arājs means "the plowman" in German . His father was a Latvian blacksmith , his mother came from a wealthy Baltic German family. Arājs attended the grammar school in Mitau , which he left in 1930 with the Abitur to serve as a conscript in the Latvian army . Arājs studied law at the University of Latvia in Riga from 1932 , but did not finish his studies. He was a member of the elite student fraternity Lettonija , which after dropping out of studies may have helped him to find a job with the Latvian police, where he was promoted to police lieutenant. Arājs was in the reign of Kārlis Ulmanis (1934-40) still a "modest, overzealous lower police charge in the province", who as an official dutifully distanced himself from the " Perkonkrusts ".

Germany's war against the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941 . After the Red Army had left Riga before the approaching Wehrmacht , Arājs took over an abandoned police prefecture at 19 Waldemarstrasse on July 1, 1941. The Germans who arrived soon afterwards, led by Walter Stahlecker and Robert Stieglitz, brought the translator of Latvian origin Hans Dressler with them, the Arājs knew from his time from high school and from the Latvian army. Thanks to this acquaintance, Arājs received the best recommendations from the German occupiers and enjoyed their trust. The core team of his troops recruited Arājs from his student union and from the Perkonkrusts (thunder cross).

Appeal: Recruitment to Arājs Command in Tēvija newspaper on July 4, 1941

From July 4, 1941, the German leadership relied on the " security group Arājs " (in literature mostly Arajs command or Arajs special command ). In the nationalist newspaper Vaterland (Latvian Tēvija ) a call appeared on that day “To all nationally thinking Latvians, Thunder Crossers , students, officers, protection forces and citizens who are ready to take an active part in clearing our country of harmful elements” The headquarters of the "security group" at Waldemarstrasse 19 should be reported. On July 4, Arājs and his followers locked 500 Jews who had not managed to escape from the approaching Germans in the Riga synagogue on Gogolstrasse. There they were burned alive and hand grenades were thrown through the windows.

The Arājs command consisted of up to 1,200 volunteers. The unit killed a total of about 45,000 people; first in Latvia and then in Belarus . Arājs was promoted to major in the police in 1942, then to SS-Sturmbannführer in 1943 . The adjutant of Arājs was the former Latvian pilot Herberts Cukurs .

After the reconquest of Latvia by the Red Army and the dissolution of his command, Arājs completed a military course in Güstrow in 1945 and was briefly battalion commander in the 15th Latvian SS division .

Arājs was in British internment camps until 1949 and then worked as a military driver for the British military government in Delmenhorst . In Germany he took the name Viktor Zeibot, with the help of the Latvian government-in-exile in London. He worked in Frankfurt am Main as an unskilled worker in a printing company.

On December 21, 1979, Arājs was found guilty by the Hamburg Regional Court of having killed the Jews living in the Great Riga Ghetto on December 8, 1941 in the Rumbula forest by mass shooting . He was sentenced to life imprisonment for jointly committed murder of 13,000 people . Arājs died in custody in a correctional facility in Kassel in 1988 .

literature

• Andrew Ezergailis: The holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944. The missing center. Published in association with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC. The historical institute of Latvia, Riga 1996, ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 .
• Karl Heinz Gräfe: From the thunder cross to the swastika. The Baltic States between dictatorship and occupation . Edition Organon, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-931034-11-5 . Short biography p. 430

• Martin Knop: Viktor Arajs - collaboration in mass murder , in: Historical research on racism. Ideologists - perpetrators - victims. Edited by Barbara Danckwortt, Thorsten Querg and Claudia Schöningh. Argument-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995 (Edition Philosophy and Social Sciences, Volume 30), pp. 231–245, ISBN 3-88619-630-5 .
• Katrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944. The Latvian Part of the Holocaust. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 .
• Aivars Stranga: Ebreji Baltijā. No ienākšanas pirmsākumiem līdz holokaustam. 14. gadsimts - 1945. gads. Nodibinājums LU žurnāla “Latvijas Vēsture” fonds, Rīgā 2008, ISBN 9984-643-81-6 ( Jews in the Baltic States. From the first beginning to the Holocaust. 14th century to 1945 ).

Web links

• Bibliography on the Holocaust in Latvia ( Memento from November 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 18. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition)
2. ↑ Valdis O. Lumans: Latvia in World War II . Fordham University Press, New York 2006, p. 239. ISBN 0-8232-2627-1 .
3. ↑ Margers Vestermanis (head of the museum "Jews in Latvia" in Riga): review of "The Death of the hangman of Riga" . In: Newsletter of the Fritz Bauer Institute , No. 18 from spring 2000.
4. ↑ Brown Heroes (Russian)
5. ↑ "Tēvija" newspaper from July 4, 1941 (PDF file; 943 kB)
6. ↑ Igors Vārpa: Latviešu karavīrs zem kāškrusta karoga (Latvian soldiers under the swastika), ISBN 9984-751-41-4 . Page 58
7. ↑ Justice and Nazi crimes ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Procedure No. 856, LG Hamburg 791221. 
8. ^ Bernhard Press: The murder of the Jews in Latvia: 1941–1945 , translated from the German by Laimdota Mazzarins. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL 2000, p. 70. ISBN 0-8101-1729-0 . (German edition under the title Judenmord in Lettland 1941–1945 , 2nd edition Metropol, Berlin 1995. ISBN 3-926893-13-3 .)