About Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs (13 January 1910 – 13 January 1988) was a Latvian/Baltic German collaborator and Nazi SS SD officer who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist unit. The Arajs Kommando murdered about half of Latvia's Jews. == Life == Viktors Bernhard Arājs was born on 13 January 1910 in the town of Baldone, then part of the Russian Empire (now Latvia). His father was a Latvian blacksmith and his mother came from a wealthy family of Baltic Germans. Arājs attended Jelgava Gymnasium, which he left in 1930 for mandatory national defense service in the Latvian Army. In 1932, Arājs studied law at the University of Latvia in Riga, but completed his degree only in 1941 after the Soviet occupation. He was a member of the elite student fraternity Lettonia, which may have helped him get a job with the Latvian police after he left the university. Arājs remained with the Latvian police until he left the service in 1938. During the Ulmanis' régime in Latvia, Arājs was a "low ranking provincial police officer" who, as a loyal administrator, dutifully "distanced himself officially from the Pērkonkrusts", the ultra-nationalist party in Latvia. == Activities during World War II == The war between Germany and the Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941.
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