Arajs Kommando The Arajs Kommando ( also : " Sonderkommando Arajs " ) , led by SS - Sturmbannführer Viktors Arājs , was a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police ( ) subordinated to the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst ( SD ) . It was one of the more well - known and notorious killing units during the Holocaust . After the entry of the Einsatzkommando into the Latvian capital contact between Viktors Arājs and " Brigadeführer " Walter Stahlecker was established on 1 July 1941 . Stahlecker instructed Arājs to set up a commando that obtained an official name " Latvian Auxiliary Security Police " or Arajs Kommando . The group was composed of students and former officers of far - right wing orientation . All of the Arajs Kommando members were volunteers , and free to leave at any time . The following day on 2 July , Stahlecker revealed to Arājs that his commando had to unleash a pogrom that looked spontaneous . The Arajs Kommando unit actively participated in a variety of Nazi atrocities , including the killing of Jews , Roma , and mental patients , as well as punitive actions and massacres of civilians along Latvia ' s eastern border with the Soviet Union . The Kommando killed around 26 , 000 Jews in total . Most notably , the unit took part in the mass execution of Jews from the Riga ghetto , and several thousand Jews deported from Germany , in the Rumbula massacre of November 30 and December 8 , 1941 . Some of the commando ' s men also served as guards at the Salaspils concentration camp . As can be seen in contemporary Nazi newsreels — part of a documentation campaign to create the image that the Holocaust in the Baltics was a local , and not Nazi - directed activity — the Arajs Kommando figured prominently in the burning of Riga ' s Great ( Choral ) Synagogue on 4 July 1941 . Commemoration of this event has been chosen for marking Holocaust Memorial Day in present - day Latvia . The unit numbered about 300 - 500 men during the period that it participated in the killing of the Latvian Jewish population , and reached up to 1 , 500 members at its peak at the height of its involvement in " anti - partisan " operations in 1942 . In the final phases of the war , the unit was disbanded and its personnel transferred to the Latvian Legion . After successfully hiding in West Germany for several decades after the war , Viktors Arājs was eventually arrested , tried , and imprisoned for his crimes . More recently , the governments of Canada , the United States , the United Kingdom , and Australia were involved in the attempt to extradite Konrāds Kalējs , a former officer of the Arajs Kommando , to Latvia for trial on charges of genocide . Kalējs died 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 . Latvian Holocaust historian A . Ezergailis estimates about a third of the Arājs Kommando , 500 of a maximum of around 1 , 500 total members , actively participated in the killings of Jews , and claimed that one cannot be convicted of crimes against humanity based solely on membership in an organization . Naums Lifšics , a Jewish - Latvian economist and survivor of the Stalinist deportations , suggested that NKVD agents probably participated in the activities of the Arajs Kommando .