Arajs Victor

(January 13, 1910 - January 13, 1988)
Latvia - a country where during the Second World War as a percentage of local Jews killed more than anywhere else in the world. According to the author of numerous books on the Holocaust Leonid Kovalev, "after the liberation of Riga in 1944 from 80 thousand Latvian Jews survived 162 people".
Moreover, Jews were not only the Nazis. First zealous Letts. Numerous documents and testimony suggest that the genocide of Jews in Latvia are local fascists and nationalists.
. Prepared for the release of a book of defenders Charles Berezin and Axel GAAP - Operation "Cottbus" (or "cleansing" of Jews from the Baltic states)
. German units of Army Group "North" captured Riga 1 st July 1941
. Together with the Germans in the occupied city showed up the set of some armed men in civilian clothes. Today in the Latvian press call them - the national partisans.

The same day, the building of the Riga Prefecture were employed by one of the detachments of the "Latvian partisans, commanded by a young guy named Victor Arajs. Recently he turned 31 year. He was broad-shouldered, strong, with a nice open face. A year ago, finished university and became a lawyer.

At the same time in the room Prefectural Germans appeared. Headed their Brigadenfuhrer SS commander eynzattsgruppy "A" Brigadenfuhrer (Major General) Walter Shtalekker. If it were inseparable from the Baltic German translator Captain Hans Dresler and former head of political department ulmanisovskogo regime Robert Stieglitz.

. Dresler was an old friend Arajs joint studies in the Jelgava Gymnasium and service in the Latvian army
. It was he who recommended his chief classmate. Perhaps it was a chance meeting. But all further activities Arajs and subordinate to the Latvian team of volunteers was not a random. And it was in the destruction of the Jews ...

His detachment, in a very rough estimate, killed about 50 thousand Jews, as residents of Latvia and exported here by the Nazis from occupied countries of Europe. The work of the team Arajs, among many hundreds of other killers Letts, was worthy of the crown of anti-Semitic campaign, held in Latvia in the past two decades Latvian fascists and "primitive" nationalists. Hitler was coming to them the magic wand to wave that began implemented innermost their dream - the elimination of all Jews. Before a single ...
Who is he - Victor AraysN Where did this Latvian vyrodokN
Born Victor Arajs (in Russian his name means "a farmer") Jan. 13, 1910 in Baldone. Father was a blacksmith, and his mother - daughter of wealthy German.

The First World War shattered the family: his father was called up from where he returned ... with his wife, a Chinese woman. Abandoned mother and son in poverty. Victor had to work with eight years - first a slave, and then he joined the Artel craftsmen who earned the erection of business buildings.

. Study Arajs graduated in Jelgava Gymnasium, where he showed himself a diligent student
. After active duty service in the Vidzeme artillery regiment, which concluded at the rank of Corporal.

Then the young man decided to break up the Police Service

. The arrival of the Soviet army in the summer of 1940 Arajs met quite calmly - passed Marxism-Leninism and earned a Soviet lawyer
. Neither he nor his relatives from the Stalinist repression is not affected. And Victor later repeatedly admitted that he believed the Bolsheviks and that they, in his understanding, no worse than the Nazis.

. Unless, . after the establishment of Soviet power in Latvia, . He organized a professed nationalist views of the so-called "security team", . which later became known as the Latvian Auxiliary Police Security,
. In his team he proudly carried the nickname "Shustin" (chief security officer of Latvia 1940-1941.), And members of his team were called "antherozoids.

. When 1 July 1941 the Nazis went to Riga, Arajs hastened to demonstrate their loyalty to the new authorities, "capturing" abandoned police prefecture
. Then everything went like clockwork:

In the cellars of Grand Choral Synagogue, which was located in the heart of Riga on Gogol Street, hid some 500 Jewish refugees from Siauliai. They managed to get only to Riga, because the German offensive has cut off their path to the east. Exhausted, frightened, full of the most dreadful forebodings, women, children and old people (and such was the overwhelming majority), have found refuge in his church.

On July 4, in the evening, Victor Arajs and his staff, arrived by car to synagogue. They sprayed the walls with kerosene, and overlaid tow, and then set fire. In mothers who were trying to throw the children out of windows of burning buildings, firing automatic. When the old walls took up a strong fire, people Arajs threw hand grenades into the windows. So 500 Jews have found here a martyr's end.
On the same day in Riga were crushed all the other synagogues and prayer houses.
The Germans did not participate in the massacre. Everything was done by local fascists of the "team Arajs".
PochemuN
First of all, because at that time the Germans were still engaged in their military affairs. Therefore, the power in the hands of Latvians.

How much hated the Jews' true Latvian patriots "! Choking with impotent envy of all - for successful stores, law offices and cozy cottages in Jurmala. Hated for the fact that Jews dare to speak their language, to pray to their god. Then came the hour ..

. Thus began the total destruction of the Jewish population of Latvian fascists ...

. At the same time, . July 4, . in the newspaper Teviya "(" Fatherland ") - the main Latvian newspaper during the German occupation, . appeared "Invitation" to read: "All ethnic Latvians thinking -" perkonkrustovtsy ", . Students, . "Aizsargi", . officers and, . who wants to take an active part in cleaning up our earth from harmful elements, . may apply to the leadership of the security team at Valdemar, . 19, . from 9-00 to 11-00 and from 17-00 to 19-00 ",
.

And "national-minded" Latvians were recorded in the "command Arajs", inspired by the impressive start of his work. By the end of July 1941 in his division there were some hundreds of punitive. The most amazing and incredible was the fact that they were mostly university students and senior students Riga schools. Some of them barely 15 years old. Many here were officers of the former Latvian army, police and "Aizsargi."

With the organization of the Riga ghetto in "team Arajs" add work. Shootings of Jews have become regular. They came early in the morning in the Bikernieki forest on the outskirts of the city. Location shooting was cordoned prudently Latvian militarized police, together with his comrades in arms - the German SS.

. The doomed, who were recruited from several hundred to one thousand-two, seated in rows of ten to twenty people on the ground
. Before the shooting victims were stripped naked and put his clothes in a heap, from which the later, still excited executions of murderers, chose their own things better.

Naked Jews methodically, row by row, raised from the ground and lined up on the edge of a huge pit, which usually dug on the eve of Russian prisoners. The arrows lined up in front, the other edge of the pit, twenty or thirty meters away from their victims. They stood in two lines: the first - on the knee (these labeled in the left half of the breast), and the second - standing (they were aiming at his head).

Volley - and a dozen victims were falling on the muddy ground of the blood. Sometimes I could not kill. Then finished off at close range with pistols. This was called - "a shot of Mercy":

: A damp froze on 29 th November 1941 was the last day for thousands and thousands of Jews. Huge columns of people condemned to death, staggered to Rumbula forest. The way they lay on the streets of Moscow, in the direction of the rubber factory "square" and more.

In frosty silence and shuffling of feet were drowned by the sound of thousands of drunken laughter, cursing protection, knocking beats, wicked crash pistols and peals of automatic bursts. Huge silent city decided to ignore this terrible action at its edge. Riga as a silent and shrank.

After that shooting in Riga newspaper Teviya "from 1 st December 1941 was made by the journalist Janis Martinsons article" The struggle against Jewry ". He wrote: "Finally it's time, when almost all the nations of Europe have learned to recognize their common enemy - the Jew. Almost all the nations of Europe went to war against this enemy, as on the battlefield and in the internal construction. And for us, Latvians, came this moment ... "

Araysovtsy read this story. And the stronger was their zeal for the eighth of December, when they are making jokes but jokes were thrown into lorries patients of Jewish children from the Children's Hospital from the street Ludzas to take them to be shot.

. Since January 1942 "team Arajs" improved "method of execution
. If previously doomed to death people were placed in small groups on the edge of the ditch, . and arrows on the team's salvo shots, . since the beginning of 1942 victims, . stripped down to his underwear, . sometimes naked, . were down on the corpses of people killed earlier and get up so, . that their bodies fell down flat stacks,
.

During some of the shootings killed up to 2 thousand people. Members of the team Arajs "Ligotnis admitted after the war, under interrogation, that only from January to March 1943 in Bikernieki Forest Latvian policemen were shot more than 10 thousand people.
. Destroying Latvian Jews, shooting all the mentally ill and "collaborators Communists" (at the same time reducing and personal accounts), "team Arajs" start "on tour"
. That should wipe out a few Belarusian or Russian villages, to help "solve the Jewish question" in the Warsaw ghetto and t. n. Sometimes members of the team rested in ... Salaspils concentration camp - of course, as the protection.

Sam Arajs actively participated in the shooting and demanded the same from his subordinates. We know his statement: "What is the Latvian, who did not kill any zhidaN"

. In 1942, for their diligence Nazi command assigned Arajs title shturmbannfyurera (Major) SS, and in July 1943 he was awarded the Cross of Military Merit with Swords
.
It is difficult to state the exact number of dead "plowman and his team of people. So usually write - about a hundred thousand ". Although some believe that figure is understated.
As the war rolled in the opposite direction, and "reserves" of the victims began to dry up and the front had rolled on the rear, most members of the team Arajs "were sent to the front of the Latvian SS legion. When the "smell of fried, Arajs leaned in Germany, where he met a capitulation.
Like all Nazi supporters, he kept hid. But since Sept. 1, 1950 the U.S. announced that they would not pursue the Letts of the SS, then "plowman" legalized as a "veteran" under the name of his wife - Zeybot. Only July 10, 1975 Germanic power, finally "found" Arajs, who worked as a compositor in the modest printing Frankfurt.
. At the trial it became clear horrific facts: he and his henchmen shot all in a row and behaved much more harshly than their German "colleagues"
. At trial Arajs only expressed regret that ... "all shot failed, and therefore were living witnesses."
As in Germany abolished the death penalty, he received the maximum - life imprisonment. He died in prison executioner Kassan on his birthday - January 13, 1988. Without repentance and regret ...