The Latvian Death Commando

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 recounts the case history of Harijs Svikeris, a senior officer in a notorious Latvian killing unit called the Arãjs Kommando, which killed thousands of Jews in Latvia, including the Rumbula Forest massacre in Riga. The elimination of Latvian Jewry could not have been accomplished without willing, locally recruited collaborators such as Harijs Svikeris, who was one of three suspects about whom the Hetherington-Chalmers Inquiry said there was a prima facie case to answer. The head of Scotland Yard’s War Crimes Unit thought the evidence was strong enough to take to court but the CPS declined to prosecute because of a lack of eyewitness testimony. This case exemplifies the core problem: that the application of normative juridical rules hamstrung the prosecution of even the most egregious Nazi collaborators. However, it also confirms that, in the absence of much historical documentation, war crimes investigations have played a valuable role in unearthing facts about the Latvian Holocaust and local complicity. The chapter looks more broadly at Latvian collaborators, including the odyssey of Konrad Kalejs, who fled to Australia after the war but also briefly sought sanctuary in the UK in the 1990s.