[3] 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 border with the Soviet Union.

[6] As can be seen in contemporary Nazi newsreels, part of a campaign to create the perception that the Holocaust in the Baltics was local, and not Nazi-directed, the Arajs Kommando figured prominently in the burning of Riga's Great (Choral) Synagogue on 4 July 1941.

[7][8] After successfully hiding in West Germany for several decades after the war under an assumed name, Viktors Arājs was eventually identified by a former colleague, arrested, tried, and imprisoned for his crimes.

Kalējs died in 2001 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.

Historian of the Latvian Holocaust Andrew Ezergailis claimed that about a third of the Arājs Kommando, 500 out of a maximum of around 1,500 total members, actively participated in the killings of Jews, and pointed out that one cannot be convicted of crimes against humanity based solely on membership in an organization.