Karlis Ozols

After later migrating to Australia, he was recommended to be charged under that country's War Crimes Act for helping oversee the mass-killings of Jews and anti-fascist insurgents in both Latvia and Belarus, but this was not pursued to prosecution.

This force, of which the infamous Arajs Kommando was part of, conducted widespread executions of Jews and other groups deemed undesirable by the Nazis in Latvia.

[2][3][4][5][6][7][1] In early 1942, Ozols joined the Nazi Security Service and was sent to the specialist mass-killing training school at Fürstenberg which was associated with the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

In July, Ozols was deployed to Minsk in Nazi-controlled Belarus where he was made a member of Himmler's SS and given the rank of lieutenant in charge of the 1st company in the 4th battalion of the Latvian Security Service.

Throughout 1942 and 1943, Ozols actively assisted in the organisation of extermination sites such as Maly Trostenets near Minsk where up to 15,000 people were killed on a weekly basis.

[1] In spring 1945, Ozols fled Riga by sea just ahead of the advancing Soviet forces, landing in West Germany, and spent the next several years in various D.P.

The director of the National Crime Authority recommended charges of genocide against Ozols, however the case failed to proceed and was dropped in 1995 due to an apparent lack of funds to continue the investigation.

[8] Ozols represented Latvia on eighth board (+7 -1 =7) in the unofficial Chess Olympiad, at Munich 1936, where he won the individual bronze medal.