never carried out since the Soviets temporarily abolished capital punishment between 1947 and 1949, thus saving the lives of the condemned convicts and more who went on trial during this period. The most frequently imposed sentence was 25 years in prison, with hard labor, plus forfeiture of civil rights for 5 years, plus forfeiture of all property. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Latvian courts rehabilitated more than 40 of those convicted despite overwhelming evidence in virtually all of the cases. 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. Herberts Cukurs, a deputy commander of the Arajs Kommado, was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad in 1965. While living in Brazil, Cukurs was befriended by a German-speaking Mossad agent, who lured him to Uruguay, where Cukurs was ambushed. 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 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 estimated 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 claimed that one cannot be convicted of crimes against humanity based solely on membership in an organization. References Further reading Foreign Ministry of Latvia: The Holocaust in German-Occupied Latvia Nazi SS Latvian collaborators with Nazi Germany The Holocaust in Latvia Local participation in the Holocaust Einsatzgruppen Generalbezirk Lettland Collaboration with the Axis Powers