Ezergailis has also argued, "I do not think that among the killers of the Jews there were more than ten Pērkonkrusts members, if that. They played a more significant role as purveyors of anti-Semitism in Nazi press." The German authorities decisively banned the organization for good in August 1941. Some former Pērkonkrusts members collaborated with the Germans, while others maintained an anti-German sentiment and joined those groups subversively opposed to German occupation. Celmiņš continued his outward collaboration with the Germans in the hopes that sizable Latvian military formations would be created. From February 1942, he headed the Committee for Organising Latvian Volunteers (), the main function of which was the recruitment of Latvian men for the Latvian Auxiliary Police Battalions, known in German as "Schutzmannschaften" or simply "Schuma". Aside from front-line combat duties, these battalions also participated in so-called anti-partisan operations in Latvia and Belarus that included the massacres of rural Jews and other civilians. Pērkonkrusts members working within the SD apparatus in occupied Latvia would feed Celmiņš information, some of which he would include in his underground, anti-German publication "Brīvā Latvija". This eventually led to Celmiņš and his associates being arrested, with Celmiņš ending up imprisoned in Flossenbürg concentration camp. A radical group claiming Pērkonkrusts's name emerged in the 1990s as an organization whose stated goal was the overthrow of the current unsatisfactory government and the establishment of a "Latvian Latvia". In 1995, three former members of the group "Rība's Defenders" - Valdis Raups, Aivars Vīksniņš and then-68-year-old Vilis Liniņš - joined up with martial artist Juris Rečs to reconstitute Pērkonkrusts. "Rība's Defenders" was an unregistered splinter group from the self-proclaimed successor organization of the pre-WWII Aizsargi"," founded by Jānis Rība. Members of the group were assigned code names, swore loyalty oaths, and senior members wore masks to initiate recruits. The organization was explicitly militaristic and considered itself a "Latvian fighting unit" pursuing a "holy liberation struggle."