April 30, 2021 • 50 mins
The spy had gotten a step closer to the Butcher. Comparing Israel's mission to assassinate Herbert Cukurs to the US mission to assassinate Osama Bin Laden, the latter was revenge. But when Israel and Mossad decided to kill The Butcher of Latvia, it was to prevent more killing of Jews. Things were starting to heat up with the Statute of Limitations, which was the whole reason for the mission: to stop Germany from giving Nazi killers a free pass for their atrocities. Importantly, a famous Nazi hunter joined the cause: Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal was a master publicist and self-promoter and was obsessed with finding the men and women responsible for the Holocaust and bringing Nazis to justice.
“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, The Good Assassin. Explore other parts of this story in the book: Buy The Good Assassin
There was also the question of the assassination method. Mossad had many ways to take someone out, what they called “targeted killings.”
Yosef Yariv's job was to recruit the rest of the team that would fly to South America to join Mio and carry out the sentence on the Butcher. The team would need to train in how to bring down a strong, desperate man who has just realized he’s fighting for his life.
Yariv found a guy. His name was Imi Lichtenfeld. Lichtenfeld had created a street-fighting technique called Krav Maga (“close combat” in Hebrew), which allowed practitioners to inflict the most damage in the shortest possible time. In 1948, the Israel Defense Forces had adopted Krav Maga for training its recruits and named Imi Lichtenfeld Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness. In 1964, Lichtenfeld began to lead secret training sessions with the kill team.
This episode contains interviews with H. Keith Melton, intelligence historian and expert on espionage tradecraft and Eyal Yanilov, co-founder and Chief Instructor of Krav Maga Global.
- Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY
- Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN
- Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS
- Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN
- Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR
- Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS
- With the voices of: NICK AFKA THOMAS, OMRI ANGHEL, ANDREW POLK, MINDY ESCOBAR-LEANSE, STEVE ROUTMAN, STEFAN RUDNICKI
- Theme Music by TYLER CASH
- Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO
- Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM
Learn more about “Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher” at DiversionPodcasts.com
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion podcasts. This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence and
scenes of genocide. Listener's discretion is advised. Meo had gotten
(00:33):
a step closer to the Butcher. He'd come back from
the road trip to the plantations in the Brazilian jungle
thinking he was making progress. The Butcher was starting to
trust him. Neo sat down to write a report to
your Reeve. He was expected to fill in his boss
with every major development. At the same time you know
was drawing up his report, things were starting to heat
(00:55):
up with the Statute of Limitations, which was the whole
reason for the mission, to stop Germans from giving Nazi
killers a free pass for their atrocities. Here's Abner Abraham again,
the former Massad agent and historian of the agency. I
mean it's you compared for examples to be Latin. In
September eleven, it was a revenge but in the mossadoh
(01:16):
and they decided to kill someone and the Plume Minister
confirmed this target. It was to prevent him and to
prevent mortal attacks and more killing of Jews. That that
was the idea. I'm Steven Talty and this is good
(01:40):
assassins hunting the butcher. So it's the first month was
to find a nasty a briging forward trial. The second
part was to find a Nazi and killing. We must
thwoat the shining losses. He hadn't of a trail of
(02:01):
blood and horror, the end of a man whose name
will be written in informating episode six. The kill team.
(02:25):
By the end of the world was waking up to
the fact that the Germans really intended to go ahead
with the amnesty, so the Jewish resistance was stepping up
their efforts to try and stop it. To Via Friedman,
the Nazi hunter, who had met with the German Justice minister,
was giving interviews in Israel and encouraging world leaders to
(02:47):
speak out. He was keeping an eye on Germany, hoping
to pressure and shame its politicians into stopping the amnesty.
As the cause gained more traction, protesters appeared on the
streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Soon they would spread
all over the world, from New York to London. Freedman
was good one on one with his eyewitness accounts of
(03:08):
the Holocaust. He could persuade people. Earlier, when the head
of the Socialist Party in Germany came to Israel. Freedman
went to see him in the lobby of his hotel,
and Israeli security agent spotted Freeman coming through the front doors.
The agent hurried over, almost blocking Freeman from making it
to the elevators. The guy was pale, nervous. He thought
(03:31):
the activists was up to no good. The agent asked
of Freeman was there to assassinate the German leader. Freedman laughed,
guy knew his reputation, but Freeman told the agent that no,
he was just going to talk to the politician. The
agent let him pass. Freedman went upstairs and made his
presentation to the German official. It was powerful stuff. A
(03:53):
few hours later, the Socialist leader agreed to oppose the amnesty.
Was another small coup for Freedman in this campaign to
sway the German government. Importantly, another much more famous Nazi
(04:13):
hunter joined the cause, Simon Wisenthal. Visenthal had barely survived
World War Two, having been imprisoned in four concentration camps
between in he was in a Polish camp when his
commander decided to celebrate Hitler's birthday by executing fifty four
(04:35):
Jewish intellectuals, one for every year of the Feurer's life.
Enthal was chosen to be one of them. He listened
as the others were shot before the killers came to him,
though someone called his name. One of the Germans had
(04:56):
convinced the commander that Visenthal, who was an accomplished artist,
should paint a poster of Hitler instead of being murdered.
He was led away from the pits and later escaped
from the camp. Visenthal made it through, but he lost
his family. Weeks after the war ended, he was already
hunting down Nazis. That quest would occupy him for the
(05:19):
rest of his life. Visenthal did everything. He spent months
digging through archives. He staked out apartment buildings waiting for
ex Nazis to show up, and unlike Friedman, he made
friends in high places, recruiting politicians and celebrities to his mission.
He'd had some major successes. When Anne Frank's diary became
(05:39):
a worldwide bestseller, some Austrians claimed it was a fake.
They said that Anne Frank had never existed, and they
challenged Wisenthal to find Carl Silberbauer, the man who had
supposedly arrested her. Resenthal went to work. After months of
searching in which Wisenthal spent hours coming through Nazi records
and Dutch phone books. He found Silverbauer was working as
(06:02):
a policeman in Vienna. Visenthal exposed him, and silver Bauer
admitted that Anne Frank had indeed existed and her memoir
was truthful. It was a major blow to Holocaust deniers.
Visenthal tracked down Eric Jakowitch, who had been in charge
of putting Jews from the Netherlands on the trains to
(06:23):
their desks. Visenthal found Jakowitch living in Italy, where a
Catholic bishop had helped the Nazi even let him live
in a local convent. By the early sixties, Jackowitch was
a millionaire several times over and living a comfortable life.
Visenthal uncovered his past, and the Nazis picture appeared on
(06:44):
the front pages of newspapers all over Europe. He went
on the run, first to Switzerland, then to Germany, but
Visenthal wouldn't give up. He found him again, and finally
the killer gave up. He was thrown in jail. So
Simon Wiesenthal was good at what he did. He was
(07:05):
a master publicist, self promoter, but he was just as
obsessed with finding the men and women responsible for the
genocide and bringing Nazis to justice. You're not just married
to me. Visenthal's wife used to tell him, you were
married to the six million. The further ist cause. Reisenthal
had even become a massad operative. The agency sent him
(07:27):
an allowance a few hundred dollars a month to help
with his quest. Here's Wisenthal explaining the significance of the
Statute of Limitations after that time, via then we will
find new people. They commit crimes. So I find new
evidence about people. They are free. They cannot bring them
(07:50):
for justice in Germany. And this mean thousands. This means
thousands of people because we lost eleven million witnesses Lake Friedman.
Simon Visenthal went to meet with the Justice minister in
Germany about the coming amnesty. He wanted to know what
would happen if the statute went into effect. Around six
(08:12):
thousand men had served at Auschwitz, only a tiny number
of them, less than one percent had even been brought
to trial when the statute went into effect. With the
rest I'll go free. The German minister avoided the question.
He started talking about the billions of Deutsche marks in
reparations that Germany had paid to survivors. Visenthal seethed. He
(08:34):
wasn't there to talk about money. He's there to talk
about punishment. It was once more a case of I
was simply not speaking the same language I told him
he had, Minister, the murderer of my mother and the
murderers of many of my relations and friends have not
been found yet. I don't even know their names. I
(08:57):
am a dressing the Minister of us. This is not
definance Minister. I recognized the Federal Republic's financial efforts, but
surely they cannot be a substitute for efforts to achieve justice.
I have come to you as a very specific question,
(09:18):
what happens after me eight? That was the date the
amnesty was supposed to go into effect May eighth. The
Minister didn't give Resenthal and answer. In fact, he was
starting to sound slippery on the whole issue. Did he
support the amnesty or didn't he? He told Recenthal it
(09:40):
wasn't up to him to decide. The Nazi Hunter wasn't satisfied.
He decided to launch a pr campaign to let people
around the world know what was going on. Reasenthal was
brilliant at that kind of thing. He had the kind
of marketing skills the vision the two Via freedmen blocked.
Eisenthal wrote an open letter condemning the statute. He called
(10:03):
the amnesty an unprecedented injustice towards the millions of victims
of Nazi brutality. Once the murders knew they would never
be prosecuted, Easenthal wrote, they would link arms with other
enemies of liberty. They would spread their propaganda and poison
to the young people of Germany and then abroad. Visenthal
(10:23):
was broadening the issue beyond the Holocaust at the West
Germans that the killers of six million get away with it,
the world would be a far more dangerous place for everybody.
Visenthal sent the letter to famous people in Europe, America
and elsewhere. The great American playwright Arthur Miller signed it,
(10:44):
as did a Nobel Prize winning physicist, The future Pope
Benedict sixteen announced his support. His own cousin, who had
down syndrome, had been murdered by the Nazis. Dozens and
dozens of others joined the campaign, artists, pol Titians, religious leaders.
Even Robert Kennedy was still recovering from the assassination of
(11:05):
his brother JFK sent a telegram moral duties. It read
have no term. Robert Kennedy came out against Germany's planned amnesty,
but the efforts of the two Nazi hunters, Freedman and
Wisenthal were in the winner of nine four, having little
effect in Germany. Opinion polls there still show the statute
(11:29):
was popular the numbers they weren't budgeting. The two activists
believed they were losing the fight, which could make Massad's
Zuker's mission that much more important. It was the final
piece that could sway the debate. A last shot. Neo
(11:50):
wrote out his report on his trip with Sukers to
the plantation. When he was finished, he took a business
letter that he had already typed out and copied out
the report in invisible inc inserting the text between the lines.
Then he folded the letter, put it in an air
mail envelope and send it off to his boss your
reeve in Paris. Meal's use of invisible ink intrigued me.
(12:13):
It's something that, of course I've seen dozens of times
and spy novels and movies, but I kind of assumed
that in real life invisible ink would be a bit
too crude for sophisticated agency like the MASSAD. So I
checked with an intelligence historian named h. Keith Melton, and
turns out it was actually a widespread tactic at the time.
(12:36):
Invisible links have been used for probably a thousand years
or thousands of years, going back ultimately to Limon juice.
And you know, if you take a limon juice right
a secret message between the lines and then hold it
up to a flame, you can see it becomes visible.
So the standard component of all invisible aks is the
(12:58):
ink itself, and the reagent is the way you make
it visible. And services developed extraordinarily complex secret inks. But
you could create a secret eak out of salava, out
of water. You could use it out of diluted blood.
You could use it from sperm, you could use it
(13:19):
from bodily fluids. Secret ease can be made out of
a variety of things. Water is probably one of the
most interesting because just water can later be detected by
intelligent service. In general, invisible ink has fallen out of
use today, but according to Melton, that might be the
very reason not to discount it entirely. The Russian Service
(13:44):
quit searching and quit teaching skills for secretings around the
year two thousands, so as you use belfore then, but
sometimes tradecraft becomes so forgotten about it and so old
it becomes usable again. But there's no one's looking for
And I don't believe the U. S. Coastal Service has
(14:05):
a capability to the sect secrets anymore, where they certainly
would have had that fifties sixty seventy years ago. Back
to me O, he now had a much better feel
for Zookers, what might work getting him to another country
and what wouldn't. In his report, he wrote that the
(14:29):
plantation trip had been worthwhile because he was conditioning Zookers
to get comfortable with longer and longer trips away from home.
This was key. He couldn't just bring a flight to
say Chili on the butcher. He had to build up
to that slowly, step by step, to make sure that
suckers would follow him wherever he went. There was also
(14:51):
the question of the assassination method. Massad had many ways
to take someone out, what they called targeted killings. In
nineteen two, when the Egyptians began building rockets at a
facility in the desert called Factory three three three, Basada
knew the missiles would eventually be aimed at Israel. They
mailed two package bombs to the factory, killing five workers there.
(15:16):
Later they were book bombs, one of which targeted a
plo operative named Bassam Sharif. Shariff survived and we were
actually able to find a tape of him discussing the incident.
Uh that was allowed to day. That morning, when the
book came to me, the mailman said, well, you have
(15:37):
a book and it's stamped. I looked at the envelope.
It was opened. The envelope was opened and the book
was protruding out and stamped by the Lebanese government. Checked
clear from explosives. So I was relaxed a little bit.
And the moment I opened that time, you know I
discovered it. It's part of a second. I've seen the
(15:57):
explosive two charges. They have hold of the book and
put two explosive charges one and another that action and
one and then down, so that they cut me into
three pieces. In my head. I was standing. That's why
my managed to probably the Palestinian poet and terrorist Mohammed
(16:23):
Buddha opened the door of his car parked on the
Paris street. Massad had planted a pressure activated bomb underneath
the driver's seat. As soon as Buddhia sat down, it
went off and Buddhia was killed. Other targets of Assad
simply disappeared. That's what happened to one German scientist, Heinz Krug,
(16:43):
who's helping Egypt build those missiles in the desert. He
worked out of Munich. MASSAD sent the surveillance team there
to learn Krug's movements. Then, early one evening, crew received
a phone call from a man pretending to be a
friend of the Egyptian general who's heading up missile program.
Something important had come up, and the man requested a
(17:04):
meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in Munich. Krug suspected nothing.
He went to the meeting and met the man, who
was actually a MASSAD operative. They discussed business. The next day,
the operative picked him up for another round of discussions
brought him to a villa in the suburbs. Krug going
into the villa expecting to meet one of the Egyptian commanders. Inside,
(17:28):
there was a MASSAD team waiting for him. They hit
him on the head and put him still alive in
the secret compartment inside a v W camper. He was
driven to Marseilles, France, sedated, put on an airplane, and
flown to Israel. Their Kruge was roughed up and interrogated.
After spilling his secrets over many months, a Massad agent
(17:49):
was ordered to take him to a deserted area north
of Tel Aviv to kill him. Krug's body was then
loaded aboard and Israeli military plane and dumped into the sea.
Some Massad assassins used handguns, though the cliche method a
(18:10):
rifle fired from a long distance never seemed to be
part of their repertoire. One PLO man was shot by
a guy driving by on a motorcycle. Another target was
pushed into traffic was killed by a passing car. There
was even a target who was dosed with radioactive material
and later died years later. Another suspected victim of Massad,
(18:34):
a scientist who doubled as a colonel in the Egyptian Army,
fell quote unquote from a balcony in Alexandria. When Egyptian
police entered his apartment, they found the gas had been
turned on and there were cuts in the scientist's arms,
both signs pointing to a suicide attempt. Massad had made
it look like the man had tried to kill himself
(18:54):
three different ways and finally succeeded. It had all the
hall marks of an Israeli hit. Massad didn't claim responsibility,
because Massad never claims responsibility. I wanted to let you
(19:17):
know about something we're trying. We've set up an email
address for listeners to send us your questions about the show.
Are you curious about something you've heard on Hunting the
Butcher and want to know more? Is there something I
haven't covered that you wish I would. I want to
hear from you. Record yourself asking your question. The voice
(19:37):
memos app on iPhone works well. Include your name and
where you're from, and we'll try to answer your question
on a future episode. The email address is Hunting the
Butcher at the Version podcast dot com. Record yourself asking
a question and email it to me again. The email
address is Hunting the Butcher at Diversion podcast asked dot com.
(20:02):
That's a podcast plural with an S at the end.
I'm looking forward to hearing your questions. Thanks. Now on
with the show. So Meo had options for the assassination method,
but he hadn't made up his mind on which was
(20:23):
the best way to go, how should it be done?
What would be the safest way? A bullets from a farm,
perhaps poisoning, maybe a point blank shot in the back
of the head. He had to know more about the
butcher before he could decide. With his report completed, Meo
got back in touch with Suckers. The butcher proposed another
(20:45):
scouting trip for Coonsla's tourist business, this time to a
town on the Brazilian coast called Santos. Meo jumped at
the opportunity. A plan was starting to form in his head,
a plan for the death of Herbert Suckers. He wanted
to test out a couple of ideas for it, so
he told Suckers they would check out the market for
rental homes in Santos, get the prices, see how many
(21:08):
were full this time of year. If it looked good,
his company might start investing. Neo drove with Suckers to
the coast and got a room at a nice hotel.
The next morning, Neo set up a routine. They would
find a rental home that was on the market and
a range of visit. They talked to the owner, see
what the properties were like and how much they were
(21:28):
going for. Zuckers thought he was helping kunz La out
with his business research. He did some interpreting. He spoke
good Portuguese. Had Mio actually been looking to make investments,
Suckers would have been pretty useful. One of the ideas
Mio had for the assassination was to bring the butcher
to a house in another of the South American countries
(21:49):
and have the killed team waiting there for him. It
would be private, safe, and it would give the team
time alone with Suckers to read him his sentence. This
option had a lot going for it, but if the
plan was going to work, Meo had to train Sukers.
Walking into strange houses had to be automatic for him.
(22:11):
After Santos Zuker suggested they hit another beach town, Portelegre.
Suckers was having a good time. Mia was paying all
the bills, nice restaurants, good hotels. It was like a
preview of coming attractions. If he could get on board
with Kunsla's company, this would be his life from now on.
He liked it. Meo was buttering up the butcher. You
(22:37):
have no idea how glad I am we met, I
told the butcher. It must have been the faiths that
brought us together. You are at home here, who know
the South American language and how to do business here.
Mio agreed to meet Suckers and Portelegre a few days later.
(23:01):
They traveled there separately. After Meal checked into their hotel,
he went to Zuker's room. He knocked on the door,
then he got a shock. Some seconds passed. Suddenly the
door of us pulled open to reveal Ukers standing there,
a gun in his hand. The snake is always on
(23:22):
his toes, I thought, I pointed as the gun, I said,
half jokingly, So what is it? But you're scared of me?
If you had a long nose, then I would have
a good reason to be scared. Zuker said, anyway, one
must always be on the alert. He returns the gun
(23:43):
to his pocket. Neio tried to laugh it off, but
he could see that the butcher was actually nervous. It
wasn't a good sign. Neo drove around Portle Gray with Zukers,
looking at houses. At one point, Zuker's was in the
passenger seat talking about tourism when Mio heard him mention
(24:04):
the name Joseph Kramer. Meo managed to keep his eyes
on the road. He controlled his breathing, showing no reaction,
but inside he was reeling. Joseph Kramer. Most Jews who'd
lost people in the Holocaust knew the name. The Belson
War criminals arrived at Lunaboug for trial. Their faces gave
(24:25):
a little clue to what they're thinking. Last out of
the lotty is Joseph Kramer, the Beast of Belson. The calm,
orderliness of the scene contrasts violently with the ghastly pictures
which shocked the country when they were shown in British usually.
Kramer was the infamous East of Belson. The former commander
of the concentration camp Auschwitz, broken out to hundreds of
(24:46):
thousands of Jews had died under his watch. He personally
selected Jews for death. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.
Kramer was known to have been exceptionally brutal to the
Jewish prisoners, sometimes whipping them until their skin flayed off
leg suckers. Cramer had denied everything after the war. He
(25:06):
told prosecutors the stories about him were quote products of
the Jews imagination. Kramer was captured by the British tried
in the months following the end of the war and
what's known as the Belson Trial. Kramer was convicted and
sentenced to death. He was hanged on December thirteenth. Meo
(25:27):
kept driving, but his mind was going a mile a minute.
Why would Suckers bring up Joseph Kramer. He hadn't even
been talking about the war. He just dropped it into
the middle of a boring little monologue about some topic.
Meo only half remembered. It was just strange. It was
as if the Butcher was testing Meo in the language
(25:49):
he would understand only if he were someone other than
Anton Kunzla, if he were saying a double agent. Couldn't
Suckers be speaking to Meo and a kind of code
saying I know why you're here, and it isn't to
make money. Neo couldn't be sure, but he was worried.
(26:12):
Back in Paris, Josef your Reeve had been busy. It
was his job to recruit the rest of the team
that would fly to South America to join Meo and
carry out the sentence on the butcher body men a
kill team. When your Reef was done, he dissembled an
intriguing collection of men. If you saw them walking down
the street, you wouldn't have thought massad, assassination squad. They
(26:36):
didn't seem like guys that were going to be sent
halfway around the world to take care of a notorious murderer.
First it was your Reeve himself. He was a pretty
unusual choice for the chief of an intelligence unit. Your
reef died. I went to Israel to speak with his daughter, Leehy,
and she described him to me. My father was a
(26:59):
very sensitive person, full of maybe contradictions, if you can
say that. On the one hand, he was a bohemian
person and his best friends were artists in theater players,
and he had a great sense of humor. You know,
(27:21):
if you heard his laughter, you couldn't stop love with
him together, and he saw everything is a very humorous thing.
But on the other hand, he used to tell me,
not everything is a joke. I don't think that everything
is a is a game or a joke. Just take
(27:42):
it seriously. So on the one hand, he was very serious.
He was the most reliable person on earth. If you
were his friend, you could rely on him to the
end of your life. I mean, he would save you
from everything. If you went through you knew that he
was your friend. That was it. And he was really
(28:07):
charismatic without being aware of it. Really. When he entered
the room, the room was filled with his empathy. Unlike Neo,
the introvert, your reefs seemed to know everyone. He had
a big personality and he attracted people to him with
his wit. And one of the men you reeve had
gotten to known Massad was an agent named Eliezer Laser
(28:30):
Seded As with me O, Sudeep didn't look much like
a secret agent. He was thin and physically unremarkable. My
father was just opposite of James Bond. He had walked
twice in the street, so you can seem that's the Deep, Son,
(28:51):
said Sharon. I spoke to him about his father and
his memories of his father's undercover work. He was modest,
It was funny. Everybody loved him. He was very, oh
you know, very nice guy. At looking at him, you
cannot imagine if you see a fight. But the Deep
(29:13):
had a reputation as someone who was tough and relentless,
a fearless, hotheaded fighter who never gave up. He had
spent his early days in Etzel Or the Ragoon, a
right wing paramilitary organization in Palestine. He can cute Jaffa.
(29:34):
After the everybody said is that he cannot get it
because it was snipers all over. And he told begging,
give me another night, an explosive that will concute Jaffa.
And he did it with his men. He'd come of
age during the struggle for a Jewish homeland. He met
(29:55):
his wife, a nurse, when she treated him for several
broken fingers. There's alto a torture session administered by a
rival organization. Their love affair played out against the bombings
of the War of Independence. They've seen the birth of
the nation together, said his son. They'd fought for it.
They were always telling stories about the early days of Israel.
(30:25):
Sede was the ultimate late dark character, the mercurial, soulful
Sabra with the sad past a. Sabra is a native
born Israeli. Saded's wife was the tough one. When he
received an invitation to join Massad from a future Israeli
prime minister, his wife didn't baden eye, it was called demon,
(30:48):
told him, if you want to him to join the Mossad.
So we came to my mother ask her if she
accept She said, all right, Look, if you are not
going to go. I will go and you stay home
to educate our children in my family. Was also a
joke that it's America that he went, not my mother,
(31:09):
because if he was saying to educate us, we will
be no education at all. Sod was soft, kind, funny
and again it was a wonderful father. You know, sometimes
you think that somebody that they working to Mossa and
and the he killed colonels, you should be something very frightening. No,
(31:34):
just olderly nice guy and apparently the kind of guy
who would carry out pranks during missions. You really decided
to bring Sue Deep onto the killed team. It was
a risky choice. So Deed had been involved in the
notorious previous mission, the plot to kill the German Chancellor
(31:54):
Conrad ad an Hour in March, so theed's commander at
the time was angry that the German government was paying
Israel reparations. He considered it to be blood money. The
Killed team used a letter bomb to try and get
at an Hour, but it exploded before it reached him.
It did, however, killed the technician who was trying to
(32:17):
defuse the bomb. Sadite was arrested in Paris. Ru's living
at the time. He was later released. If something went
wrong with the Zuker's mission and Sade's identity was revealed,
it could be a big deal in Germany. It could
actually convince Germans not to repeal the amnesty. Sade had
once tried to kill the head of the German government
(32:38):
after all, but Yariv, like Sude, he insisted he beyond
the team. Sadie's mother and grandmother had been born in Riga,
the capital of Latvia. That's where the butcher had done
most of his killing. Most of Sade's family had lived
there before the war. None of them had survived the Holocaust.
Maybe suckers had been involved in their deaths Sude didn't
(33:02):
know for sure. After your Reeve told Sude about the butcher,
the agent agreed to do the mission. But it wasn't
about revenge. There was no hatred of Suker's, Sudet's son
told me emphatically none. Sudet saw his chance to send
a message to anti Semites everywhere. If someone killed Jews
in the future, other Jews would find them. This lack
(33:23):
of desire for revenge might not have been true of
the rest of the killed team. Some of them certainly
wanted vengeance for what had happened during the Holocaust, but
for sud Et this was protection against future atrocities. It
wasn't personal for him like it was from Meo. After Sudi,
your reeve added two more operatives. The first was zev
(33:46):
A Meet, a former paratrooper and devotee of martial arts.
A Meat was a very brave guy, typical Sabra, said
Sadet's son. He was proud of the country, knew what
he wanted, had no self doubts. A Meat had served
in Unit one oh one. It was a controversial special
forces team commanded by future Prime Minister Aerial Sharone. Its
(34:10):
members were hand picked and they specialized in reprisal raids
on Arab infiltrators. Those infiltrators regularly crossed the border from
Jordan's and attacked Israeli villages. Critics accused of one O
one ers of killing Arabs indiscriminately, especially during one massacre
that happened in in It at least sixty nine Palestinians
(34:34):
died when Sharon's men waded into the heavily guarded village
and began clearing houses like tossing grenades and spraying the
insides with live rounds, but most Israelis considered them intrepid
soldiers who lived far out on the knife's edge. Sadite
was delighted when a meat joined the operation. They were
a team of two, said Sadet's son. They were always
(34:56):
making chokes, even when perhaps they shouldn't have. The last
man you we've chose was Multi Kafere, an agent who
had grown up tending sheep on an Israeli farm. He
later attended the Sorbonne, where he studied history. At Massad,
Kafire worked as director of the School for Special Operations.
(35:19):
A meeting Kafere would be body men there to neutralize
the butcher. When the time came, you Reave now had
his five guys, including himself. That was it. That was
the team. Hey, this is Stephen Talty, the host of
(35:42):
this podcast Good Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. As I've mentioned
a couple of times on the show, this podcast project
came out of my work on a related book called
The Good Assassin. If you want to explore other parts
of this story, check it out. It's not just a
book version of the podcast. I spend time on different
aspects of the mission. There are chapters diving into World
(36:04):
War two history that we didn't cover in the podcast,
and the book works as a kind of a companion
to the listening experience. The paperback edition just arrived. You
can purchase a copy of The Good Assassin on Amazon,
Apple Books, and on bookshop dot Org. Thanks. There was
(36:29):
one problem with your Reeves killed team. None of the
guys was very big. Your Reeve was short and thin.
Same for sud. I mean, it was a bit stronger,
but he wasn't nearly as big as Sukers and Mio.
He was meant to be an observer. Only the team
would need to train and how to bring down a strong,
desperate man who has just realized he's fighting for his life.
(36:51):
In those days, in the early sixties, Massa didn't have
guys who specialized in things like that, So You Reeves
started asking around who could teach his and how to
bring down a brute like the butcher. The takedown had
to be fast and it had to be quiet. Finally
you re found a guy. His name was Emi Lichtenfeld.
(37:12):
Here's Emi explaining his philosophy on self defense and the
fighting technique he created called krav Maga. This tapes not
great at times, but I wanted you to hear me
in his own voice. He says and he said things.
He's what he's said said things. He's that you can
(37:39):
defends a sin in three hundred sixty degree and forward
angles before I'm making sure and not you our movements.
And I don't get the bolish the guy don't give
(38:00):
the nice To understand how Emmy trained the team, I
reached out to one of Emmy's closest disciples. My name
is Elian Luth. I started training with Emmy when I
was about fifteen years old. I trained with him twenty
four years until he decided to live to another world. Yes, um,
(38:21):
I was his closest assistant for twenty years. Almost according
to a y'all, Emmy was a bit of a walking paradox.
Emmy was in a way very gentle person, gentlemen center
European education. Um. Or the other hand, he had this
(38:42):
other side of his of very strong fighter in time
of need, even a brawler in times that was you know,
World War two period and a little bit before which
we cannot judge with to day's eyes. So he was
definitely a man of peace. On one hand, and a
man of fighting, protecting, teaching how to kill on the
(39:07):
other Lichtenfeld had grown up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia before the war,
the son of a hard nosed police inspector who moonlighted
as a jiu jitsu master. Lichtenfeld's father taught his son gymnastics,
boxing and wrestling. As a young man, Lichtenfeld appeared bare
chested in publicity photos, looking like a lean, sculpted middleweight.
(39:31):
He joined the Czechoslovakian national wrestling team and one championships
across Europe. Even at five ft six and hundred and
fifty pounds, he was a relentless punishing opponent. With the
rise of Nazism in Germany, anti Semitic gangs began swarming
into the Jewish quarter in Bratislava. With a young Lichtenfeld lived.
(39:52):
If they caught it you alone, the gang would attack him,
leaving him blooded down the pavement or bleeding out from
stab wounds. The fascist government and brought Uslava offered terrified
Jews little or no defense against these mobs. The perpetrators
went unpunished. Y'all remembers Emmy describing the situation to him
(40:13):
on a daily basis like every day they were fights.
Most of the fights would say or big part of
it was, I guess would to put opponents. So this
uh fighting the fascists day, night, morning, evenings, on a
on a regular basis, what we say, and sometimes huge groups.
So he became the unprouned leader of a group of
(40:34):
about hundreds of people, and later years we learned that
he was also teaching them something, some self defense and fighting.
Here's a great story. One afternoon, Lichtenfeld collected the boxers,
wrestlers and amateur bodybuilders he knew from the quarter and
marched them out to confront a large group of check
men who arrived at the cave. There were hundreds of
(40:55):
young thugs waiting. Lichtenfeld, carrying a large blue and white
flag adorned with the Star of David, led the Jewish
athletes out of the neighborhood. When he spotted the checks,
he began waving it back and forth in front of
them like a red handkerchief, take down my flag? Who
is the man to take down my flag? And shouting.
(41:18):
One guy emerged from the crowd and came towards me,
grabbing at the flagpole. Amy took hold of the man's
arm hoisted him up and threw him over a cemetery walk.
The riders ran away. Later encounters turned into ultra violent melee's.
The Checks brought knives and even revolvers to terrorize the Jews.
(41:40):
Their confrontations were accompanied by screams, gunshots, and the thud
of bodies on stone. A wasted move could mean a
smashed collar bone, a severed vein. Em said there was
no time to punch a person twice, So dynamics so
visus so fast, and said as he said, no time
to punch a person twice to survive, Lichtenfeld created the
(42:03):
street fighting technique called crab Maga, close combat and Hebrew,
which allowed the Bratislava Jews to inflict the most damage
in the shortest possible time. According to a y'all, Emmy's
genius was in the simplicity of his method. Do the
most natural, the most simple, based on your natural responses
(42:24):
or one thing, but also based on the problem and
on the behavior of the attacker. So you must know
your enemy first of all this know what he's doing. No, No,
the problem, no, the attack, no, the response of the
other guy, No, he's natural behavior. But also no yours.
So the basic techniques of the system are based on
(42:47):
natural responses. So the natural response is the foundation of
the technique. What he taught was ruthlessly real world. Unlike
traditional martial arts when academy proclaimed and then add Kravmaga
makes no attempt to transform you into a spiritually enlightened warrior.
(43:13):
Lichtenfeld left Checklist Slovakia the year after the Nazis invaded,
losing an eye in a painful two year journey towards Palestine,
which he finally reached in two His mother died at
Auschwitz Berkenal and most of his other loved ones were
killed in the Holocaust. The word of Lichtenfeld's expertise and
the vicious ares spread in these really defense forces adopted
(43:38):
Kravmaga for training its recruits and named the Czech newcomer
chief instructor physical fitness. Lichtenfeld, dressed in a white karate uniform,
spent decades teaching generation after generation of young soldiers how
to gouge, hit and maim, and most importantly, how to
be smart about it. Here's em again. Gives you the kick,
(44:03):
the draw him, rolls him on the stomach. He gives
him all the kick he breaks, he said, I said,
then what you break a dead men said? If you
broke him through leaves what he didn't want me? He
can stand up, he says, no for what he said,
(44:26):
if if you think the kick in the head. When
he was contacted by your reeve, Lichton felt agreed to
train the team. He didn't care about what the man
would do with the skills he taught them, which doesn't
come as a surprise to all. He understood the need
to make the mission. It's not my business what they're
(44:49):
going to do. My country is calling me. There's a
need I give them the tools. Their commanders and them
they will use the tools. Who was all in the
end the same thing for him. He assumed they were
going to hurt those who wanted to hurt Jews. Amy
(45:09):
never asked why, nor did he dwell too much on
the request he had received, namely, to take a group
of men and teach them how to drop a men
with one aimed blow. You can't help but suspect a
subconscious motive in choosing Cravmaga. Even Israelis believed that during
the war, pale slight Jewish men had been lent to
(45:31):
their desks by strapping robust killers, something many of the
Sabras regarded with shame. Now, a group of tough Israeli
Jews planned to find one of those murderers and strike
them to the ground with their bare hands. It would
be a tactical way of ensuring silence and stealth, but
one has to imagine it was something else as well,
(45:53):
a display of Jewish masculine power. Not everyone, however, was
pleased with Lichtenfeld or with the plan to immobilize Seacres
before reading him his death sense. When the outspoken Suded
heard about it, he was appalled. It's not a movie,
(46:13):
he fumed, bring a gun. In secret, the team began
to train. Lichtenfeld led the sessions, and he was relentless.
Neo had no idea the other team members were training
in crapmaga. That was your Reeves thing. Mio didn't need
to know about it. Had he known, he would have
been pleased that the other agents were practicing eye gouging,
(46:36):
groin kicking, and other moves because he had come to
fear sucres physical abilities. He even put this in the
report he sent back to your Reeve in Paris. I
re iterates and stressed The effect is that despite the
late Fund's age of sixty four, havey have us still
dangerous men? Alert, physically strong and resourceful. Later Mia would
(47:02):
realize something, You're even. The others didn't believe him at all.
My friends stopped. It was exaggerating. It's a danger, You're even.
The other agents had been to war, they'd fought young
men who were dead set on killing them. They thought
they could handle the butcher when they read MEO's report,
(47:22):
You're even. The others were deeply skeptical. They thought me
it was seeing things in Brazil, knocking off an aching
Nazi with white hair. It wasn't going to be a problem.
But you Reeve would later change his mind. Here's Leahy again,
your Reeves daughter. He used to say that two Chors
was a huge person, just the uge you couldn't imagine before.
(47:46):
I mean as many times as you were told before,
until you really saw him, you couldn't imagine how gigantic
he was. But that change of heart came months after
MEO's report, when it was almost too late. This over
confidence would soon cause terrible problems for the Bazade team.
(48:06):
Mio had seen the butcher up close. The others had
no idea what they were dealing with, but they were
soon going to find out. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher
(48:30):
is a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I
Heart Radio. This season is written and hosted by Stephen Talti,
produced and directed by Scott Waxman and Jacob Bronstein. Executive
producers Scott Waxman and Mark Francis. Story editing by Jacob
Bronstein with editorial direction from Scott Waxman and mangesh Had
(48:51):
ticket editing, mixing and sound designed by Mark Francis, with
the voices of Nick Afka, Thomas Armory, Angle, Andrew Polk,
Mindy Escobar, Leants, Steve Rautman and Stefan Rudnitsky. Theme music
by Tyler Cash. Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Special thanks
(49:12):
to Oran Rosenbaum at u t A Diversion Podcasts
Diversion podcasts. This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence and
scenes of genocide. Listener's discretion is advised. Meo had gotten
(00:33):
a step closer to the Butcher. He'd come back from
the road trip to the plantations in the Brazilian jungle
thinking he was making progress. The Butcher was starting to
trust him. Neo sat down to write a report to
your Reeve. He was expected to fill in his boss
with every major development. At the same time you know
was drawing up his report, things were starting to heat
(00:55):
up with the Statute of Limitations, which was the whole
reason for the mission, to stop Germans from giving Nazi
killers a free pass for their atrocities. Here's Abner Abraham again,
the former Massad agent and historian of the agency. I
mean it's you compared for examples to be Latin. In
September eleven, it was a revenge but in the mossadoh
(01:16):
and they decided to kill someone and the Plume Minister
confirmed this target. It was to prevent him and to
prevent mortal attacks and more killing of Jews. That that
was the idea. I'm Steven Talty and this is good
(01:40):
assassins hunting the butcher. So it's the first month was
to find a nasty a briging forward trial. The second
part was to find a Nazi and killing. We must
thwoat the shining losses. He hadn't of a trail of
(02:01):
blood and horror, the end of a man whose name
will be written in informating episode six. The kill team.
(02:25):
By the end of the world was waking up to
the fact that the Germans really intended to go ahead
with the amnesty, so the Jewish resistance was stepping up
their efforts to try and stop it. To Via Friedman,
the Nazi hunter, who had met with the German Justice minister,
was giving interviews in Israel and encouraging world leaders to
(02:47):
speak out. He was keeping an eye on Germany, hoping
to pressure and shame its politicians into stopping the amnesty.
As the cause gained more traction, protesters appeared on the
streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Soon they would spread
all over the world, from New York to London. Freedman
was good one on one with his eyewitness accounts of
(03:08):
the Holocaust. He could persuade people. Earlier, when the head
of the Socialist Party in Germany came to Israel. Freedman
went to see him in the lobby of his hotel,
and Israeli security agent spotted Freeman coming through the front doors.
The agent hurried over, almost blocking Freeman from making it
to the elevators. The guy was pale, nervous. He thought
(03:31):
the activists was up to no good. The agent asked
of Freeman was there to assassinate the German leader. Freedman laughed,
guy knew his reputation, but Freeman told the agent that no,
he was just going to talk to the politician. The
agent let him pass. Freedman went upstairs and made his
presentation to the German official. It was powerful stuff. A
(03:53):
few hours later, the Socialist leader agreed to oppose the amnesty.
Was another small coup for Freedman in this campaign to
sway the German government. Importantly, another much more famous Nazi
(04:13):
hunter joined the cause, Simon Wisenthal. Visenthal had barely survived
World War Two, having been imprisoned in four concentration camps
between in he was in a Polish camp when his
commander decided to celebrate Hitler's birthday by executing fifty four
(04:35):
Jewish intellectuals, one for every year of the Feurer's life.
Enthal was chosen to be one of them. He listened
as the others were shot before the killers came to him,
though someone called his name. One of the Germans had
(04:56):
convinced the commander that Visenthal, who was an accomplished artist,
should paint a poster of Hitler instead of being murdered.
He was led away from the pits and later escaped
from the camp. Visenthal made it through, but he lost
his family. Weeks after the war ended, he was already
hunting down Nazis. That quest would occupy him for the
(05:19):
rest of his life. Visenthal did everything. He spent months
digging through archives. He staked out apartment buildings waiting for
ex Nazis to show up, and unlike Friedman, he made
friends in high places, recruiting politicians and celebrities to his mission.
He'd had some major successes. When Anne Frank's diary became
(05:39):
a worldwide bestseller, some Austrians claimed it was a fake.
They said that Anne Frank had never existed, and they
challenged Wisenthal to find Carl Silberbauer, the man who had
supposedly arrested her. Resenthal went to work. After months of
searching in which Wisenthal spent hours coming through Nazi records
and Dutch phone books. He found Silverbauer was working as
(06:02):
a policeman in Vienna. Visenthal exposed him, and silver Bauer
admitted that Anne Frank had indeed existed and her memoir
was truthful. It was a major blow to Holocaust deniers.
Visenthal tracked down Eric Jakowitch, who had been in charge
of putting Jews from the Netherlands on the trains to
(06:23):
their desks. Visenthal found Jakowitch living in Italy, where a
Catholic bishop had helped the Nazi even let him live
in a local convent. By the early sixties, Jackowitch was
a millionaire several times over and living a comfortable life.
Visenthal uncovered his past, and the Nazis picture appeared on
(06:44):
the front pages of newspapers all over Europe. He went
on the run, first to Switzerland, then to Germany, but
Visenthal wouldn't give up. He found him again, and finally
the killer gave up. He was thrown in jail. So
Simon Wiesenthal was good at what he did. He was
(07:05):
a master publicist, self promoter, but he was just as
obsessed with finding the men and women responsible for the
genocide and bringing Nazis to justice. You're not just married
to me. Visenthal's wife used to tell him, you were
married to the six million. The further ist cause. Reisenthal
had even become a massad operative. The agency sent him
(07:27):
an allowance a few hundred dollars a month to help
with his quest. Here's Wisenthal explaining the significance of the
Statute of Limitations after that time, via then we will
find new people. They commit crimes. So I find new
evidence about people. They are free. They cannot bring them
(07:50):
for justice in Germany. And this mean thousands. This means
thousands of people because we lost eleven million witnesses Lake Friedman.
Simon Visenthal went to meet with the Justice minister in
Germany about the coming amnesty. He wanted to know what
would happen if the statute went into effect. Around six
(08:12):
thousand men had served at Auschwitz, only a tiny number
of them, less than one percent had even been brought
to trial when the statute went into effect. With the
rest I'll go free. The German minister avoided the question.
He started talking about the billions of Deutsche marks in
reparations that Germany had paid to survivors. Visenthal seethed. He
(08:34):
wasn't there to talk about money. He's there to talk
about punishment. It was once more a case of I
was simply not speaking the same language I told him
he had, Minister, the murderer of my mother and the
murderers of many of my relations and friends have not
been found yet. I don't even know their names. I
(08:57):
am a dressing the Minister of us. This is not
definance Minister. I recognized the Federal Republic's financial efforts, but
surely they cannot be a substitute for efforts to achieve justice.
I have come to you as a very specific question,
(09:18):
what happens after me eight? That was the date the
amnesty was supposed to go into effect May eighth. The
Minister didn't give Resenthal and answer. In fact, he was
starting to sound slippery on the whole issue. Did he
support the amnesty or didn't he? He told Recenthal it
(09:40):
wasn't up to him to decide. The Nazi Hunter wasn't satisfied.
He decided to launch a pr campaign to let people
around the world know what was going on. Reasenthal was
brilliant at that kind of thing. He had the kind
of marketing skills the vision the two Via freedmen blocked.
Eisenthal wrote an open letter condemning the statute. He called
(10:03):
the amnesty an unprecedented injustice towards the millions of victims
of Nazi brutality. Once the murders knew they would never
be prosecuted, Easenthal wrote, they would link arms with other
enemies of liberty. They would spread their propaganda and poison
to the young people of Germany and then abroad. Visenthal
(10:23):
was broadening the issue beyond the Holocaust at the West
Germans that the killers of six million get away with it,
the world would be a far more dangerous place for everybody.
Visenthal sent the letter to famous people in Europe, America
and elsewhere. The great American playwright Arthur Miller signed it,
(10:44):
as did a Nobel Prize winning physicist, The future Pope
Benedict sixteen announced his support. His own cousin, who had
down syndrome, had been murdered by the Nazis. Dozens and
dozens of others joined the campaign, artists, pol Titians, religious leaders.
Even Robert Kennedy was still recovering from the assassination of
(11:05):
his brother JFK sent a telegram moral duties. It read
have no term. Robert Kennedy came out against Germany's planned amnesty,
but the efforts of the two Nazi hunters, Freedman and
Wisenthal were in the winner of nine four, having little
effect in Germany. Opinion polls there still show the statute
(11:29):
was popular the numbers they weren't budgeting. The two activists
believed they were losing the fight, which could make Massad's
Zuker's mission that much more important. It was the final
piece that could sway the debate. A last shot. Neo
(11:50):
wrote out his report on his trip with Sukers to
the plantation. When he was finished, he took a business
letter that he had already typed out and copied out
the report in invisible inc inserting the text between the lines.
Then he folded the letter, put it in an air
mail envelope and send it off to his boss your
reeve in Paris. Meal's use of invisible ink intrigued me.
(12:13):
It's something that, of course I've seen dozens of times
and spy novels and movies, but I kind of assumed
that in real life invisible ink would be a bit
too crude for sophisticated agency like the MASSAD. So I
checked with an intelligence historian named h. Keith Melton, and
turns out it was actually a widespread tactic at the time.
(12:36):
Invisible links have been used for probably a thousand years
or thousands of years, going back ultimately to Limon juice.
And you know, if you take a limon juice right
a secret message between the lines and then hold it
up to a flame, you can see it becomes visible.
So the standard component of all invisible aks is the
(12:58):
ink itself, and the reagent is the way you make
it visible. And services developed extraordinarily complex secret inks. But
you could create a secret eak out of salava, out
of water. You could use it out of diluted blood.
You could use it from sperm, you could use it
(13:19):
from bodily fluids. Secret ease can be made out of
a variety of things. Water is probably one of the
most interesting because just water can later be detected by
intelligent service. In general, invisible ink has fallen out of
use today, but according to Melton, that might be the
very reason not to discount it entirely. The Russian Service
(13:44):
quit searching and quit teaching skills for secretings around the
year two thousands, so as you use belfore then, but
sometimes tradecraft becomes so forgotten about it and so old
it becomes usable again. But there's no one's looking for
And I don't believe the U. S. Coastal Service has
(14:05):
a capability to the sect secrets anymore, where they certainly
would have had that fifties sixty seventy years ago. Back
to me O, he now had a much better feel
for Zookers, what might work getting him to another country
and what wouldn't. In his report, he wrote that the
(14:29):
plantation trip had been worthwhile because he was conditioning Zookers
to get comfortable with longer and longer trips away from home.
This was key. He couldn't just bring a flight to
say Chili on the butcher. He had to build up
to that slowly, step by step, to make sure that
suckers would follow him wherever he went. There was also
(14:51):
the question of the assassination method. Massad had many ways
to take someone out, what they called targeted killings. In
nineteen two, when the Egyptians began building rockets at a
facility in the desert called Factory three three three, Basada
knew the missiles would eventually be aimed at Israel. They
mailed two package bombs to the factory, killing five workers there.
(15:16):
Later they were book bombs, one of which targeted a
plo operative named Bassam Sharif. Shariff survived and we were
actually able to find a tape of him discussing the incident.
Uh that was allowed to day. That morning, when the
book came to me, the mailman said, well, you have
(15:37):
a book and it's stamped. I looked at the envelope.
It was opened. The envelope was opened and the book
was protruding out and stamped by the Lebanese government. Checked
clear from explosives. So I was relaxed a little bit.
And the moment I opened that time, you know I
discovered it. It's part of a second. I've seen the
(15:57):
explosive two charges. They have hold of the book and
put two explosive charges one and another that action and
one and then down, so that they cut me into
three pieces. In my head. I was standing. That's why
my managed to probably the Palestinian poet and terrorist Mohammed
(16:23):
Buddha opened the door of his car parked on the
Paris street. Massad had planted a pressure activated bomb underneath
the driver's seat. As soon as Buddhia sat down, it
went off and Buddhia was killed. Other targets of Assad
simply disappeared. That's what happened to one German scientist, Heinz Krug,
(16:43):
who's helping Egypt build those missiles in the desert. He
worked out of Munich. MASSAD sent the surveillance team there
to learn Krug's movements. Then, early one evening, crew received
a phone call from a man pretending to be a
friend of the Egyptian general who's heading up missile program.
Something important had come up, and the man requested a
(17:04):
meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in Munich. Krug suspected nothing.
He went to the meeting and met the man, who
was actually a MASSAD operative. They discussed business. The next day,
the operative picked him up for another round of discussions
brought him to a villa in the suburbs. Krug going
into the villa expecting to meet one of the Egyptian commanders. Inside,
(17:28):
there was a MASSAD team waiting for him. They hit
him on the head and put him still alive in
the secret compartment inside a v W camper. He was
driven to Marseilles, France, sedated, put on an airplane, and
flown to Israel. Their Kruge was roughed up and interrogated.
After spilling his secrets over many months, a Massad agent
(17:49):
was ordered to take him to a deserted area north
of Tel Aviv to kill him. Krug's body was then
loaded aboard and Israeli military plane and dumped into the sea.
Some Massad assassins used handguns, though the cliche method a
(18:10):
rifle fired from a long distance never seemed to be
part of their repertoire. One PLO man was shot by
a guy driving by on a motorcycle. Another target was
pushed into traffic was killed by a passing car. There
was even a target who was dosed with radioactive material
and later died years later. Another suspected victim of Massad,
(18:34):
a scientist who doubled as a colonel in the Egyptian Army,
fell quote unquote from a balcony in Alexandria. When Egyptian
police entered his apartment, they found the gas had been
turned on and there were cuts in the scientist's arms,
both signs pointing to a suicide attempt. Massad had made
it look like the man had tried to kill himself
(18:54):
three different ways and finally succeeded. It had all the
hall marks of an Israeli hit. Massad didn't claim responsibility,
because Massad never claims responsibility. I wanted to let you
(19:17):
know about something we're trying. We've set up an email
address for listeners to send us your questions about the show.
Are you curious about something you've heard on Hunting the
Butcher and want to know more? Is there something I
haven't covered that you wish I would. I want to
hear from you. Record yourself asking your question. The voice
(19:37):
memos app on iPhone works well. Include your name and
where you're from, and we'll try to answer your question
on a future episode. The email address is Hunting the
Butcher at the Version podcast dot com. Record yourself asking
a question and email it to me again. The email
address is Hunting the Butcher at Diversion podcast asked dot com.
(20:02):
That's a podcast plural with an S at the end.
I'm looking forward to hearing your questions. Thanks. Now on
with the show. So Meo had options for the assassination method,
but he hadn't made up his mind on which was
(20:23):
the best way to go, how should it be done?
What would be the safest way? A bullets from a farm,
perhaps poisoning, maybe a point blank shot in the back
of the head. He had to know more about the
butcher before he could decide. With his report completed, Meo
got back in touch with Suckers. The butcher proposed another
(20:45):
scouting trip for Coonsla's tourist business, this time to a
town on the Brazilian coast called Santos. Meo jumped at
the opportunity. A plan was starting to form in his head,
a plan for the death of Herbert Suckers. He wanted
to test out a couple of ideas for it, so
he told Suckers they would check out the market for
rental homes in Santos, get the prices, see how many
(21:08):
were full this time of year. If it looked good,
his company might start investing. Neo drove with Suckers to
the coast and got a room at a nice hotel.
The next morning, Neo set up a routine. They would
find a rental home that was on the market and
a range of visit. They talked to the owner, see
what the properties were like and how much they were
(21:28):
going for. Zuckers thought he was helping kunz La out
with his business research. He did some interpreting. He spoke
good Portuguese. Had Mio actually been looking to make investments,
Suckers would have been pretty useful. One of the ideas
Mio had for the assassination was to bring the butcher
to a house in another of the South American countries
(21:49):
and have the killed team waiting there for him. It
would be private, safe, and it would give the team
time alone with Suckers to read him his sentence. This
option had a lot going for it, but if the
plan was going to work, Meo had to train Sukers.
Walking into strange houses had to be automatic for him.
(22:11):
After Santos Zuker suggested they hit another beach town, Portelegre.
Suckers was having a good time. Mia was paying all
the bills, nice restaurants, good hotels. It was like a
preview of coming attractions. If he could get on board
with Kunsla's company, this would be his life from now on.
He liked it. Meo was buttering up the butcher. You
(22:37):
have no idea how glad I am we met, I
told the butcher. It must have been the faiths that
brought us together. You are at home here, who know
the South American language and how to do business here.
Mio agreed to meet Suckers and Portelegre a few days later.
(23:01):
They traveled there separately. After Meal checked into their hotel,
he went to Zuker's room. He knocked on the door,
then he got a shock. Some seconds passed. Suddenly the
door of us pulled open to reveal Ukers standing there,
a gun in his hand. The snake is always on
(23:22):
his toes, I thought, I pointed as the gun, I said,
half jokingly, So what is it? But you're scared of me?
If you had a long nose, then I would have
a good reason to be scared. Zuker said, anyway, one
must always be on the alert. He returns the gun
(23:43):
to his pocket. Neio tried to laugh it off, but
he could see that the butcher was actually nervous. It
wasn't a good sign. Neo drove around Portle Gray with Zukers,
looking at houses. At one point, Zuker's was in the
passenger seat talking about tourism when Mio heard him mention
(24:04):
the name Joseph Kramer. Meo managed to keep his eyes
on the road. He controlled his breathing, showing no reaction,
but inside he was reeling. Joseph Kramer. Most Jews who'd
lost people in the Holocaust knew the name. The Belson
War criminals arrived at Lunaboug for trial. Their faces gave
(24:25):
a little clue to what they're thinking. Last out of
the lotty is Joseph Kramer, the Beast of Belson. The calm,
orderliness of the scene contrasts violently with the ghastly pictures
which shocked the country when they were shown in British usually.
Kramer was the infamous East of Belson. The former commander
of the concentration camp Auschwitz, broken out to hundreds of
(24:46):
thousands of Jews had died under his watch. He personally
selected Jews for death. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.
Kramer was known to have been exceptionally brutal to the
Jewish prisoners, sometimes whipping them until their skin flayed off
leg suckers. Cramer had denied everything after the war. He
(25:06):
told prosecutors the stories about him were quote products of
the Jews imagination. Kramer was captured by the British tried
in the months following the end of the war and
what's known as the Belson Trial. Kramer was convicted and
sentenced to death. He was hanged on December thirteenth. Meo
(25:27):
kept driving, but his mind was going a mile a minute.
Why would Suckers bring up Joseph Kramer. He hadn't even
been talking about the war. He just dropped it into
the middle of a boring little monologue about some topic.
Meo only half remembered. It was just strange. It was
as if the Butcher was testing Meo in the language
(25:49):
he would understand only if he were someone other than
Anton Kunzla, if he were saying a double agent. Couldn't
Suckers be speaking to Meo and a kind of code
saying I know why you're here, and it isn't to
make money. Neo couldn't be sure, but he was worried.
(26:12):
Back in Paris, Josef your Reeve had been busy. It
was his job to recruit the rest of the team
that would fly to South America to join Meo and
carry out the sentence on the butcher body men a
kill team. When your Reef was done, he dissembled an
intriguing collection of men. If you saw them walking down
the street, you wouldn't have thought massad, assassination squad. They
(26:36):
didn't seem like guys that were going to be sent
halfway around the world to take care of a notorious murderer.
First it was your Reeve himself. He was a pretty
unusual choice for the chief of an intelligence unit. Your
reef died. I went to Israel to speak with his daughter, Leehy,
and she described him to me. My father was a
(26:59):
very sensitive person, full of maybe contradictions, if you can
say that. On the one hand, he was a bohemian
person and his best friends were artists in theater players,
and he had a great sense of humor. You know,
(27:21):
if you heard his laughter, you couldn't stop love with
him together, and he saw everything is a very humorous thing.
But on the other hand, he used to tell me,
not everything is a joke. I don't think that everything
is a is a game or a joke. Just take
(27:42):
it seriously. So on the one hand, he was very serious.
He was the most reliable person on earth. If you
were his friend, you could rely on him to the
end of your life. I mean, he would save you
from everything. If you went through you knew that he
was your friend. That was it. And he was really
(28:07):
charismatic without being aware of it. Really. When he entered
the room, the room was filled with his empathy. Unlike Neo,
the introvert, your reefs seemed to know everyone. He had
a big personality and he attracted people to him with
his wit. And one of the men you reeve had
gotten to known Massad was an agent named Eliezer Laser
(28:30):
Seded As with me O, Sudeep didn't look much like
a secret agent. He was thin and physically unremarkable. My
father was just opposite of James Bond. He had walked
twice in the street, so you can seem that's the Deep, Son,
(28:51):
said Sharon. I spoke to him about his father and
his memories of his father's undercover work. He was modest,
It was funny. Everybody loved him. He was very, oh
you know, very nice guy. At looking at him, you
cannot imagine if you see a fight. But the Deep
(29:13):
had a reputation as someone who was tough and relentless,
a fearless, hotheaded fighter who never gave up. He had
spent his early days in Etzel Or the Ragoon, a
right wing paramilitary organization in Palestine. He can cute Jaffa.
(29:34):
After the everybody said is that he cannot get it
because it was snipers all over. And he told begging,
give me another night, an explosive that will concute Jaffa.
And he did it with his men. He'd come of
age during the struggle for a Jewish homeland. He met
(29:55):
his wife, a nurse, when she treated him for several
broken fingers. There's alto a torture session administered by a
rival organization. Their love affair played out against the bombings
of the War of Independence. They've seen the birth of
the nation together, said his son. They'd fought for it.
They were always telling stories about the early days of Israel.
(30:25):
Sede was the ultimate late dark character, the mercurial, soulful
Sabra with the sad past a. Sabra is a native
born Israeli. Saded's wife was the tough one. When he
received an invitation to join Massad from a future Israeli
prime minister, his wife didn't baden eye, it was called demon,
(30:48):
told him, if you want to him to join the Mossad.
So we came to my mother ask her if she
accept She said, all right, Look, if you are not
going to go. I will go and you stay home
to educate our children in my family. Was also a
joke that it's America that he went, not my mother,
(31:09):
because if he was saying to educate us, we will
be no education at all. Sod was soft, kind, funny
and again it was a wonderful father. You know, sometimes
you think that somebody that they working to Mossa and
and the he killed colonels, you should be something very frightening. No,
(31:34):
just olderly nice guy and apparently the kind of guy
who would carry out pranks during missions. You really decided
to bring Sue Deep onto the killed team. It was
a risky choice. So Deed had been involved in the
notorious previous mission, the plot to kill the German Chancellor
(31:54):
Conrad ad an Hour in March, so theed's commander at
the time was angry that the German government was paying
Israel reparations. He considered it to be blood money. The
Killed team used a letter bomb to try and get
at an Hour, but it exploded before it reached him.
It did, however, killed the technician who was trying to
(32:17):
defuse the bomb. Sadite was arrested in Paris. Ru's living
at the time. He was later released. If something went
wrong with the Zuker's mission and Sade's identity was revealed,
it could be a big deal in Germany. It could
actually convince Germans not to repeal the amnesty. Sade had
once tried to kill the head of the German government
(32:38):
after all, but Yariv, like Sude, he insisted he beyond
the team. Sadie's mother and grandmother had been born in Riga,
the capital of Latvia. That's where the butcher had done
most of his killing. Most of Sade's family had lived
there before the war. None of them had survived the Holocaust.
Maybe suckers had been involved in their deaths Sude didn't
(33:02):
know for sure. After your Reeve told Sude about the butcher,
the agent agreed to do the mission. But it wasn't
about revenge. There was no hatred of Suker's, Sudet's son
told me emphatically none. Sudet saw his chance to send
a message to anti Semites everywhere. If someone killed Jews
in the future, other Jews would find them. This lack
(33:23):
of desire for revenge might not have been true of
the rest of the killed team. Some of them certainly
wanted vengeance for what had happened during the Holocaust, but
for sud Et this was protection against future atrocities. It
wasn't personal for him like it was from Meo. After Sudi,
your reeve added two more operatives. The first was zev
(33:46):
A Meet, a former paratrooper and devotee of martial arts.
A Meat was a very brave guy, typical Sabra, said
Sadet's son. He was proud of the country, knew what
he wanted, had no self doubts. A Meat had served
in Unit one oh one. It was a controversial special
forces team commanded by future Prime Minister Aerial Sharone. Its
(34:10):
members were hand picked and they specialized in reprisal raids
on Arab infiltrators. Those infiltrators regularly crossed the border from
Jordan's and attacked Israeli villages. Critics accused of one O
one ers of killing Arabs indiscriminately, especially during one massacre
that happened in in It at least sixty nine Palestinians
(34:34):
died when Sharon's men waded into the heavily guarded village
and began clearing houses like tossing grenades and spraying the
insides with live rounds, but most Israelis considered them intrepid
soldiers who lived far out on the knife's edge. Sadite
was delighted when a meat joined the operation. They were
a team of two, said Sadet's son. They were always
(34:56):
making chokes, even when perhaps they shouldn't have. The last
man you we've chose was Multi Kafere, an agent who
had grown up tending sheep on an Israeli farm. He
later attended the Sorbonne, where he studied history. At Massad,
Kafire worked as director of the School for Special Operations.
(35:19):
A meeting Kafere would be body men there to neutralize
the butcher. When the time came, you Reave now had
his five guys, including himself. That was it. That was
the team. Hey, this is Stephen Talty, the host of
(35:42):
this podcast Good Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. As I've mentioned
a couple of times on the show, this podcast project
came out of my work on a related book called
The Good Assassin. If you want to explore other parts
of this story, check it out. It's not just a
book version of the podcast. I spend time on different
aspects of the mission. There are chapters diving into World
(36:04):
War two history that we didn't cover in the podcast,
and the book works as a kind of a companion
to the listening experience. The paperback edition just arrived. You
can purchase a copy of The Good Assassin on Amazon,
Apple Books, and on bookshop dot Org. Thanks. There was
(36:29):
one problem with your Reeves killed team. None of the
guys was very big. Your Reeve was short and thin.
Same for sud. I mean, it was a bit stronger,
but he wasn't nearly as big as Sukers and Mio.
He was meant to be an observer. Only the team
would need to train and how to bring down a strong,
desperate man who has just realized he's fighting for his life.
(36:51):
In those days, in the early sixties, Massa didn't have
guys who specialized in things like that, So You Reeves
started asking around who could teach his and how to
bring down a brute like the butcher. The takedown had
to be fast and it had to be quiet. Finally
you re found a guy. His name was Emi Lichtenfeld.
(37:12):
Here's Emi explaining his philosophy on self defense and the
fighting technique he created called krav Maga. This tapes not
great at times, but I wanted you to hear me
in his own voice. He says and he said things.
He's what he's said said things. He's that you can
(37:39):
defends a sin in three hundred sixty degree and forward
angles before I'm making sure and not you our movements.
And I don't get the bolish the guy don't give
(38:00):
the nice To understand how Emmy trained the team, I
reached out to one of Emmy's closest disciples. My name
is Elian Luth. I started training with Emmy when I
was about fifteen years old. I trained with him twenty
four years until he decided to live to another world. Yes, um,
(38:21):
I was his closest assistant for twenty years. Almost according
to a y'all, Emmy was a bit of a walking paradox.
Emmy was in a way very gentle person, gentlemen center
European education. Um. Or the other hand, he had this
(38:42):
other side of his of very strong fighter in time
of need, even a brawler in times that was you know,
World War two period and a little bit before which
we cannot judge with to day's eyes. So he was
definitely a man of peace. On one hand, and a
man of fighting, protecting, teaching how to kill on the
(39:07):
other Lichtenfeld had grown up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia before the war,
the son of a hard nosed police inspector who moonlighted
as a jiu jitsu master. Lichtenfeld's father taught his son gymnastics,
boxing and wrestling. As a young man, Lichtenfeld appeared bare
chested in publicity photos, looking like a lean, sculpted middleweight.
(39:31):
He joined the Czechoslovakian national wrestling team and one championships
across Europe. Even at five ft six and hundred and
fifty pounds, he was a relentless punishing opponent. With the
rise of Nazism in Germany, anti Semitic gangs began swarming
into the Jewish quarter in Bratislava. With a young Lichtenfeld lived.
(39:52):
If they caught it you alone, the gang would attack him,
leaving him blooded down the pavement or bleeding out from
stab wounds. The fascist government and brought Uslava offered terrified
Jews little or no defense against these mobs. The perpetrators
went unpunished. Y'all remembers Emmy describing the situation to him
(40:13):
on a daily basis like every day they were fights.
Most of the fights would say or big part of
it was, I guess would to put opponents. So this
uh fighting the fascists day, night, morning, evenings, on a
on a regular basis, what we say, and sometimes huge groups.
So he became the unprouned leader of a group of
(40:34):
about hundreds of people, and later years we learned that
he was also teaching them something, some self defense and fighting.
Here's a great story. One afternoon, Lichtenfeld collected the boxers,
wrestlers and amateur bodybuilders he knew from the quarter and
marched them out to confront a large group of check
men who arrived at the cave. There were hundreds of
(40:55):
young thugs waiting. Lichtenfeld, carrying a large blue and white
flag adorned with the Star of David, led the Jewish
athletes out of the neighborhood. When he spotted the checks,
he began waving it back and forth in front of
them like a red handkerchief, take down my flag? Who
is the man to take down my flag? And shouting.
(41:18):
One guy emerged from the crowd and came towards me,
grabbing at the flagpole. Amy took hold of the man's
arm hoisted him up and threw him over a cemetery walk.
The riders ran away. Later encounters turned into ultra violent melee's.
The Checks brought knives and even revolvers to terrorize the Jews.
(41:40):
Their confrontations were accompanied by screams, gunshots, and the thud
of bodies on stone. A wasted move could mean a
smashed collar bone, a severed vein. Em said there was
no time to punch a person twice, So dynamics so
visus so fast, and said as he said, no time
to punch a person twice to survive, Lichtenfeld created the
(42:03):
street fighting technique called crab Maga, close combat and Hebrew,
which allowed the Bratislava Jews to inflict the most damage
in the shortest possible time. According to a y'all, Emmy's
genius was in the simplicity of his method. Do the
most natural, the most simple, based on your natural responses
(42:24):
or one thing, but also based on the problem and
on the behavior of the attacker. So you must know
your enemy first of all this know what he's doing. No, No,
the problem, no, the attack, no, the response of the
other guy, No, he's natural behavior. But also no yours.
So the basic techniques of the system are based on
(42:47):
natural responses. So the natural response is the foundation of
the technique. What he taught was ruthlessly real world. Unlike
traditional martial arts when academy proclaimed and then add Kravmaga
makes no attempt to transform you into a spiritually enlightened warrior.
(43:13):
Lichtenfeld left Checklist Slovakia the year after the Nazis invaded,
losing an eye in a painful two year journey towards Palestine,
which he finally reached in two His mother died at
Auschwitz Berkenal and most of his other loved ones were
killed in the Holocaust. The word of Lichtenfeld's expertise and
the vicious ares spread in these really defense forces adopted
(43:38):
Kravmaga for training its recruits and named the Czech newcomer
chief instructor physical fitness. Lichtenfeld, dressed in a white karate uniform,
spent decades teaching generation after generation of young soldiers how
to gouge, hit and maim, and most importantly, how to
be smart about it. Here's em again. Gives you the kick,
(44:03):
the draw him, rolls him on the stomach. He gives
him all the kick he breaks, he said, I said,
then what you break a dead men said? If you
broke him through leaves what he didn't want me? He
can stand up, he says, no for what he said,
(44:26):
if if you think the kick in the head. When
he was contacted by your reeve, Lichton felt agreed to
train the team. He didn't care about what the man
would do with the skills he taught them, which doesn't
come as a surprise to all. He understood the need
to make the mission. It's not my business what they're
(44:49):
going to do. My country is calling me. There's a
need I give them the tools. Their commanders and them
they will use the tools. Who was all in the
end the same thing for him. He assumed they were
going to hurt those who wanted to hurt Jews. Amy
(45:09):
never asked why, nor did he dwell too much on
the request he had received, namely, to take a group
of men and teach them how to drop a men
with one aimed blow. You can't help but suspect a
subconscious motive in choosing Cravmaga. Even Israelis believed that during
the war, pale slight Jewish men had been lent to
(45:31):
their desks by strapping robust killers, something many of the
Sabras regarded with shame. Now, a group of tough Israeli
Jews planned to find one of those murderers and strike
them to the ground with their bare hands. It would
be a tactical way of ensuring silence and stealth, but
one has to imagine it was something else as well,
(45:53):
a display of Jewish masculine power. Not everyone, however, was
pleased with Lichtenfeld or with the plan to immobilize Seacres
before reading him his death sense. When the outspoken Suded
heard about it, he was appalled. It's not a movie,
(46:13):
he fumed, bring a gun. In secret, the team began
to train. Lichtenfeld led the sessions, and he was relentless.
Neo had no idea the other team members were training
in crapmaga. That was your Reeves thing. Mio didn't need
to know about it. Had he known, he would have
been pleased that the other agents were practicing eye gouging,
(46:36):
groin kicking, and other moves because he had come to
fear sucres physical abilities. He even put this in the
report he sent back to your Reeve in Paris. I
re iterates and stressed The effect is that despite the
late Fund's age of sixty four, havey have us still
dangerous men? Alert, physically strong and resourceful. Later Mia would
(47:02):
realize something, You're even. The others didn't believe him at all.
My friends stopped. It was exaggerating. It's a danger, You're even.
The other agents had been to war, they'd fought young
men who were dead set on killing them. They thought
they could handle the butcher when they read MEO's report,
(47:22):
You're even. The others were deeply skeptical. They thought me
it was seeing things in Brazil, knocking off an aching
Nazi with white hair. It wasn't going to be a problem.
But you Reeve would later change his mind. Here's Leahy again,
your Reeves daughter. He used to say that two Chors
was a huge person, just the uge you couldn't imagine before.
(47:46):
I mean as many times as you were told before,
until you really saw him, you couldn't imagine how gigantic
he was. But that change of heart came months after
MEO's report, when it was almost too late. This over
confidence would soon cause terrible problems for the Bazade team.
(48:06):
Mio had seen the butcher up close. The others had
no idea what they were dealing with, but they were
soon going to find out. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher
(48:30):
is a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I
Heart Radio. This season is written and hosted by Stephen Talti,
produced and directed by Scott Waxman and Jacob Bronstein. Executive
producers Scott Waxman and Mark Francis. Story editing by Jacob
Bronstein with editorial direction from Scott Waxman and mangesh Had
(48:51):
ticket editing, mixing and sound designed by Mark Francis, with
the voices of Nick Afka, Thomas Armory, Angle, Andrew Polk,
Mindy Escobar, Leants, Steve Rautman and Stefan Rudnitsky. Theme music
by Tyler Cash. Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Special thanks
(49:12):
to Oran Rosenbaum at u t A Diversion Podcasts
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