May 7, 2021 • 38 mins
By the winter of 1964, the mission was coming into focus. In Brazil, the spy continued to meet with Herbert Cukurs, stoking The Butcher's excitement for his coming wealth and making sure he’d be willing to travel outside of Brazil. Yosef Yariv had chosen his kill team and they were training under the Krav Maga master, Imi Lichtenfeld.
“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
Herbert Cukurs was getting excited. He needed money, but more importantly, after being a pariah for years, he needed the encouragement that this high roller "Anton Kuenzle" gave him. Mio had sensed almost from the minute he met Cukurs that the guy was a narcissist.
What the spy didn’t know was that Cukurs was also playing a part. He pretended he was gung-ho, but the truth is he was deeply worried by the idea of leaving the country. Decades on the run had made him a worrier. He knew the Jews wanted him. Who’s to say this wasn’t the nightmare he’d been running away from ever since he left Latvia?
Cukurs thought about it. What Anton Kuenzle offered was so tempting. It was maybe his last chance at getting rich and getting his reputation back. It was too good to pass up. He was leaning towards going. But he wasn’t sure.
The spy flew to Uruguay and its capital, Montevideo. He wanted to see if it could work for the final act of the mission. He rented a car, studied the map, and started searching for a house. He needed something that looked like it could serve as the home base for a respectable company. It had to fool the Butcher.
Cukurs arrived in Montevideo a few days later. He was super excited. He probably hadn’t left Brazil in twenty years and now he was on a vacation with all expenses paid.
This was the important thing. Mio was starting to condition Cukurs, getting him to go in and out of strange houses.
This episode contains interviews with:
• Dr. Sarah Valente: visiting assisstant professor at The Ackerman Center at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Valente studies the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust in Brazil.
• Fernando Butazzoni: award-winning journalist and author of the 2020 book on Mossad's Cukurs mission, Los Que Nunca Olvidarán (Those Who Will Never Forget)
• Avner Avraham: former Mossad agent and renowned expert on Mossad operations
• Gad Shimron: former Mossad agent, journalist, author of several books on intelligence and history
GOOD ASSASSINS: HUNTING THE BUTCHER
• 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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Diversion Podcasts. This is Stephen Talty. I wanted to let
you 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
(00:28):
something I haven't covered that you wish I would. I
want to hear from you. Record yourself asking your question.
The voice 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 Diversion podcast dot com. Record yourself
(00:51):
asking a question and email it to me again. The
email address is Hunting the Butcher at Diversion Podcasts dot com.
That's podcasts plural with an S at the end. I'm
looking forward to hearing your questions. Thanks now on with
the show. This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence and
(01:15):
scenes of genocide. Listener's discretion is advised by the winter
(01:36):
of the mission was coming into focus. Use if you
reeve had chosen this killed team. They were training under
the Crabmaga master Emi Lichtenfeld for hours at a time.
They grunted and kicked and practiced the blow that would
bring a butcher to his knees. They were the same
moves that Lichtenfeld had used on Nazi thugs in Hungary.
(02:00):
The team was confident they would work on Herbert Suckers
in Brazil. Mio continued to meet with Suckers, trying to
stoke suckers excitement for his coming wealth and make sure
he'd be willing to travel somewhere outside of Brazil with
kunz La. They would go to a restaurant in Kunzla
(02:21):
would paint a picture deals. Money. Success was all on
the horizon, he told Suckers. He was getting excited about
the prospects for tourism in Brazil. So were his partners
back in Austria. In fact, they were so excited that
they had encouraged him to look at other countries too.
What about Chili or Uruguay? Both were up and coming
(02:43):
in the tourist trade. There were millions to be made.
Why restrict themselves to Brazil? Zukers was getting excited. He
needed the money, but more importantly, after being a pariah
for years, he needed the encouragement that this high roller
gave him. Neo had sensed almost from the minute he
met Sukers that the guy was a narcissist, but not
(03:05):
an ordinary one. Yes, Suckers had been a solo act
back in the nineteen thirties when he made headlines as
an aviator, but as he got older, it turned out
he didn't have to be in the lead role all
the time. In fact, there's evidence that Suckers sought out
strong men that he could follow, and it happened in Latvia,
where he joined a commando unit run by a handsome,
(03:27):
hard driving killer named Victor Raj. Raj was the leader,
Zukers the second in command, and now it was happening
with Kunsla. The truth was that Mia wasn't a leader either,
not in real life. As I've talked about it was
a bit of a loner. He lacked confidence, he didn't
command room. The leaders from ASSAD were pretty sharp judges
(03:50):
of character. When they promoted one of their agents and
gave them their own unit, it showed they'd seen something
in that man. He could be a boss, he could
motivate man. So far, no one had seen that in Mio.
Massad knew he was a kind of genius at going undercover,
but they never offered him his own unit. Me understood why,
(04:11):
and it's stun so. Maybe that's why he understood Suckers
so well. In a way, they were alike. They shared
that same frustration. They've never gotten their do in life.
I want to be clear, I'm speculating here. Meo never
talked about this. He never said I felt the butcher's pain.
(04:34):
He didn't feel his pain, but he recognized it and
he played on it. I'm Stephen Talty and this as
(04:55):
good assassin's hunting the butcher. So it's the first to
find and not be able to get forward til the
second part was to find the last and healing. We
must thwart this shameful forces, the end of a trail
(05:16):
of blood, of horror, the end of a man whose
name will be written in it. For episode seven, the
method of death, so Mio was taking Suckers around, winding
(05:46):
and dining him and talking about trips to other countries.
He told seekers was about making money, but the real
reason was the job couldn't be done in Brazil. They're
called out in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, the
well rioting over a Brazilian government. If the mission went badly, too,
many Jews would face blowback. According to Dr Sarah Valente,
(06:10):
who studies the legacy of the Holocaust in Brazil and
who you heard from an episode three, Jews in Brazil
were now being regularly targeted, not just along ethnic lines,
but along political and religious lines as well. The represented
leadership of sixty four disproportionately targeted those who were so
(06:30):
called subversives, those who did not fit into the you know,
nationalistic idea of of a Brazil that was dictated and
ruled by a military government. If you were seen as
a possible subversive, you were already a threat, and we
see the cases of many Jews who fell into that category.
(06:53):
I think it's important for us to mention the role
of Catholicism in many ways that religios. It still in
certain ways allows the Jew to be seen as as
a denier of Christ. So, for example, when we think
about anti Semitism in the United States today, people are
not going around in the United States saying the Jews
(07:15):
have killed Jesus, therefore right. But in the case of
Latin America, that idea, the da side charge is still
something that we see in making itself appear in media,
in in all kinds of um of communications, and so
during the dictatorship, again the Jew is seen as this
kind of other. They're not able to convert, they're not
(07:37):
able to become one of us. And Zukers seemed to
like the idea of the trips. But there was a catch.
When Zukers was discovered living in Brazilian nine, protesters had
tried to get him deported, but it hadn't worked. Here's
Dr Valente explaining the fallout. The Ministry of Justice, an
(08:00):
interior affairs replies to the Jewish community, to the it's
called the Hilitas the Jewish Federation, that there is no
issue of legality with Cooker's entrant in Brazil. That's basically
their response. Now there's no issue of legality that we
have to look into, and so that we could say
(08:20):
is kind of the official response. The Brazilian government knew
these allegations. Nothing was ever done to, you know, bring
him to judgment or anything along these lines. The only
thing that did happen is that he was not able
to become a Brazilian citizen. That was the only thing
that the Jewish Federation was able to stop was that
he was not granted citizenship. Essentially, Zukers was largely unscathed,
(08:44):
except for the fact that he couldn't get a passport.
So now how is Meal supposed to get him out
of the country if he didn't have the right documents.
Soon after the trip to Santos with Cosla, Suckers had
been to see his contact in DPS, the Brazilian Internal
Security Service. And it's worth remembering Sucers always had powerful
(09:05):
people looking out for him in the Brazilian government. Dr
Valente studied the documents Sucers used to apply for permanent residency,
and it's obvious to her that Brazilian officials would have
been sympathetic. That's as far as we could say. You
know of some kind of tangible action by the Ministry
of Justice in Brazil, is that they did decide to
(09:27):
hold a process for his petition of naturalization in virtue
of this kind of uncertainty of information available regarding to
his life prior to that moment and throughout the process.
I mean, I have the images of the different documents
that he used, the documents that he provided to the
Brazilian consulate. He never once hid his real identity, his
(09:50):
biographical information, everything is, you know, the correct information. There's
you don't get a sense that he's trying to hide
who he was or his activities. And after the Aikman kidnapping,
Zukris was worried about the Jews and the Israelis, but
he was confident that the Brazilian government would still have
his back and he was right. Again, here's Dr Valente.
(10:14):
So I've actually looked more in detail into about four
of these Nazis, Gustav Wagner being one of them, and um,
there are quite a few others, but this is always
the same. You know. They were able to attain what
was called a salvo kundo to, which is like it's
basically a permission that says you're a good person. Um,
it's almost like an affidavid that you're able to give
(10:36):
from a the local authorities that says, okay, this person
is clean. And I should also mention, you know, when
Aikman was discovered and captured in Argentina in nineteen sixty,
Kukers became very fearful of what might happen to him
and his family, and at this time he did not
(10:57):
hesitate to actually file paperwork with the local authorities to
ask for a protection for him in his family, and
he was granted a permission to care for arm because
in Brazil at the time you couldn't carry far arms,
and there was Brazilian secret service that was readily available
to protect him in his family. So Zookers knew he
(11:26):
could rely on his government contacts. It was natural that
he'd reach out about the trip he was planning with
this Austrian businessman. Should he go again. This made me
think of Marathon Man. The question that every fugitive wants answered.
Is it safe? Sukers is telling this Brazilian agent about
(11:47):
kuns La, and the guy was immediately suspicious. It's safe
to assume that your enemies have not forgotten you, He
told Sukers. I can protect you here in Sal Paulo,
but my jurisdiction stops at the border. Once Zukers crossed
into another country, he was on his own. Chile and
(12:08):
Uruguay had much smaller Jewish populations. If there was blowback
from the operation, fewer people would suffer. But there was
a catch. When Zukers were discovered living in Brazil in
nineteen fifty, protesters had tried to get him deported. It
hadn't worked. But it meant that Zukers never became a
Brazilian citizen, so he didn't have a passport. Kunst talked
(12:30):
it over with Zukers. The butcher told him there was
something called an alien's passport, a temporary travel document the
government could issue that would allow Zukers to travel. It
costs about thirty dollars Kunsili paid, and the problem was solved.
They were getting along. Mio even joked about the incident
with a pistol at the hotel, as was the gun.
(12:54):
I told Sukers, you have nothing to worry about. I'll
get it susible to controls a. Zukos grinned back. Most
of the time he kept a poker face, not disclosing
his emotions, but this time there was left the lines
around his eyes, which sparkled this genuine joy. The plan
(13:20):
seemed to be going smoothly. Suckers was starting to trust
me O. He bought in, or at least that's what
Meo thought. What the spy didn't know was that Zukers
too was playing a part. He pretended he was gung ho.
What the truth is. He was deeply worried by the
idea of leaving the country. He even mentioned it to
his wife. What if this was a trick? Decades on
(13:42):
the run had made him a warrior? He couldn't help it.
He knew the twos wanted him, he knew he was
on various lists. Who's to say this wasn't the nightmare
he'd been running away from ever since he left Latvia.
Zukers thought about it. What kuns Law offered was so
tem It was maybe his last chance at getting rich
(14:03):
and getting his reputation back. It was too good to
pass up. He was leaning towards going, but he wasn't sure.
He told the Brazilian agent, I've never been a coward.
(14:25):
This is episode seven. So if you're this far into
the story, we're assuming you're enjoying Hunting the Butcher. If
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(14:47):
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let other listeners know about the podcast much appreciate it did.
Now on with the show, Neal and Suckers hashed out
the details of the trip, when they would leave, how
(15:09):
long they would stay. Then they went to a Japanese
restaurant to celebrate. When they walked in, the matri d
rushed over. He showed the two men to a good table,
gave them v I P. Treatment. Suckers was impressed. He
didn't know that me had been there a few days earlier,
making a big splash, tipping the waiters and the matri
d heavily to make sure they remember him. He didn't
(15:33):
want to take any chances. We ordered rum and cokes,
and the drinks arrived. He glanced at Sukers. I noticed
he drank very slowly. He would start with a small
sip as if examining the contents of the glass because
in the late a few minutes, and only then stopped drinking.
(15:56):
He behaved like someone afraid of being poisoned. Slipping a
dose of poison into the butcher's cocktail had been one
method that Neo had been considering, but now it wasn't
going to work. Zukers was just too suspicious. But if
he tasted the champagne or the piece of steak that
had the poison in it and spit it out and
(16:16):
then pulled out the gun he always seemed to carry,
that would be bad. Neo cross poison off the list,
He'd have to find another way. So they had a
tentative agreement they would start with Uruguay. Zukers invited Kunsla
to his house for strutle and coffee and to tell
(16:37):
the family about the plan. It was as if he
wanted his children to see that the bad years were
almost over, that the accusations of being a Nazi in
a war criminal were beginning to fade. They made every
sentence I said and closely examined every move I made. Afterward,
(17:06):
Neo flew to Uruguay and its capital month of the day.
He wanted to see if it could work in the
final act of the mission. Jim Piden Lane team, the
Spanish sailor saw this mountain monte Ville, meaning I see
a mountain, And to this day we know the capital
of Uruguay as Montagdeo. Uruguay, between Brazil and Argentina is
(17:31):
one of the world's purest democracies. It's the traveler making
the grand tour of South America is well advised to
fars to take in the easy, congenial mood of Uruguay's metropolis.
I spoke to the noted Uruguayan writer Fernando Budizoni. Budizoni
(17:53):
studied the Zuker's case closely and recently published a carefully
researched book about it in Spanish and tip old los
k nunka vidaran or those who will never forget. He
described to me what Montevideo was like in those days.
Monte Video was that quiet city, somewhat gray, a few
(18:16):
cars on the streets, important building, well dressed as people.
It was not a dangelous city like European city, a
smaller European city, and our architecture it's very similar to
the Barcelona and Madrid architecture. Meal rented a car, studied
(18:41):
the map, and started searching for a house. He needed
something that looked like it could serve as the home
base for respectable company. It had to look good, it
had to fool the butcher. Sukers arrived in Montevideo a
few days later. He was super excited. He probably hadn't
left Brazil in twenty years, and now he was on
(19:03):
a vacation with all expenses paid. Budazoni thinks Montevideo might
have even felt like a kind of homecoming for Zukers
and for Cooks it was. I think it was like
going back to Europe after twenty year. He had never
returned as to Europe from from the end of the war.
(19:26):
Mio and Suckers checked into the hotel. Then when driving around,
they spoke to real estate agents, they studied listings, and
they checked out houses. This was the important thing. Neo
was starting to condition Zookers, getting it to go in
and out of strange houses. There weren't a lot of
places on the market, so Mio said they would come
(19:48):
back early in the spring and look again. He'd seen enough.
Uruguay was the place, and Buddhizoni understands why at that
time you why was a peaceful place, really peaceful, a
small and democratic country. We were surrounded by the dictatorship
(20:10):
in Argentina, in Brazil, in Paraguay, and so in my
country the life was peaceful in Uuay, unlike Brazils, there
was not the penalty, there were political freedom, and we
have good relations with Israel. There was not explicit anti
(20:34):
Semitism in our society, and I think that explain why
Mosal's choose your way to carry out the ambush against Cucku.
Because in Brazil he was very, very protected by the
political police, and then in Argentina still remembered the adult
(20:56):
Aisman case, you know, and Paraguay was the was for
many Nazis. That is why, in my opinion, you know
why he was the best alternatives, or maybe they are
the alternatives or the mos Everything was finalized. They'd hit
(21:24):
the capitol again in a few months and start buying buildings.
Zukers would go on the payroll. He'd finally get those
taped up glasses fixed, maybe sell off his boat rental business.
It was time to celebrate. The two men went to
a local casino in Montevideo. They played the tables, had
a few drinks, a good food. When Mia wanted roulette,
(21:46):
he took the winnings and gave half to Zukers. They
were partners now, it was like a down payment on
the dream. Through all of this, Zukers looked relaxed, but
it wasn't true. Later it would turn out that he'd
seen something disturbing. While they were having lunch one day,
he spotted a bunch of dark haired men and women
(22:06):
at a nearby table. Though he didn't tell kuns La,
he became convinced these were Israeli spies. Zucker's wife later
told police in an interview. They were sitting a few
tables away from Herbert and kuns La. They spoke in
loud voices and made a lot of noise, as is
typical of Jews. Neo had no idea this was going on.
(22:30):
He hadn't noticed the table. It was probably just a
bunch of locals having a good time. There was no
backup team trailing him. It was all in Suker's head.
It was the latest in a series of things that
worried me. Oh Zuker's tasting his drink for poison, the guns,
the mention of Joseph Kramer, the Nazi commander. Something else
(22:51):
came up. A few days later, while they were still
in Uruguay, they went out for dinner, and after they
sat down, Zuker spoke to the waiter in Kiddish. He
was checking to see if the guy knew the language,
that is, if he was Jewish. The waiter had no
idea what Sucers was saying. So the butcher switched to Spanish,
but Mio could not believe it would The butcher, ever
(23:14):
calmed down, he seemed even more paranoid now that he
was out of Brazil. It bothered Meo. In fact, the
mission was beginning to weigh on Meo. He not only
(23:37):
had to deal with Suker's mistrust, but the anxiety of
always waiting to be discovered, of being arrested and put
on trial. He really missed his family. After Abraham, the
former Massad agent, knows what that's like. And I can
tell you frankly that I lost most of my friends
(23:57):
because I was I isolated. That used to fly here.
And even when you walk in Israel, you walk from
it's not nine to five, you can walk from six
till midnight every day. You work very hard, and and
you don't see your kids maybe or you can see
them only in the morning before you go again to
(24:18):
your walk. So in this kind of work, and you
have secrets all the time. Usually you you don't have friends. Yeah,
maybe you have friends from Mossad, okay, but yes, you're paid.
It was a lonely existence in which he never got
to reveal his true self and was constantly afraid of
slipping up and destroying not only the mission but his
(24:41):
own life. Every double agent faced the same thing, but
now me, it was really starting to feel it. It
was the price of being undercover. Just because he was
good at it didn't mean it was easy. Here's Gad Samran,
the other ex Messade agent you've heard from, talking about this.
This is quite unique. I can I can only you know,
(25:02):
given my postal account, and had also worked under cover
also in Arab countries. It's a huge mental Boden and
and and Neo. I've done it so naturally that I
think that the future worlds maybe he could have done
a very nice career. Habima Israeli National Theater for MEO
(25:28):
Act one was coming to an end. It was time
for the Massad agent to return to Paris. He'd gotten
as close at the butcher as was possible. He had
all the information on Uruguay and what it would take
to carry out a mission there, and he was beginning
to sketch out the details of the assassination. They parted
like old friends. Neo told Suckers they would see each
(25:50):
other soon, and then he boarded a flight back to France. Hey,
this is Stephen Talty, the host of this podcast, Good
Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. As I've mentioned a couple of
(26:12):
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 War Two history that
we didn't cover in the podcast, and the book works
(26:33):
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. While in Brazil, New had little
(27:02):
idea what was going on in Germany and in the
whole amnesty debate. There were articles about it even in
the South Pollo papers. It was turning into a global issue.
Here's what some of the American radio coverage sounded like.
The German constitution places a maximum twenty year limit on
the prosecution of any crimes people arose to power by
(27:25):
tampering with a self same constitution, and the bond government
wants no repetition of that it believes that the Democratic
Society for a Sunnian violability of basic law. This is
not to say that the West German government is not
doing anything about these problems, if legal experts are studying
the statue of limitations, but the statue of limitations has
(27:48):
an importance aside from the question of punishing the criminals.
The fact that twenty years have passed means that almost
half of West Germany's fifty million people are too young
to remember anything at all a brought the war or
Hitler in this thousand year right. A very high percentage
reached stage of awareness only in the ten years since
(28:08):
the country was made independent. It is quite natural that
these younger people are sick and tired of hearing about
the sins of their elders. Not that they deny those sins.
They are aware of them, but they leave the denials
to those more guilty than they m But the radio
reports and newspaper articles didn't tell what was happening behind
(28:32):
the scenes. The two Nazi hunters to Via Friedman and
Simon Wiesenthal, We're working on issue nearly full time, and
they were starting to see results. A few American companies
announced the boycott of German goods. This upset a lot
(28:52):
of people. In Berlin, the German ambassador said there was
excessive agitation going on in the United States. People were
writing letters, a lot of them, which is what you
did in the mid sixties when you wanted to pressure
a government. German embassies and consulates around the world have
been bombarded with petitions and deputations, wrote the Los Angeles Times,
(29:14):
letters and telegrams in the thousands. Protesters showed up on
the streets in New York. Dozens of men and women
marched up and down Park Avenue with science reading no
Statute of Limitations for mass murder and Jewish survivors of
Nazi persecution. Vicenthal was spending money. He bought advertising space
(29:38):
in newspapers all over the world and published the letter
he'd written, along with the signatures of the two famous scientists. Politicians,
writers and others signed it. It got a lot of attention.
Someone even gave Visenthal the private number of former First
Lady Jackie Kennedy, who made calls to help the movement.
(29:58):
It was encouraging. Still, the only people that really mattered
with the men and women in the German Parliament and
what they were thinking. Nobody really knew. The debate played
out in German newspapers and on the radio and TV.
Supporters of the amnesty argued that jailing more x Nazis,
many of whom held high positions and companies in the government,
(30:20):
would crippled Germany's economy. The Justice Ministry of Germany in
nineteen sixty four, for example, was almost identical to Hitler's
Reich Ministry of Justice. The faces were mostly the same,
only the name plates on the doors had been changed.
What were you going to do? Empty the place out
because of what those men had done during the war?
(30:41):
Who would run the courts? Who would run the country?
They weren't estimated two hundred blood judges, men who had
served under the Third Reich still on the bench. If
Freeman and the other activists truly wanted to jail every
Nazi and participate in the murder of a Jew, Germany
could come to a grinding halt. As count or intuitive
as it sounded. If the world truly wanted the new
(31:03):
Germany to flourish, it had to allow some Nazis to
remain free. If you didn't, people would get angry. They'd
resent us even more than they already did. It was
a weird idea. If you prosecute Nazis for murderer, they'll
get more Nazis, not fewer. The parallel was World War One.
(31:24):
The harsh terms of the Versailles peace treaty had triggered
a conspiracy theory among Germans, the famous stabbed in the
back idea. Hitler had been obsessed by this theory. Now
the pro statute forces were saying that more Nazi trials
would start a backlash. Some sense to warning, if you
don't back off, will stop feeling remorseful and start feeling angry.
(31:48):
Behind such arguments lay an unpleasant truth, one that to
Via Freedman had known for years. Hitler had enjoyed far
wider and deeper support than anyone in Germany wanted to admit.
The former Auschwitz judge Heinz Dukes would later say approximately
ninety percent of the Germans, as activists and fellow travelers,
(32:13):
translated the murderous ideology of the National socialist regime into action.
Germans preferred the guilty few theory of the Holocaust, the
idea that Hitler and a handful of other men had
forced Germans to become accomplices in the genocide of Jews.
(32:33):
This absolved most citizens of their own guilt. Individual Germans
almost never admitted playing a part in the Holocaust. If
trials were allowed to go on indefinitely and prosecutors were
free to track down every officer and soldier who had
murdered somebody during the war, a deeper and more disturbing
portrait of the Holocaust would emerge. This is what people
(32:55):
were saying, as if that was a bad thing. But
that's exactly what free Men and the others wanted. They
believed the full truth of what happened during the war
had never been acknowledged. Here's Freemen from a memoir he
wrote in the early sixties. Millions of Germans today were
(33:16):
a decade and a half ago Nazis thoughtful people are
troubled by the fact that the new generation rising in
Germany today does not fully know the enormity of the
crimes that were committed. The textbooks in Germany do not
spell out the hideous, unspeakable crimes that were committed by
men and women who are themselves parents, grandparents, relatives of
(33:40):
young Germans. How can we be sure that the leader
loving German people will not again follow in the footsteps
of a power mad dictator if today's generation of Germans
does not know and fully understand the history of the
Nazi period. Freeman didn't know about Massad's mission to assassinate
(34:04):
Herbert Suckers, but there's little doubt he would have approved.
He was working the corridors of power. But his campaign
lacks something. It needed a face, a real life monster,
to show what kind of Nazis were still walking free
in the world. Hitler was gone, Doctor Mangela was in hiding.
They needed someone who done terrible things and was still free.
(34:28):
That role would be filled by Herbert Suckers. It was
late October. Neo was playing touchdown in Paris. He went
to his apartment, kissed his wife, played with his kids.
He slept in his own bed for the first time
(34:49):
in six weeks. He was himself again. He didn't have
to pretend. After a few days, your reefs summoned Meo.
He went back to the Massi department to meet the
three other men Youreif had selected for the killed team,
Laser Sudi, zev Amid and multi Ka. Fear Meal had
(35:11):
brought a suitcase back with him from Brazil. It was
filled with stuff, notes, maps, flight schedules. You had saved
everything that had the smallest part to play in the operation.
He'd written out a description of Zuker's home to lay
out the drawer with the guns everything. There was a
section on how scarce rental cars were in Uruguay. The
(35:34):
team would need multiple cars, so that was something they'd
have to take care of as soon as they landed.
Meal listed what documents you needed to check into a
hotel as a foreigner, and a master list of hotels
they could use. The men began sorting the documents and
putting them into separate files. Now the team had to
sort through it all and begin checking and double checking
(35:57):
every detail. They had to decide on how to eliminate
the butcher, and they had to get their own cover
I entities. The team now had five months until March,
five months until the vote in the German Parliament that
would spell victory or defeat. They felt the weight of
(36:18):
history on them. They were thinking of future generations. So
much rested on this mission, and if they could actually
pull it off, it wouldn't be until much later, In fact,
until it was too late that they realized the mistakes
they were making. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher is a
(36:52):
production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
This season is written and hosted by Stephen Tulty, 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 At Tickedur Editing,
(37:14):
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. Thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at
(37:34):
ut A Diversion Podcasts. It
Diversion Podcasts. This is Stephen Talty. I wanted to let
you 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
(00:28):
something I haven't covered that you wish I would. I
want to hear from you. Record yourself asking your question.
The voice 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 Diversion podcast dot com. Record yourself
(00:51):
asking a question and email it to me again. The
email address is Hunting the Butcher at Diversion Podcasts dot com.
That's podcasts plural with an S at the end. I'm
looking forward to hearing your questions. Thanks now on with
the show. This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence and
(01:15):
scenes of genocide. Listener's discretion is advised by the winter
(01:36):
of the mission was coming into focus. Use if you
reeve had chosen this killed team. They were training under
the Crabmaga master Emi Lichtenfeld for hours at a time.
They grunted and kicked and practiced the blow that would
bring a butcher to his knees. They were the same
moves that Lichtenfeld had used on Nazi thugs in Hungary.
(02:00):
The team was confident they would work on Herbert Suckers
in Brazil. Mio continued to meet with Suckers, trying to
stoke suckers excitement for his coming wealth and make sure
he'd be willing to travel somewhere outside of Brazil with
kunz La. They would go to a restaurant in Kunzla
(02:21):
would paint a picture deals. Money. Success was all on
the horizon, he told Suckers. He was getting excited about
the prospects for tourism in Brazil. So were his partners
back in Austria. In fact, they were so excited that
they had encouraged him to look at other countries too.
What about Chili or Uruguay? Both were up and coming
(02:43):
in the tourist trade. There were millions to be made.
Why restrict themselves to Brazil? Zukers was getting excited. He
needed the money, but more importantly, after being a pariah
for years, he needed the encouragement that this high roller
gave him. Neo had sensed almost from the minute he
met Sukers that the guy was a narcissist, but not
(03:05):
an ordinary one. Yes, Suckers had been a solo act
back in the nineteen thirties when he made headlines as
an aviator, but as he got older, it turned out
he didn't have to be in the lead role all
the time. In fact, there's evidence that Suckers sought out
strong men that he could follow, and it happened in Latvia,
where he joined a commando unit run by a handsome,
(03:27):
hard driving killer named Victor Raj. Raj was the leader,
Zukers the second in command, and now it was happening
with Kunsla. The truth was that Mia wasn't a leader either,
not in real life. As I've talked about it was
a bit of a loner. He lacked confidence, he didn't
command room. The leaders from ASSAD were pretty sharp judges
(03:50):
of character. When they promoted one of their agents and
gave them their own unit, it showed they'd seen something
in that man. He could be a boss, he could
motivate man. So far, no one had seen that in Mio.
Massad knew he was a kind of genius at going undercover,
but they never offered him his own unit. Me understood why,
(04:11):
and it's stun so. Maybe that's why he understood Suckers
so well. In a way, they were alike. They shared
that same frustration. They've never gotten their do in life.
I want to be clear, I'm speculating here. Meo never
talked about this. He never said I felt the butcher's pain.
(04:34):
He didn't feel his pain, but he recognized it and
he played on it. I'm Stephen Talty and this as
(04:55):
good assassin's hunting the butcher. So it's the first to
find and not be able to get forward til the
second part was to find the last and healing. We
must thwart this shameful forces, the end of a trail
(05:16):
of blood, of horror, the end of a man whose
name will be written in it. For episode seven, the
method of death, so Mio was taking Suckers around, winding
(05:46):
and dining him and talking about trips to other countries.
He told seekers was about making money, but the real
reason was the job couldn't be done in Brazil. They're
called out in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, the
well rioting over a Brazilian government. If the mission went badly, too,
many Jews would face blowback. According to Dr Sarah Valente,
(06:10):
who studies the legacy of the Holocaust in Brazil and
who you heard from an episode three, Jews in Brazil
were now being regularly targeted, not just along ethnic lines,
but along political and religious lines as well. The represented
leadership of sixty four disproportionately targeted those who were so
(06:30):
called subversives, those who did not fit into the you know,
nationalistic idea of of a Brazil that was dictated and
ruled by a military government. If you were seen as
a possible subversive, you were already a threat, and we
see the cases of many Jews who fell into that category.
(06:53):
I think it's important for us to mention the role
of Catholicism in many ways that religios. It still in
certain ways allows the Jew to be seen as as
a denier of Christ. So, for example, when we think
about anti Semitism in the United States today, people are
not going around in the United States saying the Jews
(07:15):
have killed Jesus, therefore right. But in the case of
Latin America, that idea, the da side charge is still
something that we see in making itself appear in media,
in in all kinds of um of communications, and so
during the dictatorship, again the Jew is seen as this
kind of other. They're not able to convert, they're not
(07:37):
able to become one of us. And Zukers seemed to
like the idea of the trips. But there was a catch.
When Zukers was discovered living in Brazilian nine, protesters had
tried to get him deported, but it hadn't worked. Here's
Dr Valente explaining the fallout. The Ministry of Justice, an
(08:00):
interior affairs replies to the Jewish community, to the it's
called the Hilitas the Jewish Federation, that there is no
issue of legality with Cooker's entrant in Brazil. That's basically
their response. Now there's no issue of legality that we
have to look into, and so that we could say
(08:20):
is kind of the official response. The Brazilian government knew
these allegations. Nothing was ever done to, you know, bring
him to judgment or anything along these lines. The only
thing that did happen is that he was not able
to become a Brazilian citizen. That was the only thing
that the Jewish Federation was able to stop was that
he was not granted citizenship. Essentially, Zukers was largely unscathed,
(08:44):
except for the fact that he couldn't get a passport.
So now how is Meal supposed to get him out
of the country if he didn't have the right documents.
Soon after the trip to Santos with Cosla, Suckers had
been to see his contact in DPS, the Brazilian Internal
Security Service. And it's worth remembering Sucers always had powerful
(09:05):
people looking out for him in the Brazilian government. Dr
Valente studied the documents Sucers used to apply for permanent residency,
and it's obvious to her that Brazilian officials would have
been sympathetic. That's as far as we could say. You
know of some kind of tangible action by the Ministry
of Justice in Brazil, is that they did decide to
(09:27):
hold a process for his petition of naturalization in virtue
of this kind of uncertainty of information available regarding to
his life prior to that moment and throughout the process.
I mean, I have the images of the different documents
that he used, the documents that he provided to the
Brazilian consulate. He never once hid his real identity, his
(09:50):
biographical information, everything is, you know, the correct information. There's
you don't get a sense that he's trying to hide
who he was or his activities. And after the Aikman kidnapping,
Zukris was worried about the Jews and the Israelis, but
he was confident that the Brazilian government would still have
his back and he was right. Again, here's Dr Valente.
(10:14):
So I've actually looked more in detail into about four
of these Nazis, Gustav Wagner being one of them, and um,
there are quite a few others, but this is always
the same. You know. They were able to attain what
was called a salvo kundo to, which is like it's
basically a permission that says you're a good person. Um,
it's almost like an affidavid that you're able to give
(10:36):
from a the local authorities that says, okay, this person
is clean. And I should also mention, you know, when
Aikman was discovered and captured in Argentina in nineteen sixty,
Kukers became very fearful of what might happen to him
and his family, and at this time he did not
(10:57):
hesitate to actually file paperwork with the local authorities to
ask for a protection for him in his family, and
he was granted a permission to care for arm because
in Brazil at the time you couldn't carry far arms,
and there was Brazilian secret service that was readily available
to protect him in his family. So Zookers knew he
(11:26):
could rely on his government contacts. It was natural that
he'd reach out about the trip he was planning with
this Austrian businessman. Should he go again. This made me
think of Marathon Man. The question that every fugitive wants answered.
Is it safe? Sukers is telling this Brazilian agent about
(11:47):
kuns La, and the guy was immediately suspicious. It's safe
to assume that your enemies have not forgotten you, He
told Sukers. I can protect you here in Sal Paulo,
but my jurisdiction stops at the border. Once Zukers crossed
into another country, he was on his own. Chile and
(12:08):
Uruguay had much smaller Jewish populations. If there was blowback
from the operation, fewer people would suffer. But there was
a catch. When Zukers were discovered living in Brazil in
nineteen fifty, protesters had tried to get him deported. It
hadn't worked. But it meant that Zukers never became a
Brazilian citizen, so he didn't have a passport. Kunst talked
(12:30):
it over with Zukers. The butcher told him there was
something called an alien's passport, a temporary travel document the
government could issue that would allow Zukers to travel. It
costs about thirty dollars Kunsili paid, and the problem was solved.
They were getting along. Mio even joked about the incident
with a pistol at the hotel, as was the gun.
(12:54):
I told Sukers, you have nothing to worry about. I'll
get it susible to controls a. Zukos grinned back. Most
of the time he kept a poker face, not disclosing
his emotions, but this time there was left the lines
around his eyes, which sparkled this genuine joy. The plan
(13:20):
seemed to be going smoothly. Suckers was starting to trust
me O. He bought in, or at least that's what
Meo thought. What the spy didn't know was that Zukers
too was playing a part. He pretended he was gung ho.
What the truth is. He was deeply worried by the
idea of leaving the country. He even mentioned it to
his wife. What if this was a trick? Decades on
(13:42):
the run had made him a warrior? He couldn't help it.
He knew the twos wanted him, he knew he was
on various lists. Who's to say this wasn't the nightmare
he'd been running away from ever since he left Latvia.
Zukers thought about it. What kuns Law offered was so
tem It was maybe his last chance at getting rich
(14:03):
and getting his reputation back. It was too good to
pass up. He was leaning towards going, but he wasn't sure.
He told the Brazilian agent, I've never been a coward.
(14:25):
This is episode seven. So if you're this far into
the story, we're assuming you're enjoying Hunting the Butcher. If
you're listening on Apple podcasts, can I ask you for
a quick favor? It only takes a minute. Find the
show on Apple Podcasts, scroll down to the section called
Ratings and Reviews and tap one of those purple stars,
hopefully it's the fifth star on the right. Then tap
(14:47):
that little purple length that says write a review and
leave a few words about what you think of Hunting
the Butcher. It really helps get the word out and
let other listeners know about the podcast much appreciate it did.
Now on with the show, Neal and Suckers hashed out
the details of the trip, when they would leave, how
(15:09):
long they would stay. Then they went to a Japanese
restaurant to celebrate. When they walked in, the matri d
rushed over. He showed the two men to a good table,
gave them v I P. Treatment. Suckers was impressed. He
didn't know that me had been there a few days earlier,
making a big splash, tipping the waiters and the matri
d heavily to make sure they remember him. He didn't
(15:33):
want to take any chances. We ordered rum and cokes,
and the drinks arrived. He glanced at Sukers. I noticed
he drank very slowly. He would start with a small
sip as if examining the contents of the glass because
in the late a few minutes, and only then stopped drinking.
(15:56):
He behaved like someone afraid of being poisoned. Slipping a
dose of poison into the butcher's cocktail had been one
method that Neo had been considering, but now it wasn't
going to work. Zukers was just too suspicious. But if
he tasted the champagne or the piece of steak that
had the poison in it and spit it out and
(16:16):
then pulled out the gun he always seemed to carry,
that would be bad. Neo cross poison off the list,
He'd have to find another way. So they had a
tentative agreement they would start with Uruguay. Zukers invited Kunsla
to his house for strutle and coffee and to tell
(16:37):
the family about the plan. It was as if he
wanted his children to see that the bad years were
almost over, that the accusations of being a Nazi in
a war criminal were beginning to fade. They made every
sentence I said and closely examined every move I made. Afterward,
(17:06):
Neo flew to Uruguay and its capital month of the day.
He wanted to see if it could work in the
final act of the mission. Jim Piden Lane team, the
Spanish sailor saw this mountain monte Ville, meaning I see
a mountain, And to this day we know the capital
of Uruguay as Montagdeo. Uruguay, between Brazil and Argentina is
(17:31):
one of the world's purest democracies. It's the traveler making
the grand tour of South America is well advised to
fars to take in the easy, congenial mood of Uruguay's metropolis.
I spoke to the noted Uruguayan writer Fernando Budizoni. Budizoni
(17:53):
studied the Zuker's case closely and recently published a carefully
researched book about it in Spanish and tip old los
k nunka vidaran or those who will never forget. He
described to me what Montevideo was like in those days.
Monte Video was that quiet city, somewhat gray, a few
(18:16):
cars on the streets, important building, well dressed as people.
It was not a dangelous city like European city, a
smaller European city, and our architecture it's very similar to
the Barcelona and Madrid architecture. Meal rented a car, studied
(18:41):
the map, and started searching for a house. He needed
something that looked like it could serve as the home
base for respectable company. It had to look good, it
had to fool the butcher. Sukers arrived in Montevideo a
few days later. He was super excited. He probably hadn't
left Brazil in twenty years, and now he was on
(19:03):
a vacation with all expenses paid. Budazoni thinks Montevideo might
have even felt like a kind of homecoming for Zukers
and for Cooks it was. I think it was like
going back to Europe after twenty year. He had never
returned as to Europe from from the end of the war.
(19:26):
Mio and Suckers checked into the hotel. Then when driving around,
they spoke to real estate agents, they studied listings, and
they checked out houses. This was the important thing. Neo
was starting to condition Zookers, getting it to go in
and out of strange houses. There weren't a lot of
places on the market, so Mio said they would come
(19:48):
back early in the spring and look again. He'd seen enough.
Uruguay was the place, and Buddhizoni understands why at that
time you why was a peaceful place, really peaceful, a
small and democratic country. We were surrounded by the dictatorship
(20:10):
in Argentina, in Brazil, in Paraguay, and so in my
country the life was peaceful in Uuay, unlike Brazils, there
was not the penalty, there were political freedom, and we
have good relations with Israel. There was not explicit anti
(20:34):
Semitism in our society, and I think that explain why
Mosal's choose your way to carry out the ambush against Cucku.
Because in Brazil he was very, very protected by the
political police, and then in Argentina still remembered the adult
(20:56):
Aisman case, you know, and Paraguay was the was for
many Nazis. That is why, in my opinion, you know
why he was the best alternatives, or maybe they are
the alternatives or the mos Everything was finalized. They'd hit
(21:24):
the capitol again in a few months and start buying buildings.
Zukers would go on the payroll. He'd finally get those
taped up glasses fixed, maybe sell off his boat rental business.
It was time to celebrate. The two men went to
a local casino in Montevideo. They played the tables, had
a few drinks, a good food. When Mia wanted roulette,
(21:46):
he took the winnings and gave half to Zukers. They
were partners now, it was like a down payment on
the dream. Through all of this, Zukers looked relaxed, but
it wasn't true. Later it would turn out that he'd
seen something disturbing. While they were having lunch one day,
he spotted a bunch of dark haired men and women
(22:06):
at a nearby table. Though he didn't tell kuns La,
he became convinced these were Israeli spies. Zucker's wife later
told police in an interview. They were sitting a few
tables away from Herbert and kuns La. They spoke in
loud voices and made a lot of noise, as is
typical of Jews. Neo had no idea this was going on.
(22:30):
He hadn't noticed the table. It was probably just a
bunch of locals having a good time. There was no
backup team trailing him. It was all in Suker's head.
It was the latest in a series of things that
worried me. Oh Zuker's tasting his drink for poison, the guns,
the mention of Joseph Kramer, the Nazi commander. Something else
(22:51):
came up. A few days later, while they were still
in Uruguay, they went out for dinner, and after they
sat down, Zuker spoke to the waiter in Kiddish. He
was checking to see if the guy knew the language,
that is, if he was Jewish. The waiter had no
idea what Sucers was saying. So the butcher switched to Spanish,
but Mio could not believe it would The butcher, ever
(23:14):
calmed down, he seemed even more paranoid now that he
was out of Brazil. It bothered Meo. In fact, the
mission was beginning to weigh on Meo. He not only
(23:37):
had to deal with Suker's mistrust, but the anxiety of
always waiting to be discovered, of being arrested and put
on trial. He really missed his family. After Abraham, the
former Massad agent, knows what that's like. And I can
tell you frankly that I lost most of my friends
(23:57):
because I was I isolated. That used to fly here.
And even when you walk in Israel, you walk from
it's not nine to five, you can walk from six
till midnight every day. You work very hard, and and
you don't see your kids maybe or you can see
them only in the morning before you go again to
(24:18):
your walk. So in this kind of work, and you
have secrets all the time. Usually you you don't have friends. Yeah,
maybe you have friends from Mossad, okay, but yes, you're paid.
It was a lonely existence in which he never got
to reveal his true self and was constantly afraid of
slipping up and destroying not only the mission but his
(24:41):
own life. Every double agent faced the same thing, but
now me, it was really starting to feel it. It
was the price of being undercover. Just because he was
good at it didn't mean it was easy. Here's Gad Samran,
the other ex Messade agent you've heard from, talking about this.
This is quite unique. I can I can only you know,
(25:02):
given my postal account, and had also worked under cover
also in Arab countries. It's a huge mental Boden and
and and Neo. I've done it so naturally that I
think that the future worlds maybe he could have done
a very nice career. Habima Israeli National Theater for MEO
(25:28):
Act one was coming to an end. It was time
for the Massad agent to return to Paris. He'd gotten
as close at the butcher as was possible. He had
all the information on Uruguay and what it would take
to carry out a mission there, and he was beginning
to sketch out the details of the assassination. They parted
like old friends. Neo told Suckers they would see each
(25:50):
other soon, and then he boarded a flight back to France. Hey,
this is Stephen Talty, the host of this podcast, Good
Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. As I've mentioned a couple of
(26:12):
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 War Two history that
we didn't cover in the podcast, and the book works
(26:33):
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. While in Brazil, New had little
(27:02):
idea what was going on in Germany and in the
whole amnesty debate. There were articles about it even in
the South Pollo papers. It was turning into a global issue.
Here's what some of the American radio coverage sounded like.
The German constitution places a maximum twenty year limit on
the prosecution of any crimes people arose to power by
(27:25):
tampering with a self same constitution, and the bond government
wants no repetition of that it believes that the Democratic
Society for a Sunnian violability of basic law. This is
not to say that the West German government is not
doing anything about these problems, if legal experts are studying
the statue of limitations, but the statue of limitations has
(27:48):
an importance aside from the question of punishing the criminals.
The fact that twenty years have passed means that almost
half of West Germany's fifty million people are too young
to remember anything at all a brought the war or
Hitler in this thousand year right. A very high percentage
reached stage of awareness only in the ten years since
(28:08):
the country was made independent. It is quite natural that
these younger people are sick and tired of hearing about
the sins of their elders. Not that they deny those sins.
They are aware of them, but they leave the denials
to those more guilty than they m But the radio
reports and newspaper articles didn't tell what was happening behind
(28:32):
the scenes. The two Nazi hunters to Via Friedman and
Simon Wiesenthal, We're working on issue nearly full time, and
they were starting to see results. A few American companies
announced the boycott of German goods. This upset a lot
(28:52):
of people. In Berlin, the German ambassador said there was
excessive agitation going on in the United States. People were
writing letters, a lot of them, which is what you
did in the mid sixties when you wanted to pressure
a government. German embassies and consulates around the world have
been bombarded with petitions and deputations, wrote the Los Angeles Times,
(29:14):
letters and telegrams in the thousands. Protesters showed up on
the streets in New York. Dozens of men and women
marched up and down Park Avenue with science reading no
Statute of Limitations for mass murder and Jewish survivors of
Nazi persecution. Vicenthal was spending money. He bought advertising space
(29:38):
in newspapers all over the world and published the letter
he'd written, along with the signatures of the two famous scientists. Politicians,
writers and others signed it. It got a lot of attention.
Someone even gave Visenthal the private number of former First
Lady Jackie Kennedy, who made calls to help the movement.
(29:58):
It was encouraging. Still, the only people that really mattered
with the men and women in the German Parliament and
what they were thinking. Nobody really knew. The debate played
out in German newspapers and on the radio and TV.
Supporters of the amnesty argued that jailing more x Nazis,
many of whom held high positions and companies in the government,
(30:20):
would crippled Germany's economy. The Justice Ministry of Germany in
nineteen sixty four, for example, was almost identical to Hitler's
Reich Ministry of Justice. The faces were mostly the same,
only the name plates on the doors had been changed.
What were you going to do? Empty the place out
because of what those men had done during the war?
(30:41):
Who would run the courts? Who would run the country?
They weren't estimated two hundred blood judges, men who had
served under the Third Reich still on the bench. If
Freeman and the other activists truly wanted to jail every
Nazi and participate in the murder of a Jew, Germany
could come to a grinding halt. As count or intuitive
as it sounded. If the world truly wanted the new
(31:03):
Germany to flourish, it had to allow some Nazis to
remain free. If you didn't, people would get angry. They'd
resent us even more than they already did. It was
a weird idea. If you prosecute Nazis for murderer, they'll
get more Nazis, not fewer. The parallel was World War One.
(31:24):
The harsh terms of the Versailles peace treaty had triggered
a conspiracy theory among Germans, the famous stabbed in the
back idea. Hitler had been obsessed by this theory. Now
the pro statute forces were saying that more Nazi trials
would start a backlash. Some sense to warning, if you
don't back off, will stop feeling remorseful and start feeling angry.
(31:48):
Behind such arguments lay an unpleasant truth, one that to
Via Freedman had known for years. Hitler had enjoyed far
wider and deeper support than anyone in Germany wanted to admit.
The former Auschwitz judge Heinz Dukes would later say approximately
ninety percent of the Germans, as activists and fellow travelers,
(32:13):
translated the murderous ideology of the National socialist regime into action.
Germans preferred the guilty few theory of the Holocaust, the
idea that Hitler and a handful of other men had
forced Germans to become accomplices in the genocide of Jews.
(32:33):
This absolved most citizens of their own guilt. Individual Germans
almost never admitted playing a part in the Holocaust. If
trials were allowed to go on indefinitely and prosecutors were
free to track down every officer and soldier who had
murdered somebody during the war, a deeper and more disturbing
portrait of the Holocaust would emerge. This is what people
(32:55):
were saying, as if that was a bad thing. But
that's exactly what free Men and the others wanted. They
believed the full truth of what happened during the war
had never been acknowledged. Here's Freemen from a memoir he
wrote in the early sixties. Millions of Germans today were
(33:16):
a decade and a half ago Nazis thoughtful people are
troubled by the fact that the new generation rising in
Germany today does not fully know the enormity of the
crimes that were committed. The textbooks in Germany do not
spell out the hideous, unspeakable crimes that were committed by
men and women who are themselves parents, grandparents, relatives of
(33:40):
young Germans. How can we be sure that the leader
loving German people will not again follow in the footsteps
of a power mad dictator if today's generation of Germans
does not know and fully understand the history of the
Nazi period. Freeman didn't know about Massad's mission to assassinate
(34:04):
Herbert Suckers, but there's little doubt he would have approved.
He was working the corridors of power. But his campaign
lacks something. It needed a face, a real life monster,
to show what kind of Nazis were still walking free
in the world. Hitler was gone, Doctor Mangela was in hiding.
They needed someone who done terrible things and was still free.
(34:28):
That role would be filled by Herbert Suckers. It was
late October. Neo was playing touchdown in Paris. He went
to his apartment, kissed his wife, played with his kids.
He slept in his own bed for the first time
(34:49):
in six weeks. He was himself again. He didn't have
to pretend. After a few days, your reefs summoned Meo.
He went back to the Massi department to meet the
three other men Youreif had selected for the killed team,
Laser Sudi, zev Amid and multi Ka. Fear Meal had
(35:11):
brought a suitcase back with him from Brazil. It was
filled with stuff, notes, maps, flight schedules. You had saved
everything that had the smallest part to play in the operation.
He'd written out a description of Zuker's home to lay
out the drawer with the guns everything. There was a
section on how scarce rental cars were in Uruguay. The
(35:34):
team would need multiple cars, so that was something they'd
have to take care of as soon as they landed.
Meal listed what documents you needed to check into a
hotel as a foreigner, and a master list of hotels
they could use. The men began sorting the documents and
putting them into separate files. Now the team had to
sort through it all and begin checking and double checking
(35:57):
every detail. They had to decide on how to eliminate
the butcher, and they had to get their own cover
I entities. The team now had five months until March,
five months until the vote in the German Parliament that
would spell victory or defeat. They felt the weight of
(36:18):
history on them. They were thinking of future generations. So
much rested on this mission, and if they could actually
pull it off, it wouldn't be until much later, In fact,
until it was too late that they realized the mistakes
they were making. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher is a
(36:52):
production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
This season is written and hosted by Stephen Tulty, 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 At Tickedur Editing,
(37:14):
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. Thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at
(37:34):
ut A Diversion Podcasts. It
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