The Good Assassin: A Mossad Agent's Hunt For WW2’s “Butcher of Latvia”

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Before World War II, Herbert Cukurs was a famous figure in his small Latvian city, the “Charles Lindbergh of his country.” But by 1945, he was the Butcher of Latvia, a man who murdered some thirty thousand Latvian Jews. Somehow, he dodged the Nuremberg trials, fleeing to South America after war’s end.

By 1965, as a statute of limitations on all Nazi war crimes threatened to expire, Germany sought to welcome previous concentration camp commanders, pogrom leaders, and executioners, as citizens. The global pursuit of Nazi criminals escalated to beat the looming deadline, and Mossad, the Israeli national intelligence agency, joined the cause. Yaakov Meidad, the brilliant Mossad agent who had kidnapped Adolf Eichmann three years earlier, led the mission to assassinate Cukurs in a desperate bid to block the amnesty. In a thrilling undercover operation unrivaled by even the most ambitious spy novels, Meidad traveled to Brazil in an elaborate disguise, befriended Cukurs and earned his trust, while negotiations over the Nazi pardon neared a boiling point.

Today’s guest, Stephan Talty, is author of The Good Assassin, which uncovers this little-known chapter of Holocaust history and the undercover operation that brought Cukurs to justice.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,
0:09.4	Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch.
0:14.2	Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling,
0:20.8	wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders,
0:27.2	environment, and geography.
0:29.5	I invite you to come along for the ride.
0:44.4	History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.
0:47.7	It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explain how and why we got here.
0:53.1	Welcome to the History and Plug podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange,
0:58.0	and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.
1:02.1	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:12.2	Before World War II, Herbert Zookers was a famous figure in a small Latvian town.
1:17.1	He was sort of the Charles Lindbergh of his country, this dashing figure.
1:21.8	But by 1945, he was known as the Butcher of Latvia, someone who murdered about 30,000 Latvian Jews.
1:28.9	He managed to escape the Nuremberg trials and fled to South America after the war's end.
1:33.9	By 1965, a statue of limitations on all Nazi war criminals was about to expire.
1:40.4	So Germany sought to welcome previous concentration camp commanders, program leaders, and executioners as citizens.
1:47.4	In order to beat this deadline, there was a global pursuit of Nazi criminals,
1:51.7	and Masad, the Israeli National Intelligence Agency, joined the cause.
1:55.9	Jakov Medat, who was the Masad agent who kidnapped Adolf Eichmann three years earlier,
2:01.1	led the mission to assassinate Zookers in a bid to block the amnesty.
2:05.7	Today I'm speaking with Stephen Talty, author of the book The Good Assessant,
	...

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