Speaker 1: Diversion podcasts. This is a story about a spy and
Speaker 1: a murderer. I first heard about it a few years
Speaker 1: ago when I was reading a book about Massad, the
Speaker 1: Israeli spy agency. I do a lot of that reading
Speaker 1: about espionage. I've always loved spies. At one point, I'd
Speaker 1: even wanted to be one. When I graduated from college,
Speaker 1: I thought about applying to the c I A. Some
Speaker 1: of my classmates were doing it, and I thought, why not.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could live in a foreign city, Berlin or Cairo.
Speaker 1: It would be an adventure. But then I realized I'd
Speaker 1: make a pretty terrible spy. First of all, I'm not
Speaker 1: really good at keeping secrets. I'm not especially good under
Speaker 1: pressure either, And some of the questionable things that the
Speaker 1: CIA had done around the world, Yeah, that played a
Speaker 1: role too. So instead, I joined the Miami Herald newspaper
Speaker 1: and became a journalist. Years later, I ended up writing
Speaker 1: about spies, even a couple of books. I loved their world.
Speaker 1: The idea of one man or one woman playing this
Speaker 1: invisible role in history and doing it with a kind
Speaker 1: of flare. Espionage is important, but it's also just cool.
Speaker 1: So in this book, I was reading about Massad a
Speaker 1: few years ago. The author mentioned in operation I'd never
Speaker 1: heard about. It was unlike any of the missions I
Speaker 1: had studied in a few important ways. My first thought was,
Speaker 1: this is weird. I was immediately hooked. I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that in the history of espionage, this
Speaker 1: case of the undercover agent and the man known as
Speaker 1: the book Ture of Latvia is unique. It still has
Speaker 1: all the things that fascinate me about spies, the tradecraft,
Speaker 1: letters in invisible ink, intrigue in places around the world,
Speaker 1: in this case Paris, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Montevideo, Uruguay, and
Speaker 1: Rio de Janeiro. There were recondissions, disguises, fake passports, shooting contests,
Speaker 1: a kill team training in a specially martial arts called
Speaker 1: krav magaw. There was a body and a leather trunk,
Speaker 1: and a drug that one agent takes so he doesn't
Speaker 1: sweat and appear nervous. There's a psychiatrist who tries to
Speaker 1: psychoanalyze Nazis Hitler even makes an appearance. But there are
Speaker 1: even otter things too. What makes this story so different,
Speaker 1: first of all, is that it's about an assassination plot,
Speaker 1: which are usually bad things. When I think of assassinations.
Speaker 1: I think of some awful moments history. I think about
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald and Deely Plaza in Dallas, President of
Speaker 1: the United States, and as he turned left, two or
Speaker 1: three shots rang up Sir Han, Sir Hand and Robert
Speaker 1: Kennedy lying in a pool of blood. Martin Good. I
Speaker 1: think about Jeans Ray and Martin Luther King Jr. On
Speaker 1: the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. I have some
Speaker 1: very sad news for all of you, and that is
Speaker 1: that Martin Luther King and was shot and was killed
Speaker 1: tonight and the start of World War One when an
Speaker 1: assassin killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But this was something different.
Speaker 1: This was the story of the spy was going to
Speaker 1: try and kill someone for a very good reason, to
Speaker 1: prevent crimes against humanity, and to close the chapter on
Speaker 1: something that happened in the spy's own life. This mission
Speaker 1: was personal, at least the agent who was the lead operative.
Speaker 1: His name was Mio. Again, this is unique. Spy missions
Speaker 1: are never personal. They're not supposed to be. They're supposed
Speaker 1: to be clinical, unemotional. This operation was like that for
Speaker 1: some of its architects. But it wasn't like that at
Speaker 1: all for MEO. It also had a target who had
Speaker 1: first read seems completely evil. His name was Herbert Suckers,
Speaker 1: and he betrayed people who had once spend his friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors. He led them to their desks at gunpoint
Speaker 1: and sometimes killed them point blank. The machine gun he
Speaker 1: had on his hands the blood of literally thousands of
Speaker 1: innocent victims. These were people, some of whom had really
Speaker 1: admired Herbert Suckers, thought of him as a hero, which,
Speaker 1: oddly enough, he'd once been. All of this is wrapped
Speaker 1: up in World War Two and the Holocaust and genocide law.
Speaker 1: The effects of the mission are still with us today.
Speaker 1: It's had this secret impact on our lives that nobody
Speaker 1: really knows about. I couldn't get this story out of
Speaker 1: my head, so I wrote a book about it. It's
Speaker 1: called The Good Assassin. After the book was published in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, honestly, I thought I was done with
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It's spent two years looking into the mission,
Speaker 1: traveling to Israel, interviewing MASSAD agents, pouring through archives in
Speaker 1: Latvia and Brazil and Israel, totally immersing myself. I was
Speaker 1: done with it. What else was there to say. Apparently
Speaker 1: something Because I kept thinking about the main characters. I
Speaker 1: had questions about them, puzzles I hadn't been able to
Speaker 1: solve in the book. But I just couldn't get out
Speaker 1: of my head. And my book had brought people out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork were contacting me, giving me new information,
Speaker 1: things I'd never heard before. But we're slowly helping me
Speaker 1: to peel away the layers and get closer to the
Speaker 1: core of this story. At first, I thought, forget it.
Speaker 1: No way am I going back to all that. The
Speaker 1: Nazis crimes were so horrible. I didn't want to revisit them.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to wait through all that violence again.
Speaker 1: But after a few months I changed my mind. Maybe
Speaker 1: I could solve those puzzles that were still bothering me,
Speaker 1: put them to rest. I realized I had to try,
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm here doing this podcast. I'm glad actually,
Speaker 1: because the story of the Hunt for the Butcher of
Speaker 1: Latvia wasn't what I thought it was. It was even
Speaker 1: stranger than I had first imagined. What I found surprised me.
Speaker 1: So let me tell you about the spy. His real
Speaker 1: name was Yakov, my dad, but everyone called him Mio.
Speaker 1: And there are a few things you should know about
Speaker 1: Mio right off the bat. First of all, he was Jewish.
Speaker 1: He'd grown up in Germany in the thirties as Hitler
Speaker 1: was just beginning to gain power. As a young boy,
Speaker 1: Mio so Nazis marching in the streets. He listened as
Speaker 1: his teachers began repeating Hitler's lies. It seemed to him
Speaker 1: that violence was in the air. The mission in Brazil
Speaker 1: and later Puruguay was so personal for me, or because
Speaker 1: of his childhood, because of his background. That's Gad Shimron.
Speaker 1: He's a former Massad agent who knew me. Oh well.
Speaker 1: I met him in Tel Aviv when I went to
Speaker 1: research this story. No, I mean he was born in
Speaker 1: so that's called What's up time. It was a German
Speaker 1: town to a very German Jewish family. I mean, his
Speaker 1: father was a very famous doctor, wearing the iron cross
Speaker 1: of the Germany Burial Army and for his gallant service
Speaker 1: in the First World War as a medical officer on
Speaker 1: the front Light and his parents regarden themselves as pure Germans,
Speaker 1: Jewish Germans, but Germans. And when the Nazis came to
Speaker 1: Barrow in thirty three, and the father said, nothing he's
Speaker 1: going to happen to me, because I'm what they call
Speaker 1: it German front kempt further, which means frontline soldier, and
Speaker 1: he felt, you know that in the it's a wave
Speaker 1: of anti Semitism, but it will it will die away,
Speaker 1: and nothing will happen me. On the other hand, as
Speaker 1: a teenager he went to school, he was exposed to
Speaker 1: the terrible expressions of anti Semitism and investigations of Jews,
Speaker 1: and he came to his parses said I'm not going
Speaker 1: to stay here, I'm going away. So Mea was worried.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be in Germany anymore. He saw
Speaker 1: bad things coming. He asked his parents if he could leave,
Speaker 1: and finally, when he become a teenager, they let him
Speaker 1: go to Palestine, which would later become Israel. Then they
Speaker 1: managed to arrange for him a scholarship in a very
Speaker 1: good and famous high school in Haifa, and Mio went
Speaker 1: away at the age of what he was fourteen maybe fifteen,
Speaker 1: went away from his family alone to a new country
Speaker 1: with a new language, with a new atmosphere and friends, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And he grew up in this and h then the
Speaker 1: Second World broke out, so Mio spent the years before
Speaker 1: World War Two safe and sound. When the war came,
Speaker 1: he volunteered for the British Army and saw some action,
Speaker 1: but he never made it back to Germany. His parents
Speaker 1: sent me a postcards letting in know they were okay.
Speaker 1: They were still in Germany, hoping for the best. But
Speaker 1: then the postcard stopped and Meal knew that something had
Speaker 1: gone terribly wrong. And all his correspondence and the vacation
Speaker 1: this family was cut off, but totally, and only later
Speaker 1: after the war he learned that his parents were both
Speaker 1: of them were burned in Nazi concentration camps. And it's
Speaker 1: true that you know the Nazist game his father the
Speaker 1: honor of because it was iron cross the front. Kemper
Speaker 1: the game in the honor of being on the last
Speaker 1: transports being sent from breast Law to the concentration camps.
Speaker 1: I think in night Meal always regretted not being able
Speaker 1: to help his mother and father escape. He had nightmares
Speaker 1: about them. He was a private guy, so it's not
Speaker 1: like he would tell you about it, but that feeling
Speaker 1: of not being there when his parents needed him most,
Speaker 1: it never left him. After his military career was over.
Speaker 1: Mea was recruited by Massad, these really spy agency. He
Speaker 1: was a patriot, so he agreed to join. I'm Steven
Speaker 1: Talty and this is good assassin's hunting the butcher. So
Speaker 1: he's the first months to find and not being put
Speaker 1: forward trial, the second thought, most to find, and lastly
Speaker 1: and healing. We must swoll was this shameful causes the
Speaker 1: end of a trail of blood and horror, the end
Speaker 1: of a man whose name will be written in it
Speaker 1: for me Episode one, The Spy and the Murderer. The
Speaker 1: second thing you should know about Meo was that he
Speaker 1: didn't look like a spy. I mean he really didn't.
Speaker 1: At the time our story takes place the mid sixties,
Speaker 1: he was in his forties. He was overweight, he was
Speaker 1: balden ing. He looked maybe like an accountant or a
Speaker 1: vice president of a bank. And when he spoke, his
Speaker 1: voice was a little high. He was shy, and he
Speaker 1: found it hard to talk to people. If you got
Speaker 1: to look at him, you wouldn't be impressed. Even Mio's
Speaker 1: son told me that when I met him in Israel,
Speaker 1: he'd walk right past my father. He said, I never
Speaker 1: think twice about at it. In the early sixties, MASSAD
Speaker 1: was just beginning to gain a reputation around the world.
Speaker 1: Its operatives were tough, physically fit, methodical. Some of their
Speaker 1: missions were controversial, and they remained controversial today, but very
Speaker 1: few people doubted that their agents were among the best
Speaker 1: in the world lethal when they had to be. That
Speaker 1: wasn't meo, It just wasn't a skill set. His skill
Speaker 1: set was looking boring anonymous. When he assumed a false
Speaker 1: identity for a mission, that became his real identity. Mia
Speaker 1: was known for diving into his cover stories with conviction.
Speaker 1: That was a little scary. His son told me that
Speaker 1: when Mio left on a mission, he wasn't their father anymore.
Speaker 1: He become this different person. That Meal was a legend.
Speaker 1: Here's get him wrong again, Gad. He looks like a spy.
Speaker 1: He's tall, lean, handsome. If he played a secret agent
Speaker 1: in a movie, you'd believe it. In our conversation, Gad
Speaker 1: stressed one thing about me, how he could disappear into
Speaker 1: a character. He had this special characteristic of being able
Speaker 1: to dive into the person he was supposed to be
Speaker 1: for this mission, which is not that easy. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't understand how difficult it is to really ignurse
Speaker 1: in yourself all the necessary characteristics for playing the new
Speaker 1: person you are using for the operation and neo. First
Speaker 1: of all, he was, of course it was very intelligent.
Speaker 1: He knew how to improvise what was a good actor.
Speaker 1: But also he had a very good cosmopolitan European background,
Speaker 1: which man. He spoke German fluently, of course, very well English,
Speaker 1: very well French. And they say that he for many
Speaker 1: years he held the Mossade record for a false stolen
Speaker 1: acquired identities. That he had more than a hundred sixty
Speaker 1: different identities during this time. That she's quite a number.
Speaker 1: Some agents hate going undercover. Pretending to be someone else
Speaker 1: can get stressful, especially when one slip could lead to disaster,
Speaker 1: even death. But Meal actually seemed to look forward to
Speaker 1: these kinds of missions. He liked becoming other people. This
Speaker 1: is what Meal had to say about playing a role.
Speaker 1: We've had an actor read me as parts, but these
Speaker 1: are direct quotes in his own words. In my daily life,
Speaker 1: I was quiet, introverted man, not particularly bushy or demanding.
Speaker 1: It's a minute I on the two K a mission
Speaker 1: I would become different person. I felt confident, even assertive,
Speaker 1: and had the capacity to strike up conversations and gain
Speaker 1: the trust of people that I met. So Meo didn't
Speaker 1: look like a spy, but he was really good at
Speaker 1: the work. By the sixties, Mio had made himself into
Speaker 1: one of the best undercover ages in the world, but
Speaker 1: he still had a lot of guilt about what happened
Speaker 1: to his mother and father. He left them at the
Speaker 1: key moment, the pain lingered, and that's what makes the
Speaker 1: next part so hard to believe. Imagine your Meo and
Speaker 1: one day Massad calls you into a meeting. You don't
Speaker 1: know what it's about, but it turns out they have
Speaker 1: a mission for you, a chance to get justice for
Speaker 1: your mother and father and for the other six million
Speaker 1: Jews murdered during the war. The mission is simple, to
Speaker 1: arrange the death of one man, a Nazi killer named
Speaker 1: Herbert Zuckers. Zukers had been an aviation hero before the war.
Speaker 1: People called him the Latvian Lindburgh. In his own way,
Speaker 1: he was just as unusual as Mio was. There's a catch,
Speaker 1: of course. The mission isn't going to be easy. The
Speaker 1: man you're going after is suspicious, like really suspicious. He
Speaker 1: sees assassins around every corner. It's going to be dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's possible that you might not come back. But it
Speaker 1: really is a once in a lifetime chance, something that
Speaker 1: many of us perhaps dream of writing the wrongs of
Speaker 1: the past, a chance in a way, at redemption. So
Speaker 1: bo I was pretty confident. I understood him. Who doesn't
Speaker 1: want a second chance to make things right with your
Speaker 1: loved ones, not to mention the larger picture getting justice
Speaker 1: for the six million. But even after spending all those
Speaker 1: months doing the research for my book, I still didn't
Speaker 1: get the other main character, Herbert Sukers. Yes, he had
Speaker 1: colluded with the Nazis and committed horrible war crimes. But
Speaker 1: why had he changed from this respected pilot would traveled
Speaker 1: to Palestine and even praise what he observed there to
Speaker 1: this monster? What had driven him to transform, to betray
Speaker 1: so many of his countrymen? And importantly, why did Sukers
Speaker 1: have supporters around the world even today? Why did some
Speaker 1: people believe he was innocent? They were certainly critics of
Speaker 1: Assad that said they were wrong to have gone after him.
Speaker 1: Sucers was a puzzle, a dark, twisted puzzle, and I
Speaker 1: had to figure him out. So let me tell you
Speaker 1: about that meeting where Mio learned about the operation, the
Speaker 1: meeting that changed Meal's life. Of course, spy missions are secret,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the point. But in looking into this
Speaker 1: operation I found something odd. Years afterwards, Mio talked publicly
Speaker 1: about it. Massad must have given their permission. How he
Speaker 1: convinced them to do that, I have no idea. It's
Speaker 1: very rare for any spy agency, let alone Massad, to
Speaker 1: sign off on an agent telling their secrets. But you'll
Speaker 1: hear his words and that of the other agents, and
Speaker 1: even the target. We've got an actress to read some
Speaker 1: of their words where recordings aren't available for once, you'll
Speaker 1: get to hear the inside story of a spy mission
Speaker 1: from beginning to end. So it's September one, nineteen sixty four, Paris,
Speaker 1: where Mio lives. The meeting is set for that morning.
Speaker 1: September is a great time to be in France. It's
Speaker 1: cool and everyone has just returned from their August holiday,
Speaker 1: so everyone has a little color. He refreshed. Meo walked
Speaker 1: the streets on his way to the meeting. He was
Speaker 1: enjoying the day. He was also looking for tales during
Speaker 1: the Cold War Paris wasn't the favorite city for spies.
Speaker 1: That was probably Berlin. The city was still populated by
Speaker 1: operatives from many different agencies, and Mio had to make
Speaker 1: sure none of them was following him. Neo stopped in
Speaker 1: front of the Radio France building checked out the pedestrians
Speaker 1: people lingering on steps. When he was satisfied that he
Speaker 1: wasn't being tailed, he started walking again. He found the
Speaker 1: building he was looking for. He was on the Avenue
Speaker 1: day Verside, a beautiful boulevard, one of the city's richest neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: He ducked into the lobby, waved at the concierge, and
Speaker 1: went up to the apartment where his boss was waiting.
Speaker 1: Joseph your Ree met him at the door. Uri was
Speaker 1: the head of Massad's Special operations unit code named Cesarea.
Speaker 1: Caesaria still exists today. It's an elite undercover unit that
Speaker 1: plants agents in foreign countries. It sends its men on
Speaker 1: sabotage missions, and it plans and carries out targeted killings
Speaker 1: of those that Israel considers to be its enemies. It's
Speaker 1: secret and what it does is highly classified. Youri was
Speaker 1: a charming guy, very loyal. He had lots of friends.
Speaker 1: He was popular inside Massad. He knew how to work
Speaker 1: a room. Nea was the opposite. He was an outsider
Speaker 1: at the agency and it bothered him. When he opened
Speaker 1: the door, he read said something strange. From this moment onwards.
Speaker 1: Your name is Anton Kunzla with a battle style to
Speaker 1: getting used to it. Neo didn't say anything. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, he was a quiet guy. He walked into
Speaker 1: the room and saw another agent, Michael not his real name,
Speaker 1: sitting at a small table. He nodded to Michael sat
Speaker 1: down towards some coffee. You, Reid followed. The three sipped
Speaker 1: the coffee before getting down to business. You reeve got
Speaker 1: it started. You must be wondering why I summoned you
Speaker 1: him and in such a heavy we have received final
Speaker 1: confirmation about the Nazi woe criminal who lives in one
Speaker 1: of the South American countries. Israel had decided to hunt
Speaker 1: down one of the Holocaust's most savage killers. The target
Speaker 1: was Herbert Suckers. He was a Latvian in the small
Speaker 1: country that sits between Russia and Germany. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: more about Sukers in the next episode. But even though
Speaker 1: he became a war criminal, He'd led a fascinating life
Speaker 1: before World War Two. He'd been a world class aviator,
Speaker 1: the Latvian Lindbergh. He'd flown aircraft he'd built himself through
Speaker 1: sand and snowstorms all the way to the East coast
Speaker 1: of Africa, Japan, the Middle East. He was brave, adventurous.
Speaker 1: But that was before the war. When the Germans invaded,
Speaker 1: Zukers had changed. According to Massad, he'd become a beast,
Speaker 1: a mass murderer. He helped Hitler's forces killed thirty thousand
Speaker 1: Jewish men, women and children, and actions that wiped out
Speaker 1: over of Latvia's Jews. The survivors gave him a name
Speaker 1: after the war, the Butcher of Latvia, and Massad had
Speaker 1: decided to hunt him down. There was another reason for
Speaker 1: the mission, which I'll get into a little later. It's
Speaker 1: something that I found almost unbelievable, a part of history
Speaker 1: that seems so bizarre to me that it couldn't have
Speaker 1: been ill. But in nineteen sixty four, the Israelis decided
Speaker 1: that Herbert Sukers had to die. Your Reef gave MEO
Speaker 1: a little background on the butcher. He fled to Brazil
Speaker 1: ninety six after the war ended, with his wife and children,
Speaker 1: and one unexpected guest I'll tell you about later. Your
Speaker 1: reef told the two agents that the butcher was living
Speaker 1: in a house sal Paulo. You know, a small boat
Speaker 1: rental business. The cater to the locals and to tourists.
Speaker 1: Meal listened to your reef talk. He looked calm. You
Speaker 1: always looked calm. But he wasn't calm. He was thinking
Speaker 1: about the past. I felt my health race and my
Speaker 1: adrenaline level skyrocket. Suddenly, so many different thoughts ran through
Speaker 1: my mind. I released a deep breath. Having been born
Speaker 1: in Germany and having lost both parents in the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: I needed no lengthy, detailed explanations of that terrible time.
Speaker 1: My father, a well known doctor in our hometown, served
Speaker 1: during the First World War as a medical officer in
Speaker 1: the Prussian Army, and for his service in the cruel
Speaker 1: battles of Balato on the Western Front, he was awarded
Speaker 1: the Iron Cross. This fact did not stop the Nazis
Speaker 1: from sending him to his death entat concentration camp. My
Speaker 1: mother was deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered as
Speaker 1: part of what the Nazis and their battles turned the
Speaker 1: final solution to the Jewish problem. For me, Oh, this
Speaker 1: would be a mission unlike any of the others had
Speaker 1: gone on. This was personal. He knew that MISSAD didn't
Speaker 1: carry out many operations against escape war criminals. Israel was
Speaker 1: only sixteen years old at the time, and there are
Speaker 1: other things to worry about, mainly its own survival. The
Speaker 1: agency didn't have time to settle old scores. In fact,
Speaker 1: this would be the first time we know about that.
Speaker 1: His spies were going to set out to kill a
Speaker 1: Nazi war criminal at a Fike men they kidnapped, but
Speaker 1: Sucers they were determined to kill you. Reeve added some
Speaker 1: more details. Sucers was six or four years old, but
Speaker 1: he was still a powerful guy, built like a tank.
Speaker 1: You reve described him to the two men. You will
Speaker 1: face a criminal who is, according to our boats, miss dustful,
Speaker 1: ruthless and dangerous, and he's always prepelled for the worst.
Speaker 1: That was true, as Mio would later find out, Sucers
Speaker 1: imagine Jewish agents around every corner. To carry out the mission,
Speaker 1: Neo had to get close to this guy to form
Speaker 1: a real relationship, maybe even a friendship. This was deeply
Speaker 1: painful for him. The butcher was exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: man who forced his parents to the concentration camps. But
Speaker 1: why didn't sad mates man dead? There were thousands of
Speaker 1: ex Nazis walking around Europe South America. Why zookers and
Speaker 1: why now you read got to that you wanted Meo
Speaker 1: and Michael to know the reason that the butcher had
Speaker 1: to die. At that particular time, he started talking about
Speaker 1: an anniversary that was approaching in about eight months. On
Speaker 1: May eight, the world will mount the twenty years since
Speaker 1: the victory of the Nazi Germany, and there are already
Speaker 1: voices and not in Germany alone, would say that it
Speaker 1: is time to look forward, to do a line under
Speaker 1: the events of the past, to forget the Nazis and
Speaker 1: to apply the statute of limitations to the crimes. That
Speaker 1: was the real reason for the mission. It turns out
Speaker 1: that in the German government had decided that all cases
Speaker 1: of murder would be given a twenty year statute of limitations.
Speaker 1: If you killed someone, state would have twenty years to
Speaker 1: open a case against you. If they didn't, you were
Speaker 1: free forever. You couldn't be indicted, you couldn't be prosecuted,
Speaker 1: and you couldn't go to jail. Of course, in the
Speaker 1: government had no idea that someone named Hitler would be
Speaker 1: born in Austria and that the Holocaust would happen, and
Speaker 1: that six million Jews and millions of other victims would
Speaker 1: be murdered by their successors. They couldn't imagine something like
Speaker 1: the Third Reich was beyond them. The kinds of murders
Speaker 1: they imagined were the kind we know today, crimes of passion,
Speaker 1: one person killing another person, not of greed or momentary
Speaker 1: rage or whatever, what you might call a garden variety murder,
Speaker 1: not Auschwitz m But by nineteen sixty four, the Germans
Speaker 1: had grown tired of hearing about the war. There had
Speaker 1: been the Nuremberg trials in and there had been others
Speaker 1: since then. The guilty had been punished. In their view,
Speaker 1: people wanted to move on. Opinion polls showed that fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent of Germans were in favor of the Statute
Speaker 1: of Limitations. All it had to do was pass the
Speaker 1: German Parliament and it would become law. But Israel's leaders
Speaker 1: were determined that this would not happen. They protested to
Speaker 1: the German government, but that really went nowhere. You Reef
Speaker 1: told me that they believed the statute was going to pass,
Speaker 1: and that meant two things. Any escape Nazi hiding in
Speaker 1: Europe or in South America, and some people believe there
Speaker 1: were thousands of them, would go free. They could never
Speaker 1: be brought to trial. This included the worst of the worst,
Speaker 1: the actual killers who shot us at the pits and
Speaker 1: put them into the gas chambers. I found this whole
Speaker 1: backstory to be a little surreal. Honestly, I had no
Speaker 1: idea that Germany's leaders had ever thought about doing this.
Speaker 1: It seemed incredible to me that they seriously considered giving
Speaker 1: an amnesty to mass killers. But they did. And Massad
Speaker 1: and many others suspected that if the statute passed, it
Speaker 1: would be a signal to start winding down the trials
Speaker 1: of the Nazi war criminals who had been indicted. It
Speaker 1: would be the end of the hunt for those responsible Germany.
Speaker 1: They just wanted to forget. They wanted the guilt and
Speaker 1: the stories of what happened at the camps to be over.
Speaker 1: So this is why Israel had come up with the mission.
Speaker 1: Your reefs started talking about the statute and he got
Speaker 1: a little emotional. It is absolutely inconceivable that tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of Nazi war criminals who never paid for the
Speaker 1: Reinos crimes should now be able to call out of
Speaker 1: their hiding holes and spend their best of their lives
Speaker 1: in peace and tranquility. It's been only twenty years since
Speaker 1: the release of the survivors of the Death Games, and
Speaker 1: we owe it to them and to the six million
Speaker 1: who did not survive and are unable to avenge themselves.
Speaker 1: We must thwart this shameful process of the Statute of Limitations. Hi,
Speaker 1: this is Stephen Talty, host of Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher.
Speaker 1: The folks that help me bring you the show, Diversion Podcasts,
Speaker 1: have just launched another podcast that I think you'll like.
Speaker 1: It's called Backstaged The Devil in Metal, a deep dive
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Speaker 1: you listen to your podcasts. You've obviously felt the mission
Speaker 1: was justified, but he admitted it was something of a
Speaker 1: long shot. First, Mio had to get to Zukers, this
Speaker 1: ex soldier who went around armed and on the lookout
Speaker 1: for exactly what meal was a MASSAD agent to trust him. Second,
Speaker 1: get him out of Brazil. Third, he had to get
Speaker 1: him to Chile or Uruguay on some pretext and lead
Speaker 1: him into a trap where the killed team was waiting. Finally,
Speaker 1: the entire team had to get out of the country
Speaker 1: without getting caught. After Zukers was dead, Massad would announce
Speaker 1: it to the world, reminding everyone, particularly people in Germany,
Speaker 1: that these kinds of Nazi monsters were still out there.
Speaker 1: The agency had to do this before the Statute of
Speaker 1: Limitations came up for debate the German Parliament the following March.
Speaker 1: That gave them about six months, and then they had
Speaker 1: a hope that the publicity and the shocking crimes that
Speaker 1: the butcher had committed would convince enough German legislators that
Speaker 1: the amnesty could not happen. The Statute of Limentations would
Speaker 1: be voted down. That was the end game. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty long string of things to happen in a row.
Speaker 1: If the chain was broken, at any point the operation
Speaker 1: would fail, but it was the best idea that Massad had.
Speaker 1: If we're succeed in the operation we are now preparing,
Speaker 1: will once again put the feel of death into the
Speaker 1: hearts of tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals. We'll
Speaker 1: do everything in our power to make the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives miserable. They will feel their own shadow, they
Speaker 1: will not dare to leave their homes, and they will
Speaker 1: have continuous night mills of anonymous assassins, the offspring of
Speaker 1: of innocent victims seeking their revenge. This was interesting to me.
Speaker 1: You Reeve was saying that even if Massad carried out
Speaker 1: the mission and the Germans still went ahead with the statute,
Speaker 1: the death of Herbert Sucres would have meaning because it
Speaker 1: would serve as a warning any Nazi killers could never
Speaker 1: be sure they would be safe again. So it would
Speaker 1: be a kind of life sentence of fear, of waiting
Speaker 1: for the knock on the door. But that was a
Speaker 1: pale imitation of what the survivors and millions of other
Speaker 1: people around the world really wanted, true justice. The men
Speaker 1: went over some other details you Reeve talked about suckers crimes.
Speaker 1: I'll get to those things in episode two, because we
Speaker 1: actually have the testimonies of survivors describing what they saw,
Speaker 1: and I'd like you to hear them. You Reeve didn't
Speaker 1: mention one more thing. He pointed out that there was
Speaker 1: a difference between other Nazi fugitives like Ada Aikman and
Speaker 1: people like Herbert Sukers. Aikman was one of the masterminds
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, but he never shot anyone. He had
Speaker 1: gone to visit concentration camps, but he kept his distance
Speaker 1: from the victims. He didn't have actual blood on his hands.
Speaker 1: But Sucris was at the opposite end of that spectrum.
Speaker 1: According to your reeve, he shot women and children, among
Speaker 1: other things. We are dealing here with the despicable saddist
Speaker 1: who actually enjoyed torturing his victims and meldling innocent people.
Speaker 1: And this Sokos as the ROOTSBA to give interviews to
Speaker 1: Brazilian magazines and claimed that he is innocent, that he
Speaker 1: has no idea what anyone would want with him, and
Speaker 1: after telling everyone about his innocence, he prays his s
Speaker 1: S uniform with great pride before the Commons. This is true,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the crazy details that drew me
Speaker 1: to this story. Most Scape war criminals changed their names
Speaker 1: when they fled to South America or other countries. Herbert
Speaker 1: Sucers didn't. He not only arrived in Brazil under his
Speaker 1: own name, he actually sought out Jewish leaders in Rio,
Speaker 1: told them how he'd saved some of their people during
Speaker 1: the war. We'll get to that part. But I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it when I first heard it. Every other Nazi
Speaker 1: on the run I've ever heard about had assumed a
Speaker 1: false identity. Joseph Mengela went by the name Wolfgang Gerhardt.
Speaker 1: Aikman had called himself Ricardo Clement when he was living
Speaker 1: in Argentina. It was common sense if you were one
Speaker 1: of the most wanted men in the world, the first
Speaker 1: thing you did was find a new identity. But the
Speaker 1: butcher apparently didn't do that. Could he have been so
Speaker 1: delusional or so self confident that he hadn't even bothered
Speaker 1: to get a fake passport? It seemed incredible to me.
Speaker 1: So the butcher wasn't only guilty in the eyes of
Speaker 1: Israel's leaders. He was laughing at them, taunting the survivors.
Speaker 1: Why would seekers do that? Some of his supporters actually
Speaker 1: pointed to this fact to prove his innocence. Why would
Speaker 1: a guilty man keep his own name if he'd done
Speaker 1: such terrible things. At this point, it seemed to me
Speaker 1: that Sucers was either innocent or mentally unstable in some way.
Speaker 1: Maybe the risk taking that had made him into the
Speaker 1: Latvian Lindbergh had also made him reckless later in life.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know. There was one other reason I
Speaker 1: found later on that Suckers had been chosen as the
Speaker 1: Massad's target. Months before Mio went to that Paris apartment,
Speaker 1: a meeting had been held in Israel the leaders of
Speaker 1: the various intelligence agencies. The subject was Nazi officers who
Speaker 1: still remained at large. During the meeting, someone read out
Speaker 1: the list of escape criminals. When he got to Herbert Suckers,
Speaker 1: the head of the country's military intelligence Directorate collapsed. His
Speaker 1: name was a Haran Yariev. He wasn't in a relation
Speaker 1: to Joseph your Reeve, Mio's boss. It turned out that
Speaker 1: this man's family had lived in Latvia when the war came,
Speaker 1: and the butcher had helped murder them. This personal reaction
Speaker 1: helped move Suker's name to the top of the list.
Speaker 1: He was a mass killer. He apparently had no remorse,
Speaker 1: His whereabouts were publicly known, and he had killed the
Speaker 1: loved ones of someone high up in the Israeli government.
Speaker 1: He was perfect in a way. Zukers would be the
Speaker 1: representative of all the Holocaust killers. The meeting in Paris
Speaker 1: was coming to an end, but before the three men
Speaker 1: went their separate ways, there was one last question they
Speaker 1: had to decide. Would Mio go on the mission alone?
Speaker 1: For would Massad send a small stocking and protection unit
Speaker 1: with him. Mio spoke up immediately, I prefer to work alone.
Speaker 1: I'd rather work without tales or protection. My god feeling
Speaker 1: tells me, said, such an operation can be carried out
Speaker 1: only alone, me against the target. Mio would later say
Speaker 1: a big team could have endangered the mission. Suckers was paranoid.
Speaker 1: Why give him a reason to believe he was being
Speaker 1: followed by a bunch of dark haired men who just
Speaker 1: might turn out to be Israelis. There was probably another reason,
Speaker 1: as I later found out, but I'll save that for
Speaker 1: another episode. When Mio was actually in South America. The
Speaker 1: last thing you reeve did wu show MEO the files
Speaker 1: on Sukers. It was, I wrote in my book a
Speaker 1: thin stack of pages, thin due to the fact that
Speaker 1: so few Jews had been left alive to speak about
Speaker 1: Herbert Suckers. These pages represented about half a dozen testimonies.
Speaker 1: The exact number isn't known. The tray Suckers crimes during
Speaker 1: the war collected from eyewitnesses during the late nineteen forties
Speaker 1: and early fifties. Some of these accounts were barbaric, others
Speaker 1: oddly moving. In one story, Zuker speaks to a young
Speaker 1: girl in Yiddish. They have a short pleasant conversation before Zukers,
Speaker 1: for no apparent reason, pulls out his handgun and executes
Speaker 1: her in cold blood. In another account, Zucker saves a
Speaker 1: woman that he knew to be Jewish, risking his own
Speaker 1: life to do so. This collection of testimonies added up
Speaker 1: to a curiously fractured, incomplete portrait of Herbert Suckers, whose
Speaker 1: life had been larger and stranger than NEO could have
Speaker 1: ever imagined at that first meeting. It would take many
Speaker 1: years and the survival of one obsessed Jewish woman to
Speaker 1: tell it in full. One survivor later wrote, Zuckers is
Speaker 1: a fascinating historical figure full of tremendous contradictions. Before they left,
Speaker 1: the three Massad agents agreed on a code name for Zukers.
Speaker 1: They would be sending telegrams and letters with invisible link
Speaker 1: and you Reave ordered that the butcher's real name not
Speaker 1: be used in any of them. If some of their
Speaker 1: correspondents was discovered, he could be tipped off and the
Speaker 1: mission would be over. So they chose a substitute would
Speaker 1: refer to him as the late one, as in the deceased.
Speaker 1: Was there a little joke? After that the meeting broke up.
Speaker 1: Mio strolled back to his apartment in Paris, where his
Speaker 1: family was living at the time. He had to tell
Speaker 1: his wife they'd be moving again in case Mio was
Speaker 1: caught in Brazil and exposed as a spy. Massad wanted
Speaker 1: his family to change apartments. It was for their own safety.
Speaker 1: His wife had been through this before. Being in Massad
Speaker 1: meant that he'd often be gone from months at a time.
Speaker 1: He missed birthdays anniversaries was part of the job. So
Speaker 1: that was the mission. Mia was to travel to Brazil
Speaker 1: impersonating an Austrian businessman named Anton kunz La. There he
Speaker 1: would get to know Herbert Sukers. How Yurev didn't say
Speaker 1: that would be up to Mio. He then had to
Speaker 1: get the butcher to leave the country and travel to
Speaker 1: another part of South America where the other team members
Speaker 1: would be waiting. Reason it had to be another country
Speaker 1: was blowback. If Israel assassinated the butcher in Brazil, there
Speaker 1: were thousands of Jews living there who might suffer the
Speaker 1: consequences threats, bombings, whatever. And if the Brazilian police caught
Speaker 1: Meo or one of the other agents, that would be
Speaker 1: a disaster too. It was a right wing military government
Speaker 1: who knew what they might do. They might hang Meo
Speaker 1: or put him in jail for decades. Either of those
Speaker 1: would be an embarrassment for Israel. They didn't want that
Speaker 1: to happen. Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, Herbert Sucres was
Speaker 1: tending to his boats and a small marina on a
Speaker 1: man made lake in South Pawlo. Winter in the Southern
Speaker 1: Hemisphere was almost over. He was hoping the summer would
Speaker 1: make him some money. He had no idea who Mio
Speaker 1: was or that the Massad was after him. But the
Speaker 1: butcher did know one thing, or he believed it. He
Speaker 1: leave that his victims had not forgotten him. Four years before,
Speaker 1: Sod had kidnapped Adolph Eichmann and Argentina put him on trial.
Speaker 1: I mean, who escaped the normery more trials by playing no,
Speaker 1: South America receives justice and the hands and the people
Speaker 1: who will be unabled. The kidnapping had scared Sukers. He
Speaker 1: put a barbed wire around his house, bought a German
Speaker 1: shepherd to patrol it. He assembled the collection of guns
Speaker 1: to protect himself. He's basically living inside a fortress. But
Speaker 1: Seekers went further. He went to the Brazilian intelligence agency
Speaker 1: to appeal for protection. They were called DPS, and they
Speaker 1: had a bad reputation for kidnapping and killing anyone who
Speaker 1: posed the military regime. After his visit, Brazil issued a
Speaker 1: warning to anyone that might think of kidnapping Seekers. This
Speaker 1: would not be tolerated. They were talking to Israel. Your
Speaker 1: reeve had warned me Oh that his target was on guard.
Speaker 1: In fact, it went way by on that. At one
Speaker 1: point before the operation began, Suckers had promised his family
Speaker 1: that he was ready if the MSSAD comes after me.
Speaker 1: He told them, I will die before I let them win.
Speaker 1: Meo had been warned, but he really had no idea
Speaker 1: of who he was actually going up against. Good assassins.
Speaker 1: Hunting the Butcher is a production of Diversion Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with I Heart Radio. This season is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by Stephen Tulti, produced and directed by Scott Waxman
Speaker 1: and Jacob Bronstein. Executive producers Scott Waxman and Mark Francis.
Speaker 1: Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial direction from Scott
Speaker 1: Waxman and Mongesh At ticket Or Editing, mixing and sound
Speaker 1: designed by Mark Francis with the voices of Armory Angele,
Speaker 1: Andrew Polk, Steve Rautman, and Stefan Drudnitsky. Theme music by
Speaker 1: Tyler Cash. Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Oran Rosenbaum at U t A