Herberts Cukurs

Herberts Cukurs
Cukurs in 1934
Born(1900-05-17)17 May 1900
Liepāja, Courland Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Latvia)
Died23 February 1965(1965-02-23) (aged 64)
Shangrilá, Canelones Department, Uruguay
Cause of deathAssassinated by the Mossad
NationalityLatvian
Other namesThe Butcher of Latvia
The Hangman of Riga
OccupationAviator
Known forInvolvement in the Holocaust
SpouseMilda Bērzupe
Children4
Details
Span of crimes
1941–1944
CountryGerman-occupied Latvia
Target(s)Jews

Herberts Albert Cukurs (17 May 1900 – 23 February 1965) was a Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator. He served as the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist unit that carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews during the Holocaust.[1][2] Although Cukurs never stood trial, the accounts of multiple Holocaust survivors, including Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to personally supervising[3] and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for the duration of the German occupation of Latvia.[4][5][6] His crimes included shooting Jewish children and babies in captivity,[7] burning Jews alive,[8] and sexually assaulting Jewish women.[8]

Two decades after World War II, Cukurs was identified in Brazil by a Holocaust survivor, who attempted to alert the authorities after seeing Cukurs' face on the cover of a magazine. Following the discovery, Cukurs was investigated and, in 1965, assassinated by Nazi hunters who were working for Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel.[9][10] In the aftermath of the assassination, Israeli journalist Gad Shimron and one of the Mossad agents ("Künzle") who killed Cukurs authored a book on the experience, titled The Execution of the Hangman of Riga. In it, they referred to Cukurs as the Butcher of Latvia, a name later used by several other sources.[11][12][13][14][15]

  1. ^ "Memorandum" (PDF). cia.gov. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
  2. ^ Stephan Talty (2 April 2021). "Good Assassins". website (Podcast). Diversion Audio & iHeartPodcasts. Retrieved 25 September 2022., Season 1, Episode 1: The Spy & The Murderer
  3. ^ Posner, Gerald L.; Ware, John (2000). Mengele: The Complete Story. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-8154-1006-5. Cukurs had been a notoriously cruel SS officer, who supervised massacres at the Riga concentration camp from horseback.
  4. ^ Lumans, Valdis O. (2006). Latvia in World War II. Fordham Univ Press. ISBN 978-0-8232-2627-6. Herberts Cukurs joined in the rampage, mercilessly beating and shooting as they pleased. Those unfortunates who could not rouse themselves or moved too slowly, Arajs, Cukurs, and their followers shot. Those that resisted or refused to go were also shot on the spot. Blood literally flowed in the streets.
  5. ^ Kaufmann, Max (2010). Churbn Lettland: the destruction of the Jews of Latvia. Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre. p. 81. ISBN 978-3-86628-315-2.
  6. ^ "Herberts Cukurs. A criminal. Just a criminal". Latviannews.lv. Archived from the original on 9 April 2019.
  7. ^ Walters, Guy (4 May 2010). Hunting Evil: The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice. Crown. pp. 231–232. ISBN 978-0-307-59248-4. One of the leaders of the Arajs Commando was Herberts Cukurs, who many remembered as being horrifically brutal, beating, and shooting those Jews who could not keep up with the march for an unknown destination. Isaak Kram, a Jewish engineering student, recalled how he had got close to the former pilot: An old Jewish woman screamed because her daughter was not allowed to climb with her on to the truck. Cukurs pulled out his gun and shot the old woman. I was an eyewitness to the shooting. I also saw with my own eyes how Cukurs aimed his gun at a baby who was crying because he could not find his mother. Cukurs killed that baby with a gunshot. Kram was not the only witness to Cukurs committing infanticide. Another was the twenty-year-old David Fiszkin.
  8. ^ a b Zuroff, Efraim (10 November 2009). Operation Last Chance: One Man's Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice. St. Martin's Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-230-10138-8. Rafael Shub, for example, noted that on July 2, 1941, Cukurs burned to death eight Jews in the new Jewish cemetery: the synagogue sexton Feldheim, his wife and four children, and Cantor Mintz and his wife. Abraham Shapiro, a survivor who had been incarcerated at the headquarters of the Arajs Kommando at 19 Valdamaras Street after Cukurs had taken over his family's apartment, related that the deputy commander [Cukurs] had personally murdered two Jews, one of whom was named Leitmann, who failed to appear at a lineup as ordered. He also witnessed Cukurs and his fellow Latvian officers sexually molest and torture a young Jewish girl while he played piano at a command performance ordered by Cukurs in the apartment he had seized from the Shapiro family. The most damning evidence was supplied by Max Tukacier, who on September 23, 1948, testified that he was among a group of Jews arrested by the Arajs Kommando and taken to their headquarters, where he witnessed how numerous Jews were tortured and subsequently shot on Cukurs's orders. On July 15, 1941, he personally saw Cukurs order an elderly bearded Jew to rape a 20-year-old Jewess in front of a crowd of Latvian police and prisoners, and when he proved incapable of doing so, forced the man to kiss the naked girl all over her body again and again. Those prisoners who could not bear to watch this ugly sight—some 10 to 15 of them, including several women—were beaten to death by Cukurs with the butt of his pistol. Tukacier also testified to Cukurs's active role in the mass murders of November 30 and December 8, 1941, noting that he beat and shot men, women, and children who could not keep pace on the death march to Rumbula.
  9. ^ Aderet, Ofer (1 July 2012). "Mossad agent who helped abduct Eichmann dies at 93". Haaretz. (registration required)
  10. ^ Kinstler, Linda (24 May 2022). "Nazi or KGB agent? My search for my grandfather's hidden past". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  11. ^ Press, Bernhard (2000). The murder of the Jews in Latvia: 1941-1945. Translated by Mazzarins, Laimdota. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN 978-0-8101-1729-7.
  12. ^ Künzle and Shimron, The Execution of the Hangman of Riga, at page 127.
  13. ^ Lumans, Latvia in World War II, at page 240.
  14. ^ Eksteins, Walking Since Daybreak, at page 150.
  15. ^ Michelson 2001, p. 103.