S1-E02: The Killer's History

operation to take out the Butcher of Latvia. But that's what's the idea to let the other nazis, not to try to find all the other just to let them know that if we came to South America, we can find you in any place. I'm Stephen Talty and this is good assassin's hunting the butcher. And there was a knock on the door. All the men line up outside and the machine gun was that that? That that that I remember the seventh one of the cops came over and said, look at the sun tomorrow. You want to

see the end. We must thwart this shameful paces, the end of a trail of blood and horror the end of a man whose name will be written in inform episode two, The Killer's History. So when we left me O it's really spy. He had just finished a meeting where he had been briefed on his mission. But before we follow Meo on his trip across the world and eventually to his first meeting with his target, it's important

to know who Zucres really was. Why was he called the Butcher of Latvia or another of his nicknames, the Hangman of Riga. Those two things, who the target really was, and with crimes he committed during World War two, they'd influence how the operation would go down. And for that we have to go back to Latvia, to the days just before World War Two began. Riga was a very beautiful, very beauniversity. I had an opera, we had the university,

we had a polytech for engineering. We had five six theaters, German, Russian theater, Jewish tata. This is Shishana Khan, a Latin Jew from the town of Leopaya. I mean we got monifeses all right. As in many of us A small states, the Jews tried to identify and said higher culture and the Illebo German was the culture. Anything which came from Germany, I mean, was a hundred percent wonderful. The books, the music,

the clothes, the chocolates, everything was perfect. The people who lived more on the eastern side of latter as they emulated the Russians, of course, and the talk Russian. Latvie is one of the Baltic states, and it's had a fairly tragic history. It sits between two much more powerful countries, Germany and Russia, and it's been occupied by one of the other multiple times over the centuries, often with bloody

results when it came to its Jewish citizens. Latvie was a decent place to live in the nineteen thirties if you consider the other options in Eastern Europe. There was discrimination, quotas, but no history of massacres thirty five in the names of the streets. Every document was in three languages. Latvian, German, Russian are not exactly that order. The capital Riga had only one Jewish policeman. He was a kind of tourist

attraction because the sight of him was so rare. Many Jews were called incidents with their classmates or their co workers. Jews were sometimes referred to as the black growth. Some of their neighbors even called them parasites. But there were gentiles who were friends with Jewish families, and there were even some inner marriages. So for Jews, Latview was not

as bad as say Russia, at least not yet. In the thirties and into the forties, as the Nazis spread their message, Latvia was actually considered as sanctuary for Jews. They came to Riga from places like Prague or Lynn Warsaw to find a safe place to live. During this time the ninety thirties, Herbert Sucres was becoming a national hero. This is Richards Plavniks. He's an historian. It teaches at

the University of Central Florida. Richards was born in Latvia and he wrote a book about Victor Raj and the notorious commando unit that Suckers was part of that murdered so many thousands. Because Richards is an authority, I called him to get his thoughts on Latvia during the war. The celebrity of Suckers, who sort of technology pioneer, exploration pioneer with some daring do uh. And he's handsome and

he looks good. He's a great spokes model for the Latvian state in the nineteen thirties, and really it was sort of of a piece in that era. Suckers was such a celebrity in Latvia in the thirties. In fact, popular songs were even recorded that told of his exploits. This is a song about Zuker's ninety three solo flight from Latvia to the British African colony of the Gambia. Hello, Hello, or Lida. As I mentioned before, he was a brilliant pilot,

made these epic journeys all over the world. When it came to flying, he really was a kind of genius. Not only did he design a series of small aircraft, he built them by hand on a tiny budget, often using spare parts. He took off crashed planes. Then he flew that thousands of miles to places like Japan, the West coast of Africa, even Palestine. He was a daredevil with a brain. Herbert Suckers put Latvia on the map. His fellow citizens, including many Jews, loved him for it.

If you're looking for an American equivalent, think Amelia Earhart or Charles Lindbergh. Suckers was a big deal, but It's not like he had a perfect reputation when it came to Jews. He joined the Air Force when he was young. In the Latin military at that time it had a lot of anti Semites. Zuckers would occasionally make an anti Jewish joe. It was fairly typical at the time. But he had actually grown up with Jews. They had worked in his father's shop, and he was often seen talking

with Jewish men in the cafes of Riga. So Circrets wasn't considered an anti Semite before the war. In fact, far from it. I spoke with a man named Michael crom about his father. Isaac crom who was the Latvian Jew was at school studying engineering at the same time

as Herbert Suckers. Michael Cromb pointed me to his father's interview with the survivors of the show a Visual History Foundation now the usc Show A Foundation Institute as one fellow that Chuckers who became infamous his name, uh you know, mentioning here. He was a mechanical student and mechanical call it call that he had a faculty Sustas and I was an engineering since my father was an engineering student

and Suckers was this engineering person. He saw Suckers all the time in the hallways uh in the engineering the warment and Suckers was a celebrity and big man on campus and always was mobbed by people. But there was no question that my father I knew him, saw him, didn't interact with him in terms of being friends, didn't have conversations with him, but saw him at you know,

a distance of a few feet all the time. And the show a Foundation interview, Isaac crom talks about how Zuker's visited Palestine in the thirties and when he came back to Latvia gave public talks about the Jewish settlers he observed there. The Jews had impressed stokers. Then the Suckers on the way back has stopped over in Palestine, and he had lectures in the Jewish theater, fully packed houses, telling them how the Halachim we're working on the swamps

and drying out the swam flant in Ronstin. He made a meant on this kind of lectures in the Soviets occupied Latvia. This becomes important later in the story. The takeover was part of something called the Molotov Ribbon trop packed between Hitler and Stalin. It meant that life in Latvia was completely transformed. Money became worthless. Soviet soldiers broke into shops and took everything they wanted. Thousands of Latvians exiled to Siberia or sentenced to death. It was a

terrible time. The Soviets were almost universally hated. Your occupation became known as the Year of Horror. Then, in July forty one, the Germans invade. They fought their way into Riga. It soon sent the last Soviet soldiers running to the east. Another kind of horror emerged, one now directed at Jews. The Nazis began passing anti Semitic laws. They encouraged Latvians to direct their hatred at their Jewish neighbors. They declared that Jews had helped the Soviets to occupy Latvia and

carry out atrocities. Jews had betrayed their country and they needed to pay for it. It was a lie, of course, but it worked. Round Ups began almost immediately. What added to the terror was that it was often their fellow Latvians who took the lead in the violence. Once I remembered in my wildest streams I could never have a match on the hidden animosity the Latvians had for their Jewish neighbors. I had hoped deliberation would have passionate meaning

for the Jews. Instead, the Latvians as sawed themselves as the messengers of Nazi evil and began to govern the city as if they had received consent from Berlin to do so. I had lived my entire life there among Latvians were now considered me their mortal enemy and were prepared to kill me. Jews and Gentiles had lived side by side in Latvia, gone to the same schools, and tore the suffering of the Soviet occupation together, but now

the Jews were being singled out. Jewish families hid in their apartments, listening for the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. That was the sign the German and Latvian soldiers were in the building looking for them. Landlords would tell the Germans where the families lived, and there would be a loud pounding on the door that would echo

through the building. And on the first night of the occupation, on July the first or second, every Jewish home was visited by the Nazis, along with it with the Latvian God. This is Sasha's Seminoff, a Latin Jew who was sixteen when the Nazis invaded. And there was a knock on the door on July the second. It was a knock at the door and they were was it German s s officer and the Latvian God? And they said, all

the men line up outside. And we looked out the window and there it was nighttime and there all our neighbors the land up outside on the god like like like criminals. The Latin Guard, the seven Off mentions. That was Herbert Suckers. Seminas father knew him from before the war. He tried to reason with the famous aviator and my dad said, oh no, I'm a I'm a veteran of the First World War, you know, and show these papers. It's a Jew. Get out of it. It was the

last time Sashi would see his father. He was shot in the nearby forest and buried in a mass grave along with thousands of other Jewish men. A few nights later, the butcher came back. He wanted the Seminas flat. He occupied our apartment all our longings, and he was the one that showed my mother the list of the Mende. But they were killed on that first program, and my mother, my father was amongst them. Zukers even ordered Seminof, who was a talented young musician, to complay the piano at

the wild parties he threw at the seminoffs apartment. He would call me at night he had used to entertain some of his horse had a Jewish girlfriend that they would it was his mistress, and he would make me come up to my apartment and play the piano for him bal it was drinking. Just imagine that scene, this teenage boy walking into the apartment. He grew up in on the couches was aunts and uncles. Once sat during family parties with these red faced soldiers, laughing, shouting, drinking

bottle after bottle. They would come to the apartment after the work of rounding up and killing Jews was done. They would tell jokes, stories about their day. The place was like a frat house, but with a much darker edge, and Sasha would play waltz is on the piano as the men dance with prostitutes. Who knows what went on in the bedrooms. Sasha didn't see that, but he could imagine. In a memoir, he wrote After the war, Seminof recalled how Sukers treated the Jewish girl he brought along with him.

One day, he ordered me at night in the month of July n that I come to his room and play for him and his friends. There I met the heads of the secret lot, being police. They were drunk that I played for many hours. Dous I witnessed how they brought in the Jewish girl, and each of them, one after the other, had their way with her. I know that this maiden was held for many more weeks and took his apartment. There were executions in the streets.

The Germans created a ghetto in a poor neighborhood of Riga, and every Jew, on pain of death, was ordered to move there. Zuker has lived like a lord inoccupied Riga. He and his men could do anything anything they wanted, provided they didn't cross the Germans. He would visit Jewish homes demanding coffee and women. He would drag the wom into his car and rape them. Occasionally he'd kill and mutilate them, or he would show up in the ghetto

drunk and go crazy. Survivor El Medalia remembered those visits. She knew Sukers well she'd met him at one of the holding points for prisoners in Riga, where he told her she didn't look very much like a Jew. Now she saw him in action. Oppression and murder became part of everyday life. One day I saw Zukers through the window driving his car up to the ghetto. He was drunk and could hardly stand on his feet. Laughing, he started shooting at the people like a hunter in a forest.

This is Henry burmanis Latin into talking about atrocities during the war. As we lined up to go to work that morning, we were faced on the other side of the street by hundred ten special Electrian police and we stood there eyeing each other, and one of the cops came over and poked his rifle in my stomach and said, look at the sun tomorrow, you want to see it again.

I didn't know what he had in mind, but that group came into the ghetto unders a supervision and on the supervision of a man name of Suckers Latvian wards flying is. They took off of the get of population by seat blocks and forced them out to the out of their homes to line up in the sleep. The columns of four or five, and they were marched off to Lumberland. November, the clearing of the Riga Ghetto began. The Nazis and their accompasses took Choose and forced them

into a nearby forest. Women were dragged from their apartments along with their children and beaten. Those who resisted were often bludged to death. Here's Isaac crom again, who saw Zukers in action that morning. The recording of crimes statement is unavailable, so this is an actor reading Ham's words. This time, I was on lords Of Street near the Riga Ghetto when I saw some Joe being dragged. Herbert Zuckers was in charge of the soldiers. He was dressed

in black uniform of a military aviator. He ordered me and some other men to put the killed Jews on the sledge and dragged them to the cemetery. I had an upportnity to watch Suckers closely for a while. A Jewish woman started screaming when she was being dragged to the truck. She wanted to have her daughter with her. Zuker shot her with his gun. I was a witness of this killing. I also saw Sukers point his gun at the child who was crying because he couldn't find

his mother in the crowd. He killed this child with one shot. Some of the testimonies are almost too awful to believe proven. Parkin been a neighbor of the Zukers when Herbert was a boy. He spoke Yiddish very well, for you've always been friends with Jews. We grew up together and her friends. But later during the Nazi occupation, Barkin ran across the butcher in Riga. The man he

once called a friend had become unrecognizable. When I was still in the ghetto, I saw how Tooker has approached a girl the age of ten or eleven years and asked in Yiddish if you would like a candy. He told her to open her mouth, and then I saw him pulling his revolver, shootings a girl into mouth and killing her on the spot. I was just going to work and walking on the same sidewalk I saw the murder from close up. Suckers was a cruel murderer. Zuker's

fame worked against him. He was a well known figure in Latvia. There were other men who were equally as brutal in but Jews remembered Suckers because he was a kind of celebrity. There was also the trail. Jews knew they were anti Semites and Riga before the war, but Suckers had never been one of them. For many Jews, he embodied the double cross their neighbors had inflicted on them. The official toll of Suckers actions, the one that Massad

used was thirty thousand men, women and children. That didn't mean he'd shot all those people by himself. For many of those deaths, he acted as a collaborator, the man who forced Jews out of their homes, drove them to the killing grounds. I came across other stories as well.

This is Carolina Tates, a Jewish Latvian who was an eyewitness to the mass murders in the Ramboula forest outside Riga and so um a ditch and that it was people of his his Tata shooters with the and the Germans say stay in line or we was back there. We was very bad. So the first people because I just saw that I was not there, but I saw that they stand and and the ditch on that side was the shooters. There was Latvians and Germans and the Jewish people. You know, there is a mother with a

child and too little. Every the Jewish people have children, a lot of children. They stay in the machine gun. Was I remember the sound. The sound was as they was falling in that grave, half dead, half life, the little children screaming, people was benching to God. Well the woman was screaming and yelling and crying. It is a mess, you know. That was just like, what what can I feel?

I feel nothing? Ella, the young woman who seen sucers shoot at people in the ghetto, was driven to the pits on December eight, when thousands of Jews were murdered. Secrets was among the commandos who cleared the ghetto and forced the Jews to the pits. There they were ordered into the trenches, shot in rows. Mothers were ordered to hold their infants in the air and both were executed at close range. Some were buried alive. Ella watched as

her fellow Jews prepared for their desks. The people seemed indifferent to their surroundings. They were holding each other, suffering from the bitter cold, crying and saying goodbye. Relatives and friends were standing together. From the front, we could hear veiling and crying, which created a terrible hun a drone. There were many women with babies crying in their arms,

as though they also sensed their impending death. Children took hold of the clothing of their mothers, grandmothers, and grandfathers seeking protection. There are no words to describe the tragedy. Ella actually managed to escape the pits by claiming she wasn't Jewish. A guard let her stand to the side. She listened to the shots ring out until they began to die off. Finally, she was brought to a car told to get inside. The Germans began to leave. The door of the car opened and Zuker sat down at

the veal. He turned on the lights in the car and peered back at us. For a few seconds, he stared at me. I was frightened that he might recognize me. I remembered his assertion that I didn't look Jewish at all, that I would live a better life somewhere in the city like other people, or go to the country. But this time Zucker said nothing. He started the engine and they left that horrible place. He did not betray me. So suckers saved the life of this young Jewish woman,

and she wasn't the only one. Once in a while, as the killing went on, he would pick out a Jew almost at random and helped him escape. Why why did the butcher kill some of his neighbors and spare others? I read through the testimonies looking for a clue. Maybe he did it for the money, but there was no record of him asking for any Maybe he only saved young women, but no, he actually spared at least one Jewish Man, a doctor he'd known before the war. So

what was it? The testimonies did answer one question for me. Clearly Zukers was guilty, So why did he still have the enders? I found half a dozen eyewitnesses to his actions, and later I came across statements from fellow Latvians in his commando unit. They confirmed he had been part of the massacres. But again, why, I went through other possibilities. Maybe he'd always been an anti Semit and just hit it till the Nazis came. Maybe the Germans forced him

to kill. That was the explanation of many non Germans who murdered Jews during the war. Maybe that was part of the answer. But then I'd read a testimony talking about how the butcher seemed to enjoy killing. There was more than one. It just didn't fit the idea that he was forced to do anything, So I had no answers. Even the survivors and their testimonies couldn't give a reason. Most of them, they were as baffled as I was.

Maybe there were others who fit this pattern, friendly towards Jews before the war, joined in the maskers, but save the occasional victim. Maybe there were historians who had found killers like this and that would help give some insight into Zukers. I made some calls, and I was able to track down and speak to two people who shared with me some crucial insights. I'll play you some of those tapes a little later in a future episode. It was a start, a way to get inside Suker's mind.

So the war ends, Suker survived it without being thrown into a pow camp. He was detained briefly by the U. S Army, but his name was not on any list of perpetrators at that point, so he was let go. Then in he and his family sailed for Brazil. They had almost no money. When the family arrived, Zukers was forced to build a makeshift house on a real beach to give them somewhere to live. But he was a hard worker. He built small boats to rent a tourists

and his business crew. He came a success. He even told people he'd hid shows when the Nazis had come to Latvia, that he'd risked his life to save a young woman named Miriam. In fact, he brought her to Brazil. He took Miriam around, showed her off to his new friends. Resilient Jews were moved. He was a hero who had protected their brothers and sisters when they were being hunted. Jos and Rio, two parties for Zukers, invited him to

their homes, even gave him money. As for Miriam, it's likely she was the same woman that Sasha Semonov had seen in his family's apartment. Sukers had saved her life, but he also abused and humiliated her. The young Jewish girl had become his mistress and sex slave. By the Butcher was living well. His business was making money, his children were thriving, and he had friends all over the city. If he'd kept his mouth shut, he just lived his life,

It's unlikely anyone would have ever bothered him. Then he did something stupid, like really stupid. A popular Brazilian magazine named Okrazero asked Suckers if they could write a profile of him. They were impressed with his story. He was an immigrant who had made good in Brazil. People love those kinds of stories. They were also impressed with his family. His bronzed children could be seen water skiing on the lakes around sal Paolo. Zuker's proved Brazil was the land

of dreams. Of course, Zuker should have said no, he was a war criminal, but he was tempted and eventually he agreed. He gave the interview, using his real name. In it, he talked about his rags to riches story. Who were pictures of him and his good looking children water skiing, looking like movie stars. The magazine came out on June. It landed on the coffee tables of middle

class homes throughout Brazil, in shops everywhere. Basically, most Brazilians read the story and thought, Wow, what a cool guy. He came to this country with nothing, and now look at him, he's thriving. But there were a few people who read the piece differently. They were Jewish. They knew the name Herbert Zukers, and they knew the real story behind it, this whole episode with a magazine interview. It's

just bizarre to me. What was Zuker's thinking. Nazis who escaped to South America, they kept their heads down, they changed their names, they did anything they could to avoid attention. But here was Zuker's parading around like he was another Oscar Schindler. It was almost schizophrenic. Did Zukers really believe the stories he was telling of saving Jews? Why did he seek how publicity when it could only bring him closer to danger. I kept coming back to that name.

Herbert Sukers was so proud of what he'd achieved before the war. He loved being the Latvian Lindburgh. He really thought of himself as this historical figure, and if he changed his name, all of that would go away, the aviation awards, the headlines, the fame. He wouldn't be able to tell anyone about these amazing things he'd done in his twenties and thirties. So he couldn't be safe and be Herbert Sukers at the same time. And eventually he

chose to keep the name. He was willing to risk his life in order to be admired, and loved it. Was madness, but he took the risk and it was paying off once again. He was a hero who cared if he told some lies along the way. For Zukers, it was the attention that mattered. He wanted to be adored. But then the rumors started, rumors about atrocities, the machine guns, the ghetto and Riga. First, that's all they were gossip. There were no cell phone cameras to take a quick

picture of him. Compare it with the Butcher of Latvia. There was no Google to look up his past. By chance, Zukers had chosen the right country to live in in the nineteen fifties. There were almost no Latvian Jews in Rio, no eyewitnesses to his crimes, no one who'd known him as a boy and had watched him transform into a killer. How would the survivors who knew about his monstrosities find Suckers and prove he was the Butcher of Latvia? And how would they do that without spooking him. Zukers had

escaped justice once after the war. He was a resourceful, a narcissist and a very good actor. Masada knew some of this. They had studied the reports of survivors and the articles on his flights before the war. All those details were given to Mio as he prepared himself to meet and hopefully outwit the Butcher. Mio knew he would probably only get one shot. With the target as paranoid as Sukers was, he would have to be careful about how he went after him. The worry was Zukers might

feel the spies on his trail then disappear. This time for good, Neo's cover would have to be airtight. He couldn't let his jewishness show. He couldn't alert Suckers in any way. After the meeting with Your Reeve, Neo started creating his cover. We'll talk about that in the next episode. But years before he set out, there had actually been another mission to Brazil. Another group of Nazi hunters, many of them Holocaust survivors, had gone looking for the killer.

They wanted to find out whether this Herbert Sukers was really the Butcher of Latvia. It was essential to prove his identity. Targeting an innocent man. That would be a terrible injustice. It would also make the hunters look like criminals themselves, damaging the cause. So the first thing Nazi Hunters had to do to verify beyond a doubt their target was really the right man, but with Herbert Suckers, that was going to be much harder than anyone expected.

Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher is a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This season is written and hosted by Stephen Toulting, 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 Ticket or Editing, mixing and sound designed by Mark Francis, with the voices of Nick Afka, Thomas Armory, Angle, Andrew Polk, Mindy Escobar, Leants, Steve Routman and Stefan Rudnitsky. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Special thanks to or In Rosenbaum at ut A Diversion Podcasts