S1-E06: The Kill Team

with every major development. At the same time you know was drawing up his report, things were starting to heat up with the Statute of Limitations, which was the whole reason for the mission, to stop Germans from giving Nazi killers a free pass for their atrocities. Here's Abner Abraham again, the former Massad agent and historian of the agency. I

mean it's you compared for examples to be Latin. In September eleven, it was a revenge but in the mossadoh and they decided to kill someone and the Plume Minister confirmed this target. It was to prevent him and to prevent mortal attacks and more killing of Jews. That that was the idea. I'm Steven Talty and this is good assassins hunting the butcher. So it's the first month was to find a nasty a briging forward trial. The second part was to find a Nazi and killing. We must

thwoat the shining losses. He hadn't of a trail of blood and horror, the end of a man whose name will be written in informating episode six. The kill team. By the end of the world was waking up to the fact that the Germans really intended to go ahead with the amnesty, so the Jewish resistance was stepping up their efforts to try and stop it. To Via Friedman, the Nazi hunter, who had met with the German Justice minister, was giving interviews in Israel and encouraging world leaders to

speak out. He was keeping an eye on Germany, hoping to pressure and shame its politicians into stopping the amnesty. As the cause gained more traction, protesters appeared on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Soon they would spread all over the world, from New York to London. Freedman was good one on one with his eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust. He could persuade people. Earlier, when the head

of the Socialist Party in Germany came to Israel. Freedman went to see him in the lobby of his hotel, and Israeli security agent spotted Freeman coming through the front doors. The agent hurried over, almost blocking Freeman from making it to the elevators. The guy was pale, nervous. He thought the activists was up to no good. The agent asked of Freeman was there to assassinate the German leader. Freedman laughed, guy knew his reputation, but Freeman told the agent that no,

he was just going to talk to the politician. The agent let him pass. Freedman went upstairs and made his presentation to the German official. It was powerful stuff. A few hours later, the Socialist leader agreed to oppose the amnesty. Was another small coup for Freedman in this campaign to sway the German government. Importantly, another much more famous Nazi

hunter joined the cause, Simon Wisenthal. Visenthal had barely survived World War Two, having been imprisoned in four concentration camps between in he was in a Polish camp when his commander decided to celebrate Hitler's birthday by executing fifty four Jewish intellectuals, one for every year of the Feurer's life. Enthal was chosen to be one of them. He listened as the others were shot before the killers came to him,

though someone called his name. One of the Germans had convinced the commander that Visenthal, who was an accomplished artist, should paint a poster of Hitler instead of being murdered. He was led away from the pits and later escaped from the camp. Visenthal made it through, but he lost his family. Weeks after the war ended, he was already hunting down Nazis. That quest would occupy him for the rest of his life. Visenthal did everything. He spent months

digging through archives. He staked out apartment buildings waiting for ex Nazis to show up, and unlike Friedman, he made friends in high places, recruiting politicians and celebrities to his mission. He'd had some major successes. When Anne Frank's diary became a worldwide bestseller, some Austrians claimed it was a fake. They said that Anne Frank had never existed, and they challenged Wisenthal to find Carl Silberbauer, the man who had

supposedly arrested her. Resenthal went to work. After months of searching in which Wisenthal spent hours coming through Nazi records and Dutch phone books. He found Silverbauer was working as a policeman in Vienna. Visenthal exposed him, and silver Bauer admitted that Anne Frank had indeed existed and her memoir was truthful. It was a major blow to Holocaust deniers. Visenthal tracked down Eric Jakowitch, who had been in charge of putting Jews from the Netherlands on the trains to

their desks. Visenthal found Jakowitch living in Italy, where a Catholic bishop had helped the Nazi even let him live in a local convent. By the early sixties, Jackowitch was a millionaire several times over and living a comfortable life. Visenthal uncovered his past, and the Nazis picture appeared on the front pages of newspapers all over Europe. He went on the run, first to Switzerland, then to Germany, but Visenthal wouldn't give up. He found him again, and finally

the killer gave up. He was thrown in jail. So Simon Wiesenthal was good at what he did. He was a master publicist, self promoter, but he was just as obsessed with finding the men and women responsible for the genocide and bringing Nazis to justice. You're not just married to me. Visenthal's wife used to tell him, you were married to the six million. The further ist cause. Reisenthal had even become a massad operative. The agency sent him an allowance a few hundred dollars a month to help

with his quest. Here's Wisenthal explaining the significance of the Statute of Limitations after that time, via then we will find new people. They commit crimes. So I find new evidence about people. They are free. They cannot bring them for justice in Germany. And this mean thousands. This means thousands of people because we lost eleven million witnesses Lake Friedman. Simon Visenthal went to meet with the Justice minister in Germany about the coming amnesty. He wanted to know what

would happen if the statute went into effect. Around six thousand men had served at Auschwitz, only a tiny number of them, less than one percent had even been brought to trial when the statute went into effect. With the rest I'll go free. The German minister avoided the question. He started talking about the billions of Deutsche marks in reparations that Germany had paid to survivors. Visenthal seethed. He wasn't there to talk about money. He's there to talk

about punishment. It was once more a case of I was simply not speaking the same language I told him he had, Minister, the murderer of my mother and the murderers of many of my relations and friends have not been found yet. I don't even know their names. I am a dressing the Minister of us. This is not definance Minister. I recognized the Federal Republic's financial efforts, but surely they cannot be a substitute for efforts to achieve justice. I have come to you as a very specific question,

what happens after me eight? That was the date the amnesty was supposed to go into effect May eighth. The Minister didn't give Resenthal and answer. In fact, he was starting to sound slippery on the whole issue. Did he support the amnesty or didn't he? He told Recenthal it wasn't up to him to decide. The Nazi Hunter wasn't satisfied. He decided to launch a pr campaign to let people around the world know what was going on. Reasenthal was

brilliant at that kind of thing. He had the kind of marketing skills the vision the two Via freedmen blocked. Eisenthal wrote an open letter condemning the statute. He called the amnesty an unprecedented injustice towards the millions of victims of Nazi brutality. Once the murders knew they would never be prosecuted, Easenthal wrote, they would link arms with other enemies of liberty. They would spread their propaganda and poison

to the young people of Germany and then abroad. Visenthal was broadening the issue beyond the Holocaust at the West Germans that the killers of six million get away with it, the world would be a far more dangerous place for everybody. Visenthal sent the letter to famous people in Europe, America and elsewhere. The great American playwright Arthur Miller signed it, as did a Nobel Prize winning physicist, The future Pope Benedict sixteen announced his support. His own cousin, who had

down syndrome, had been murdered by the Nazis. Dozens and dozens of others joined the campaign, artists, pol Titians, religious leaders. Even Robert Kennedy was still recovering from the assassination of his brother JFK sent a telegram moral duties. It read have no term. Robert Kennedy came out against Germany's planned amnesty, but the efforts of the two Nazi hunters, Freedman and Wisenthal were in the winner of nine four, having little

effect in Germany. Opinion polls there still show the statute was popular the numbers they weren't budgeting. The two activists believed they were losing the fight, which could make Massad's Zuker's mission that much more important. It was the final piece that could sway the debate. A last shot. Neo wrote out his report on his trip with Sukers to

the plantation. When he was finished, he took a business letter that he had already typed out and copied out the report in invisible inc inserting the text between the lines. Then he folded the letter, put it in an air mail envelope and send it off to his boss your reeve in Paris. Meal's use of invisible ink intrigued me. It's something that, of course I've seen dozens of times and spy novels and movies, but I kind of assumed that in real life invisible ink would be a bit

too crude for sophisticated agency like the MASSAD. So I checked with an intelligence historian named h. Keith Melton, and turns out it was actually a widespread tactic at the time. Invisible links have been used for probably a thousand years or thousands of years, going back ultimately to Limon juice. And you know, if you take a limon juice right a secret message between the lines and then hold it up to a flame, you can see it becomes visible.

So the standard component of all invisible aks is the ink itself, and the reagent is the way you make it visible. And services developed extraordinarily complex secret inks. But you could create a secret eak out of salava, out of water. You could use it out of diluted blood. You could use it from sperm, you could use it from bodily fluids. Secret ease can be made out of a variety of things. Water is probably one of the most interesting because just water can later be detected by

intelligent service. In general, invisible ink has fallen out of use today, but according to Melton, that might be the very reason not to discount it entirely. The Russian Service quit searching and quit teaching skills for secretings around the year two thousands, so as you use belfore then, but sometimes tradecraft becomes so forgotten about it and so old

it becomes usable again. But there's no one's looking for And I don't believe the U. S. Coastal Service has a capability to the sect secrets anymore, where they certainly would have had that fifties sixty seventy years ago. Back to me O, he now had a much better feel for Zookers, what might work getting him to another country

and what wouldn't. In his report, he wrote that the plantation trip had been worthwhile because he was conditioning Zookers to get comfortable with longer and longer trips away from home. This was key. He couldn't just bring a flight to say Chili on the butcher. He had to build up to that slowly, step by step, to make sure that suckers would follow him wherever he went. There was also the question of the assassination method. Massad had many ways

to take someone out, what they called targeted killings. In nineteen two, when the Egyptians began building rockets at a facility in the desert called Factory three three three, Basada knew the missiles would eventually be aimed at Israel. They mailed two package bombs to the factory, killing five workers there. Later they were book bombs, one of which targeted a plo operative named Bassam Sharif. Shariff survived and we were actually able to find a tape of him discussing the incident.

Uh that was allowed to day. That morning, when the book came to me, the mailman said, well, you have a book and it's stamped. I looked at the envelope. It was opened. The envelope was opened and the book was protruding out and stamped by the Lebanese government. Checked clear from explosives. So I was relaxed a little bit. And the moment I opened that time, you know I discovered it. It's part of a second. I've seen the

explosive two charges. They have hold of the book and put two explosive charges one and another that action and one and then down, so that they cut me into three pieces. In my head. I was standing. That's why my managed to probably the Palestinian poet and terrorist Mohammed Buddha opened the door of his car parked on the Paris street. Massad had planted a pressure activated bomb underneath the driver's seat. As soon as Buddhia sat down, it went off and Buddhia was killed. Other targets of Assad

simply disappeared. That's what happened to one German scientist, Heinz Krug, who's helping Egypt build those missiles in the desert. He worked out of Munich. MASSAD sent the surveillance team there to learn Krug's movements. Then, early one evening, crew received a phone call from a man pretending to be a friend of the Egyptian general who's heading up missile program. Something important had come up, and the man requested a meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in Munich. Krug suspected nothing.

He went to the meeting and met the man, who was actually a MASSAD operative. They discussed business. The next day, the operative picked him up for another round of discussions brought him to a villa in the suburbs. Krug going into the villa expecting to meet one of the Egyptian commanders. Inside, there was a MASSAD team waiting for him. They hit him on the head and put him still alive in

the secret compartment inside a v W camper. He was driven to Marseilles, France, sedated, put on an airplane, and flown to Israel. Their Kruge was roughed up and interrogated. After spilling his secrets over many months, a Massad agent was ordered to take him to a deserted area north of Tel Aviv to kill him. Krug's body was then loaded aboard and Israeli military plane and dumped into the sea.

Some Massad assassins used handguns, though the cliche method a rifle fired from a long distance never seemed to be part of their repertoire. One PLO man was shot by a guy driving by on a motorcycle. Another target was pushed into traffic was killed by a passing car. There was even a target who was dosed with radioactive material and later died years later. Another suspected victim of Massad, a scientist who doubled as a colonel in the Egyptian Army,

fell quote unquote from a balcony in Alexandria. When Egyptian police entered his apartment, they found the gas had been turned on and there were cuts in the scientist's arms, both signs pointing to a suicide attempt. Massad had made it look like the man had tried to kill himself three different ways and finally succeeded. It had all the hall marks of an Israeli hit. Massad didn't claim responsibility, because Massad never claims responsibility. 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 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 the Version podcast dot com. Record yourself asking a question and email it to me again. The email address is Hunting the Butcher at Diversion podcast asked dot com. That's a podcast plural with an S at the end. I'm looking forward to hearing your questions. Thanks. Now on with the show. So Meo had options for the assassination method, but he hadn't made up his mind on which was the best way to go, how should it be done?

What would be the safest way? A bullets from a farm, perhaps poisoning, maybe a point blank shot in the back of the head. He had to know more about the butcher before he could decide. With his report completed, Meo got back in touch with Suckers. The butcher proposed another scouting trip for Coonsla's tourist business, this time to a town on the Brazilian coast called Santos. Meo jumped at the opportunity. A plan was starting to form in his head,

a plan for the death of Herbert Suckers. He wanted to test out a couple of ideas for it, so he told Suckers they would check out the market for rental homes in Santos, get the prices, see how many were full this time of year. If it looked good, his company might start investing. Neo drove with Suckers to the coast and got a room at a nice hotel. The next morning, Neo set up a routine. They would find a rental home that was on the market and

a range of visit. They talked to the owner, see what the properties were like and how much they were going for. Zuckers thought he was helping kunz La out with his business research. He did some interpreting. He spoke good Portuguese. Had Mio actually been looking to make investments, Suckers would have been pretty useful. One of the ideas Mio had for the assassination was to bring the butcher to a house in another of the South American countries

and have the killed team waiting there for him. It would be private, safe, and it would give the team time alone with Suckers to read him his sentence. This option had a lot going for it, but if the plan was going to work, Meo had to train Sukers. Walking into strange houses had to be automatic for him. After Santos Zuker suggested they hit another beach town, Portelegre. Suckers was having a good time. Mia was paying all the bills, nice restaurants, good hotels. It was like a

preview of coming attractions. If he could get on board with Kunsla's company, this would be his life from now on. He liked it. Meo was buttering up the butcher. You have no idea how glad I am we met, I told the butcher. It must have been the faiths that brought us together. You are at home here, who know the South American language and how to do business here. Mio agreed to meet Suckers and Portelegre a few days later. They traveled there separately. After Meal checked into their hotel,

he went to Zuker's room. He knocked on the door, then he got a shock. Some seconds passed. Suddenly the door of us pulled open to reveal Ukers standing there, a gun in his hand. The snake is always on his toes, I thought, I pointed as the gun, I said, half jokingly, So what is it? But you're scared of me? If you had a long nose, then I would have a good reason to be scared. Zuker said, anyway, one must always be on the alert. He returns the gun to his pocket. Neio tried to laugh it off, but

he could see that the butcher was actually nervous. It wasn't a good sign. Neo drove around Portle Gray with Zukers, looking at houses. At one point, Zuker's was in the passenger seat talking about tourism when Mio heard him mention the name Joseph Kramer. Meo managed to keep his eyes on the road. He controlled his breathing, showing no reaction, but inside he was reeling. Joseph Kramer. Most Jews who'd lost people in the Holocaust knew the name. The Belson

War criminals arrived at Lunaboug for trial. Their faces gave a little clue to what they're thinking. Last out of the lotty is Joseph Kramer, the Beast of Belson. The calm, orderliness of the scene contrasts violently with the ghastly pictures which shocked the country when they were shown in British usually. Kramer was the infamous East of Belson. The former commander of the concentration camp Auschwitz, broken out to hundreds of thousands of Jews had died under his watch. He personally

selected Jews for death. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. Kramer was known to have been exceptionally brutal to the Jewish prisoners, sometimes whipping them until their skin flayed off leg suckers. Cramer had denied everything after the war. He told prosecutors the stories about him were quote products of the Jews imagination. Kramer was captured by the British tried in the months following the end of the war and what's known as the Belson Trial. Kramer was convicted and

sentenced to death. He was hanged on December thirteenth. Meo kept driving, but his mind was going a mile a minute. Why would Suckers bring up Joseph Kramer. He hadn't even been talking about the war. He just dropped it into the middle of a boring little monologue about some topic. Meo only half remembered. It was just strange. It was as if the Butcher was testing Meo in the language he would understand only if he were someone other than

Anton Kunzla, if he were saying a double agent. Couldn't Suckers be speaking to Meo and a kind of code saying I know why you're here, and it isn't to make money. Neo couldn't be sure, but he was worried. Back in Paris, Josef your Reeve had been busy. It was his job to recruit the rest of the team that would fly to South America to join Meo and carry out the sentence on the butcher body men a kill team. When your Reef was done, he dissembled an

intriguing collection of men. If you saw them walking down the street, you wouldn't have thought massad, assassination squad. They didn't seem like guys that were going to be sent halfway around the world to take care of a notorious murderer. First it was your Reeve himself. He was a pretty unusual choice for the chief of an intelligence unit. Your reef died. I went to Israel to speak with his daughter, Leehy,

and she described him to me. My father was a very sensitive person, full of maybe contradictions, if you can say that. On the one hand, he was a bohemian person and his best friends were artists in theater players, and he had a great sense of humor. You know, if you heard his laughter, you couldn't stop love with him together, and he saw everything is a very humorous thing. But on the other hand, he used to tell me, not everything is a joke. I don't think that everything

is a is a game or a joke. Just take it seriously. So on the one hand, he was very serious. He was the most reliable person on earth. If you were his friend, you could rely on him to the end of your life. I mean, he would save you from everything. If you went through you knew that he was your friend. That was it. And he was really charismatic without being aware of it. Really. When he entered the room, the room was filled with his empathy. Unlike Neo,

the introvert, your reefs seemed to know everyone. He had a big personality and he attracted people to him with his wit. And one of the men you reeve had gotten to known Massad was an agent named Eliezer Laser Seded As with me O, Sudeep didn't look much like a secret agent. He was thin and physically unremarkable. My father was just opposite of James Bond. He had walked twice in the street, so you can seem that's the Deep, Son, said Sharon. I spoke to him about his father and

his memories of his father's undercover work. He was modest, It was funny. Everybody loved him. He was very, oh you know, very nice guy. At looking at him, you cannot imagine if you see a fight. But the Deep had a reputation as someone who was tough and relentless, a fearless, hotheaded fighter who never gave up. He had spent his early days in Etzel Or the Ragoon, a right wing paramilitary organization in Palestine. He can cute Jaffa. After the everybody said is that he cannot get it

because it was snipers all over. And he told begging, give me another night, an explosive that will concute Jaffa. And he did it with his men. He'd come of age during the struggle for a Jewish homeland. He met his wife, a nurse, when she treated him for several broken fingers. There's alto a torture session administered by a rival organization. Their love affair played out against the bombings of the War of Independence. They've seen the birth of

the nation together, said his son. They'd fought for it. They were always telling stories about the early days of Israel. Sede was the ultimate late dark character, the mercurial, soulful Sabra with the sad past a. Sabra is a native born Israeli. Saded's wife was the tough one. When he received an invitation to join Massad from a future Israeli prime minister, his wife didn't baden eye, it was called demon, told him, if you want to him to join the Mossad.

So we came to my mother ask her if she accept She said, all right, Look, if you are not going to go. I will go and you stay home to educate our children in my family. Was also a joke that it's America that he went, not my mother, because if he was saying to educate us, we will be no education at all. Sod was soft, kind, funny and again it was a wonderful father. You know, sometimes you think that somebody that they working to Mossa and

and the he killed colonels, you should be something very frightening. No, just olderly nice guy and apparently the kind of guy who would carry out pranks during missions. You really decided to bring Sue Deep onto the killed team. It was a risky choice. So Deed had been involved in the notorious previous mission, the plot to kill the German Chancellor Conrad ad an Hour in March, so theed's commander at the time was angry that the German government was paying

Israel reparations. He considered it to be blood money. The Killed team used a letter bomb to try and get at an Hour, but it exploded before it reached him. It did, however, killed the technician who was trying to defuse the bomb. Sadite was arrested in Paris. Ru's living at the time. He was later released. If something went wrong with the Zuker's mission and Sade's identity was revealed, it could be a big deal in Germany. It could

actually convince Germans not to repeal the amnesty. Sade had once tried to kill the head of the German government after all, but Yariv, like Sude, he insisted he beyond the team. Sadie's mother and grandmother had been born in Riga, the capital of Latvia. That's where the butcher had done most of his killing. Most of Sade's family had lived there before the war. None of them had survived the Holocaust. Maybe suckers had been involved in their deaths Sude didn't

know for sure. After your Reeve told Sude about the butcher, the agent agreed to do the mission. But it wasn't about revenge. There was no hatred of Suker's, Sudet's son told me emphatically none. Sudet saw his chance to send a message to anti Semites everywhere. If someone killed Jews in the future, other Jews would find them. This lack of desire for revenge might not have been true of

the rest of the killed team. Some of them certainly wanted vengeance for what had happened during the Holocaust, but for sud Et this was protection against future atrocities. It wasn't personal for him like it was from Meo. After Sudi, your reeve added two more operatives. The first was zev A Meet, a former paratrooper and devotee of martial arts. A Meat was a very brave guy, typical Sabra, said Sadet's son. He was proud of the country, knew what he wanted, had no self doubts. A Meat had served

in Unit one oh one. It was a controversial special forces team commanded by future Prime Minister Aerial Sharone. Its members were hand picked and they specialized in reprisal raids on Arab infiltrators. Those infiltrators regularly crossed the border from

Jordan's and attacked Israeli villages. Critics accused of one O one ers of killing Arabs indiscriminately, especially during one massacre that happened in in It at least sixty nine Palestinians died when Sharon's men waded into the heavily guarded village and began clearing houses like tossing grenades and spraying the insides with live rounds, but most Israelis considered them intrepid soldiers who lived far out on the knife's edge. Sadite

was delighted when a meat joined the operation. They were a team of two, said Sadet's son. They were always making chokes, even when perhaps they shouldn't have. The last man you we've chose was Multi Kafere, an agent who had grown up tending sheep on an Israeli farm. He later attended the Sorbonne, where he studied history. At Massad, Kafire worked as director of the School for Special Operations. A meeting Kafere would be body men there to neutralize

the butcher. When the time came, you Reave now had his five guys, including himself. That was it. That was the team. Hey, this is Stephen Talty, the host of this podcast Good Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. As I've mentioned a couple of 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 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. There was one problem with your Reeves killed team. None of the guys was very big. Your Reeve was short and thin.

Same for sud. I mean, it was a bit stronger, but he wasn't nearly as big as Sukers and Mio. He was meant to be an observer. Only the team would need to train and how to bring down a strong, desperate man who has just realized he's fighting for his life. In those days, in the early sixties, Massa didn't have guys who specialized in things like that, So You Reeves started asking around who could teach his and how to bring down a brute like the butcher. The takedown had

to be fast and it had to be quiet. Finally you re found a guy. His name was Emi Lichtenfeld. Here's Emi explaining his philosophy on self defense and the fighting technique he created called krav Maga. This tapes not great at times, but I wanted you to hear me in his own voice. He says and he said things. He's what he's said said things. He's that you can defends a sin in three hundred sixty degree and forward angles before I'm making sure and not you our movements.

And I don't get the bolish the guy don't give the nice To understand how Emmy trained the team, I reached out to one of Emmy's closest disciples. My name is Elian Luth. I started training with Emmy when I was about fifteen years old. I trained with him twenty four years until he decided to live to another world. Yes, um, I was his closest assistant for twenty years. Almost according to a y'all, Emmy was a bit of a walking paradox. Emmy was in a way very gentle person, gentlemen center

European education. Um. Or the other hand, he had this other side of his of very strong fighter in time of need, even a brawler in times that was you know, World War two period and a little bit before which we cannot judge with to day's eyes. So he was definitely a man of peace. On one hand, and a man of fighting, protecting, teaching how to kill on the other Lichtenfeld had grown up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia before the war, the son of a hard nosed police inspector who moonlighted

as a jiu jitsu master. Lichtenfeld's father taught his son gymnastics, boxing and wrestling. As a young man, Lichtenfeld appeared bare chested in publicity photos, looking like a lean, sculpted middleweight. He joined the Czechoslovakian national wrestling team and one championships across Europe. Even at five ft six and hundred and fifty pounds, he was a relentless punishing opponent. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, anti Semitic gangs began swarming

into the Jewish quarter in Bratislava. With a young Lichtenfeld lived. If they caught it you alone, the gang would attack him, leaving him blooded down the pavement or bleeding out from stab wounds. The fascist government and brought Uslava offered terrified Jews little or no defense against these mobs. The perpetrators went unpunished. Y'all remembers Emmy describing the situation to him on a daily basis like every day they were fights. Most of the fights would say or big part of

it was, I guess would to put opponents. So this uh fighting the fascists day, night, morning, evenings, on a on a regular basis, what we say, and sometimes huge groups. So he became the unprouned leader of a group of about hundreds of people, and later years we learned that he was also teaching them something, some self defense and fighting.

Here's a great story. One afternoon, Lichtenfeld collected the boxers, wrestlers and amateur bodybuilders he knew from the quarter and marched them out to confront a large group of check men who arrived at the cave. There were hundreds of young thugs waiting. Lichtenfeld, carrying a large blue and white flag adorned with the Star of David, led the Jewish athletes out of the neighborhood. When he spotted the checks, he began waving it back and forth in front of

them like a red handkerchief, take down my flag? Who is the man to take down my flag? And shouting. One guy emerged from the crowd and came towards me, grabbing at the flagpole. Amy took hold of the man's arm hoisted him up and threw him over a cemetery walk. The riders ran away. Later encounters turned into ultra violent melee's. The Checks brought knives and even revolvers to terrorize the Jews. Their confrontations were accompanied by screams, gunshots, and the thud

of bodies on stone. A wasted move could mean a smashed collar bone, a severed vein. Em said there was no time to punch a person twice, So dynamics so visus so fast, and said as he said, no time to punch a person twice to survive, Lichtenfeld created the street fighting technique called crab Maga, close combat and Hebrew, which allowed the Bratislava Jews to inflict the most damage in the shortest possible time. According to a y'all, Emmy's

genius was in the simplicity of his method. Do the most natural, the most simple, based on your natural responses or one thing, but also based on the problem and on the behavior of the attacker. So you must know your enemy first of all this know what he's doing. No, No, the problem, no, the attack, no, the response of the other guy, No, he's natural behavior. But also no yours. So the basic techniques of the system are based on natural responses. So the natural response is the foundation of

the technique. What he taught was ruthlessly real world. Unlike traditional martial arts when academy proclaimed and then add Kravmaga makes no attempt to transform you into a spiritually enlightened warrior. Lichtenfeld left Checklist Slovakia the year after the Nazis invaded, losing an eye in a painful two year journey towards Palestine, which he finally reached in two His mother died at Auschwitz Berkenal and most of his other loved ones were

killed in the Holocaust. The word of Lichtenfeld's expertise and the vicious ares spread in these really defense forces adopted Kravmaga for training its recruits and named the Czech newcomer chief instructor physical fitness. Lichtenfeld, dressed in a white karate uniform, spent decades teaching generation after generation of young soldiers how to gouge, hit and maim, and most importantly, how to be smart about it. Here's em again. Gives you the kick,

the draw him, rolls him on the stomach. He gives him all the kick he breaks, he said, I said, then what you break a dead men said? If you broke him through leaves what he didn't want me? He can stand up, he says, no for what he said, if if you think the kick in the head. When he was contacted by your reeve, Lichton felt agreed to train the team. He didn't care about what the man would do with the skills he taught them, which doesn't come as a surprise to all. He understood the need

to make the mission. It's not my business what they're going to do. My country is calling me. There's a need I give them the tools. Their commanders and them they will use the tools. Who was all in the end the same thing for him. He assumed they were going to hurt those who wanted to hurt Jews. Amy never asked why, nor did he dwell too much on the request he had received, namely, to take a group of men and teach them how to drop a men with one aimed blow. You can't help but suspect a

subconscious motive in choosing Cravmaga. Even Israelis believed that during the war, pale slight Jewish men had been lent to their desks by strapping robust killers, something many of the Sabras regarded with shame. Now, a group of tough Israeli Jews planned to find one of those murderers and strike them to the ground with their bare hands. It would be a tactical way of ensuring silence and stealth, but one has to imagine it was something else as well,

a display of Jewish masculine power. Not everyone, however, was pleased with Lichtenfeld or with the plan to immobilize Seacres before reading him his death sense. When the outspoken Suded heard about it, he was appalled. It's not a movie, he fumed, bring a gun. In secret, the team began to train. Lichtenfeld led the sessions, and he was relentless. Neo had no idea the other team members were training in crapmaga. That was your Reeves thing. Mio didn't need

to know about it. Had he known, he would have been pleased that the other agents were practicing eye gouging, groin kicking, and other moves because he had come to fear sucres physical abilities. He even put this in the report he sent back to your Reeve in Paris. I re iterates and stressed The effect is that despite the late Fund's age of sixty four, havey have us still dangerous men? Alert, physically strong and resourceful. Later Mia would

realize something, You're even. The others didn't believe him at all. My friends stopped. It was exaggerating. It's a danger, You're even. The other agents had been to war, they'd fought young men who were dead set on killing them. They thought they could handle the butcher when they read MEO's report, You're even. The others were deeply skeptical. They thought me it was seeing things in Brazil, knocking off an aching Nazi with white hair. It wasn't going to be a problem.

But you Reeve would later change his mind. Here's Leahy again, your Reeves daughter. He used to say that two Chors was a huge person, just the uge you couldn't imagine before. I mean as many times as you were told before, until you really saw him, you couldn't imagine how gigantic he was. But that change of heart came months after MEO's report, when it was almost too late. This over confidence would soon cause terrible problems for the Bazade team.

Mio had seen the butcher up close. The others had no idea what they were dealing with, but they were soon going to find out. 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 Talti, 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 Had ticket editing, 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. Special thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at u t A Diversion Podcasts