Diversion podcasts. In my daily life. It was quiet interpreted man, not particularly from this moment onwards. Your name is Anton Kunzla with the better stuff getting used to it. So I left many of the Holoc provivors, and most of them cannot trip it. When there was a knock of the door, all the men line up outside in the machine gun was I remember that the second over wins. Around that stage, my maigor was too tight against the natural negus to abolish the statue of commentation in Germany.
I heard the names of the friends on the collaborators. They used to come to the house chilly because he was wearing a leather jacket and turned around over the door at a pistol book that of his bad conn knew these allegations. Nothing was ever done to bring him to judge. I see a mountain and they see that. In the end, the smell of the corps guided him
to the house j She had nightmares. As far as I remember myself, there was not a single night of the plast quie suspicious that nothing is wrong with this business. Mental pH of lower and life with the Brons for Golden Future and excellent business. A few episodes ago. I started asking listeners for questions. Things you didn't hear in
the podcast, and we're curious about or others worries. The podcast got you thinking of many of your questions prompted me to do new research, and I really liked that. So I'm going to spend this entire episode answering your questions and digging deeper into the issues that you brought up. We've got some amazing questions from all over the world. My name is Johannah and I'm listening from Toronto, Canada. Hi. My name is Mark Lazarus from Chicago, Illinois. Hi. My
name's rub Timmis Varion from Nitland in New South Wales, Australia. Hello, I'm a theory I'm from b and I have some of them were from families of Holocaust survivors. My grandmother escaped Nazi Germany. For someone like me, history, specifically World War Two and the Holocaust, in a sense, it's very close to home. Hi. My name is Leah. I'm a child of Holocaust survivors. My parents were teenagers when they
were in the camps. The sporadic nature of the butcher, how he would just simply turn up and execute someone that is in the story of what my grandpa tall. It was a very similar experience, and a lot of them made me think about aspects of Massad's Zuker's mission that hadn't really occurred to me. Was this sort of process or document used because of legal, judicial or massad internal policy reasons? Did the Massad allow families of these
monsters to continue living in luxury? There was even one from a guy who worked with the soldier with a very shady past. Yeah, I met and worked with a stocky German guy that I was told by the locals had been a member of the s S. Over the next few months, Unta and I became friends. So thanks to everyone who emailed us. I really appreciate your interest. I'm even talty and this as good Assassin's hunting the Butcher. You made a comment that really just kind of sent
chills down my spine. My friends and I loved the podcast, and it has sparked a lot of debate amongst my friends. I am just really curious to understand how people would claim that he's innocent. I remember I literally posed the podcast, took off my headphones and I was just golf smacked. Final those are cool, but I didn't think anything like that happened in real life having discussions over family dinners. So it's been a great, great ride. Episode twelve new
questions and conspiracies, So onto your questions. The first one comes from James mcinness. I'd like to know the background of the family of the butcher. How did I time believing with such a boy? Where they accepting what? Who he want? What? Loving on this guy? Where the pride? Where they just a general background of hound I grew up this person. I was curious about the same thing James. I did find one news article in a Latvian newspaper
from before the war. It talks about Suckers being arrested for publicly whipping one of his sons, and it condemned him for being so brutal to one of his own children. There aren't a lot of details in the story, but apparently he became angry at the boy and started beating him. So it's clear Suckers had a serious temper, and the article indicates was turned on his family at least once. But to be fair, after his death, Zucker's family defended
him to the end. They did interviews in the Brazilian press talking about his good qualities, how he was a loving father and a patriot. They talked about pain of his execution and how they felt an innocent man had been targeted. It's clear that the assassination was a deeply traumatic experience for them. So to answer your question as best I can, I think his family did love him. They were certainly very loyal to his memory for decades afterward.
I hope that answers the question onto the next one. Hi. My name is joh Hannah and I'm listening from Toronto, Canada. My friends and I love the podcast and it has sparked a lot of debate amongst my friend group, and we've settled on two questions that we couldn't quite answer ourselves. The first is did East Germany have a statute of
limitations for Nazi war crimes? The book in the podcast focuses a lot on West Germany, and because my friends and I are a bunch of history majors, we've read a lot about Nazis having a place in Easterman government, which kind of speaks to how denotification was attempted in West Germany and top ranking officials had escaped it. Perhaps to the d DR, Nazis having folks come US seats
very likely would influence Nazi legal standings. So did the d DR have a statute or any punishment for Nazis at all, and did that punishment have a time limit. The second is if Musad had a presence noticeable or not in East Germany, and if they tried to sway Israeli DDR or really Israeli USSR relations through espionage. Thanks so much. We're really enjoying the book as a group right now and the podcast is fantastic. Thank you so much.
Abon karaj Hi Johanna, really good questions. Thanks. The East German part of the story is really interesting. East Germany was under the control of the Soviet Union at the time, and their response to the Nazi question was often purely political. They did not recognize the Statute of Limitations when it came to Nazi crimes, and in fact, they played up the failure of West Germany to prosecute Nazi atrocities that
had happened during the war. So the West German Statute of Limitations became a weapon, a tool for East Germany and the USSR. It was the Soviet Union's position that they had been the key to defeating the Third Reich and they had been far harsher on Nazi criminals than governments in the West had been. There was truth in both of those claims, and the USSR used that wedge very effectively to embarrass the West. They claimed the moral
high ground when it came to x Nazis. They carried out some show trials and would occasionally release the file of an x Nazi living in the West who done horrific things simply to gain an edge in the Cold War. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it became clear that East Germany hadn't been as forthcoming as it could have been. Researchers found a huge number of files on Nazi criminals that the East Germans had never released for various reasons. Those files could have led to many
more prosecutions of killers and torturers. So even though East Germany claimed to be the more righteous, it turned out that they had just as many skeletons in the closet as West Germany did. As far as Joanna's second question, did Massad have any presence in East Germany, the answer is little to none. The two countries never had diplomatic relations, and they never exchanged ambassadors or maintained embassies in each other's countries. Berlin was a hot spot for American and
British spies. That's where John Lecare's first novel was set, but much less so for Massad. The main issue for the Israelis was probably that East German politics were largely being directed from Moscow, so why not do your spying in Moscow? East Germany and the other satellites weren't where the action was from Massad, they had much more pressing issues to address than what was happening on both sides
of the Berlin Wall. Another question that arrived by email. Hi, my name is Jason Friend from Virginia in the United States. I have a question about MEO and other spies living in Europe. How would they keep their cover in a place like Paris without the French government knowing? Or did they know? Yeah? Perceptive Jason. Let me start with the second part and then work back. Basically, do countries know
that their allies are spying on them? They do? The basic rule is that a spy living in a friendly country is supposed to only have contact with his counterparts. That means a CIA officer living in London is allowed to have lunch with an officer from m I six, the British spy agency. They're also allowed to have joint operations with friendly spy agencies that the two countries have a similar objective in mind. They might partner up on a mission. But that's where things are supposed to stop.
You're not supposed to conduct espionage on your allies, but of course governments do all the time. Right now, my country, the US is spying on several of our closest allies, including France and Germany and the UK, and they're spying on us. We want to know what our governments are planning in counter terrorism, in technology and trade, not what they're saying publicly, what they're actually planning on doing. Now, as far as the first part of Jason's question, how
did MIO and the others operate in France? Often spies work under the cover of a diplomatic mission. Embassies are hotbeds for intelligence officers who have a fake title and a fake job that allows them to spend most of their time on espionage. But me and the others did not have diplomat to cover. They were simply Israeli citizens who had gotten visas to stay in Europe, so they had to lie low, pretend to be ordinary business people or visitors who loved Paris so much that they decided
to live there. Whether the French government knew about their activities, that's a fascinating question. Most spy agencies direct their counter intelligence efforts at their enemies. Keeping track of agents from your allies isn't a top priority unless they screw up in a spectacular way and embarrass themselves, or if they steal a major military secret or piece of hardware. Then all bets are off. Friends then have to act like enemies, and spies are sometimes expelled from the country in question.
My best guests is that your Eve and the others kept their heads down, obeyed the laws of France, and had basic covers as some kind of business men. France had bigger fish to fry in the mid sixties. I doubt they were overly concerned about a few massad agents using Paris as a base of operations, so long as they kept under the radar. The next question came in
by email from Garrett Davies. Hi, Stephen, I just had a question regarding the statute of limitations in relation to Zookers, which you may be able to shed some light on. I was wondering why the German law would apply to Zookers even though he was a Latvian citizen. Could he still not have been prosecuted in his home country. That's a great point. I've often wondered why Massad chose a Latvian to go after instead of a German. After all, it was the Third Reich that triggered the Holocaust, not
the Latvians, or the Lithuanians or the Poles. So why target Zookers, a guy from this small country that didn't play a big part in the war. In my research into the possible targets for the mission, their nationality never came up. It was always about two things, the seriousness of their crimes and the ability of Massad to locate them quickly. But I do think their nationality played a part.
Think about it. If Massad went and assassinated the German, what would that have done to public opinion in Berlin and elsewhere. Killing someone's countrymen, even if he's done horrible things, is never popular. If Massad had assassinated a prominent German, they probably would have doomed the mission. There would have been a huge public backlash, and it would have affected not only the Statute of Limitations, but a whole range of issues between Germany and Israel, war reparations, trade, the
list goes on and on. My theory is that it was just too dangerous, too counterproductive to go after a German. The bad news for Sukers was that Latvia wasn't a powerful nation. In fact, after the Soviet annexation of the country, Latvia didn't even exist in so the consequences for killing a Latvian would be much less severe. You could illustrate to Germans the kind of monsters that were still out there without actually killing one of their citizens. Was the
best of both worlds. Hi, my name is Cameron. I'm a big fan of the podcast. I actually got some impatient following along that I ended up buying the book. Mew and the team seemed to have a formalized judgment document or speech or some sort of written piece that they intend to read to Zookers at his execution. It's betrayed as a sort of all encompassing legal document that functions as the predetermined outcome. In opinion of judge Drury
into ex cutioner. Was this sort of process or document used because of legal judicial or MASSAD internal policy reasons? Who wrote the judgment? And at what point in the government decision making process is this judgment made and written out? Like did the high level government officials that named zookers for execution? Right? This did Massad? Or did MEO or yuive themselves? Right? It? Was this a common occurrence in MASSAD operations or in government or state sponsored assassinations at
the time. Was it a formality or a requirement? And was this done for non Nazi related MASSAD operations like those against the plotters of the Munich Olympic attacks in nineteen seventy two. Did the document have legal ramifications in Israeli, Uruguayan or Brazilian international law? Thanks for any responses, Thanks Cameron. I had never actually thought about that part of the mission, and it's a tough one to answer. Massad is usually
a bit of a black box. It's very secretive as our most by agencies, hard to tell who did what, so I'm not sure who wrote the verdict. I suspect it was someone at MASSAD, maybe even Joseph. Your Reeve was the head of the unit carrying out the operation and had the responsibility for all of its tactics. If Meo had written the verdict, I think he would have talked about it, so my guests, and it's only a guess is that yr Reeve, as the team boss, sat
down and wrote it out. As to why, I think it's clear it wasn't for legal reasons or judicial ones. It certainly wasn't a Massad policy. In fact, I've never heard of them doing this again in any of their other operations. It was a combination of two things, clarity and public relations. Massad knew the body was going to be discovered. Of course, they wanted it to be discovered, and they wanted it known that Zukers didn't die in a business deal on wrong, that he wasn't the victim
of some home invasion or robbery. It was important for the mission that Sucre's death retied clearly to his crimes. The verdict would also serve as a warning to other Nazi criminals. Massad wanted them to live in fear. The second part was public relations. Massad knew that news about the killing would be a sensation, and they wanted the verdict to get into the news reports. The verdict was really aimed at the German public. These were the man's
crimes carried out under the Nazi regime. Look at the life Sucers was living, look at the atrocities he committed. They were saying something's wrong here. Sucers and thousands of others never faced a court of justice, and if the statute passes, they never will. So it was intended to jab at the conscience of Germans and other countries who could put pressure on Germany. Hi, my name is Mimi.
I'm from San Francisco, UM. I have a question about something mentioned in one of the early episodes about the Zookers having supporters. I am just really curious to understand how people would claim that he's innocent with all the testimonials from victims that you have and have shared, is there any evidence pointing to innocence? Thanks by thanks me me. I've had other people asked me about this, so I'm glad you sent the question in. Those who support Herbert
seekers fall somewhere along the spectrum. I think there are a few hardcore anti Semites and Holocaust deniers who see the focus on perpetrators as being some kind of conspiracy. There are let and nationalists who say that Suckers may have done something during the war, but nothing has been proven, and there are many people who say that Latvian suffering before and after the war has never gotten equal time with the Holocaust, So why should they spend time on
Sukers crimes when other crimes are being ignored. We talked about this a bit in episode ten. I think the big issue is the lack of a trial. Some supporters brings up again and again they compare it to a normal criminal case. We might have five or ten people saying that a suspect committed a crime, but those witnesses need to be interrogated, their timelines need to be examined,
and the suspects alibi needs to be checked out. It's all the mechanics of due process that they feel are missing, and that's what makes them stop short of calling him a war criminal. There were some testimonies about Suckers that were almost certainly adjurated. There are stories of him impaling babies on his bayonet, and frankly, I don't believe that ever happened. Those kinds of accounts do pop up here and there among Holocaust survivors with human nature. I think
that's inevitable. A huge crime was committed and people want to testify to how horrible it really was. For me, the many testimonies that are authentic, along with the fact that other commandos also acknowledged Suker's crimes and his behavior after the war, makes me convinced that Sukers collaborated with the Nazis and the murder of thousands of Jews. If you've done the research as I have, the evidence is just overwhelming. The next question comes to us from David
Rochester in Surrey in the UK. My name is David Rochester and I've been listening to your podcast, Hunting the Butcher. I'm not finished it yet, almost don't want it to end. It is just brilliant and so gripping and brutal at the same time. But one of the things that I would love to get a bit more background on is the fact that when he went to South America he had a young girl, a Jewish girl with him. What
happened to her, how and why was she there? But more intriguing is a bit of background on his wife, because the whole thing sounds a bit bizarre that he could do that with his children and his wife and his wife, Is there any background at all on on the relationship because he was clearly a tough and I would assume extremely brutal and individual. Um. So, so that's really well. I would like to to hear a bit
more on so. Um. Thank you very much for a fantastic podcast, and hopefully you will give me a response. Thank you, bye bye. I can answer one part of this question better than the other. Milda Zuker's wife is a bit of a mystery. From all accounts, she was a loyal and loving wife and at least publicly never questioned what Suckers did. Neo and his brief mentions of her and Zone Writings describes mild Suckers as somewhat timid
and not a strong character in the marriage. Maybe Sucker scared her, or maybe she just loved him, maybe both, We just don't know. As for Miriam, yeah, it's a crazy story. After Zukers was exposed as a war criminal, it seems that the two rarely oak. I heard that her family didn't want her to be in touch with Suckers. They didn't want her to get involved any deeper than she already was. When I wrote my book The Good Assassin. I did get in touch with Miriam's daughter, Helga, who
lived in the US at the time. She told me that her mother rarely spoke about Suckers or the war, and her guests was that it was just too painful. Miriam lost many loved ones in the Holocaust and just wanted to move on with her life. But one thing is clear. When she was called upon by Jewish leaders in Brazil, she backed up Sucre's story that he'd rescued her during the war and had hit her from Nazi soldiers. Subsequently,
I uncovered an update to the story that's just wild. Helga, Miriam's daughter, actually traveled back to Latvia in two thousand nineteen to search for her family's history There. In Latvia, she met with Suker's daughter Tonya and thanked the family for saving her mother. She went up to the attic in the Zuker's farmhouse where Miriam hid during the war years. One day, a passer by apparently spotted Miriam looking out
the window. That sighting placed the Zookers in danger. If the Nazis found out a Jewish girl was living there, there'd beheld a pay. It probably wouldn't have mattered that Zukers was working with Nazi troops either, So Zukers had Miriam dye her hair blonde and passed her off as a teacher who was instructing the Suckers children. That's how she made it through the war disguised as a gentile.
So it's complex. Miriam was clearly grateful to Zukers the testimony of her being kept as a kind of sex slave. She never addressed that publicly. It seems to me that she chose to remember the good things that Zukers had done for her and to let the other stuff go. It's a choice that many Holocaust survivors had to make. Hi. My name is Leah. I'm a child of Holocaust survivors. My parents were teenagers when they were in the camps. My father actually escaped and became a partisan. The only
surviving member of either family was my maternal grandmother. So my question is when they would hunt Nazis. A lot of these guys were able to stock away quite a bit of money from all the things they stole and looted, and their families lived quite well. So I wondered did the Massad allow the families of these monsters to continue li in luxury, or were any of these things taken from them, or were the families touched in any way? Was there any retribution in taking out any of these
bastard's families. I guess that's a few questions. Thanks so much and I love your podcast. Hi Lah, thanks for the question. The short answer is no, Massad didn't concern itself with recovering things stolen from Jewish families during the war. There were just too many other things that they identified as more urgent and that just wasn't their mission anyway. But it doesn't mean that ex Nazis always kept the things that they stole from Jewish victims. That part of
the Holocaust story has been left to the lawyers. There have been many cases of Jewish survivors or their families going to court to recover paintings or home or other valuables. It often takes years, if not decades, but many survivors have won their cases and gotten back art with many millions. But of course there are thousands of cases that were never pursued, and we're justice never had a chance to prevail. The next and last question is fascinating. Give it a listen.
In the mid nineteen seventies, I was a young English engineer working for the Algerian National Oil Industry sound a
track at skeet to Algeria. There I met and worked with a stocky German guy that I was told by the locals had been a member of the s S. Gunta, who was in his early sixties, had a scar on the under side of his left arm, and after working with him for a few weeks, he confirmed to me that he had in fact been a member of the s S and at the end of the war he had joined the French Foreign Legion and had been based
in Algeria. After an unspecified term of service, Gunta had been given a new identity by France and could live a normal life. Over the next few months, Gunta and I became friends, although he refused to discuss his earlier life. My question is is it true France offered s S and other war criminals immunity from prosecution in return for
the service in the French Foreign Legion. I'd actually never heard about this, so I had to do a little digging, and it appears that Gunter just might have been telling the truth. Here's two things I learned in my research. The French Foreign Legion has always been popular with Germans for reasons too complex to go into here. In fact, a lot of Germans joined the French Foreign Legion before and during World War Two and actually went off to
fight the Nazis in North Africa. Because of this, books about the Legion were burned in German cities and towns, and the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels even announced that young German men were being hypnotized into joining crazy. I had no idea that this ever happened. The second thing I learned until quite recently, the Legion didn't require you to reveal your identity when you joined up. You didn't have to give your real name, your real nationality, or
provide any papers at all about your background. The Legion, of course, became a destination for men running away from all kinds of things, bad marriages, horrible crimes, even genocide. So it's highly possible that Gunter, looking for a way out to avoid prosecution, joined the Legion under a fake name. One statistic I saw in my research about the men in the Legion from to nineteen fifty four had German roots, most of them to fight for France in the First
Into China War. In Vietnam, over seventy two thousand legionnaires fought under the French flag and over ten thousand of them were killed there. So here's what might have happened. Gunter was an s S member who needed a new life. He joins the Legion after v E Day, and most likely he gets sent to Vietnam. He serves there under an assumed name, fighting for French interests, and after a period of three years, any member of the Legion is
eligible to apply for French citizenship. That's the law. If Gunter performed well, he would easily have gotten a residency permit and then full nationality. So if Gunter was telling the truth, it would be going too far to say that France recruited him and gave him a new identity. But it's likely that he joined the Legion under a fake name and eventually was able to become a French citizen. With no record of his past on the books, Gunter
found a way to watch his record clean. He escaped responsibility the terrible things he probably did during the war. All it took, most likely was risking his life and another deadly conflict. Half a world away from home, Zookers chose an easier route. He went to Brazil, water skied and built a business. He too, came very close to escaping his past. If it hadn't been for the handful of men and women that you've met in this series, I really think he would have gotten away with it.
I love the show, really, really fantastic. I just have to know, are you guys doing another season? I love for you guys to make a season two, and I think it'd be cool with you guys did it in the Vietnam War era, just because my grandpa wasn't the war. Absolutely love if you did a season two. Season one was so engaging, so awesome. One question that I keep hearing is will there be a season two of Good Assassins and what will it be about. The answers are yes,
and I'm not sure yet. We're looking at a few espionage operations that have always intrigued me, but we want to find something that's just as suspenseful and complex as Meal's operation, and then we'll do the kind of deep dive that you guys seem to appreciate. So there will definitely be a season two of the Good Assassin's podcast, and you should look out for it some time later in the year. So that's it for now. I really hope you enjoyed listening to Good Assassins Season one as
much as I enjoyed making it. If we get more questions in, I'll be happy to answer them in a future episode, and I hope you'll keep an eye out for more spies and more Cloak and Dagger in season two. 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, Theme music by Tyler Cash, Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at U t A.