S1-E07: The Method of Death

Explicit content warning

05/07/21 • 38 min

By the winter of 1964, the mission was coming into focus. In Brazil, the spy continued to meet with Herbert Cukurs, stoking The Butcher's excitement for his coming wealth and making sure he’d be willing to travel outside of Brazil. Yosef Yariv had chosen his kill team and they were training under the Krav Maga master, Imi Lichtenfeld.

“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, The Good Assassin. Explore other parts of this story in the book: Buy The Good Assassin

Herbert Cukurs was getting excited. He needed money, but more importantly, after being a pariah for years, he needed the encouragement that this high roller "Anton Kuenzle" gave him. Mio had sensed almost from the minute he met Cukurs that the guy was a narcissist.

What the spy didn’t know was that Cukurs was also playing a part. He pretended he was gung-ho, but the truth is he was deeply worried by the idea of leaving the country. Decades on the run had made him a worrier. He knew the Jews wanted him. Who’s to say this wasn’t the nightmare he’d been running away from ever since he left Latvia?

Cukurs thought about it. What Anton Kuenzle offered was so tempting. It was maybe his last chance at getting rich and getting his reputation back. It was too good to pass up. He was leaning towards going. But he wasn’t sure.

The spy flew to Uruguay and its capital, Montevideo. He wanted to see if it could work for the final act of the mission. He rented a car, studied the map, and started searching for a house. He needed something that looked like it could serve as the home base for a respectable company. It had to fool the Butcher.

Cukurs arrived in Montevideo a few days later. He was super excited. He probably hadn’t left Brazil in twenty years and now he was on a vacation with all expenses paid.

This was the important thing. Mio was starting to condition Cukurs, getting him to go in and out of strange houses.

This episode contains interviews with:

• Dr. Sarah Valente: visiting assisstant professor at The Ackerman Center at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Valente studies the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust in Brazil.

• Fernando Butazzoni: award-winning journalist and author of the 2020 book on Mossad's Cukurs mission, Los Que Nunca Olvidarán (Those Who Will Never Forget)

• Avner Avraham: former Mossad agent and renowned expert on Mossad operations

• Gad Shimron: former Mossad agent, journalist, author of several books on intelligence and history

GOOD ASSASSINS: HUNTING THE BUTCHER

• Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY

• Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN

• Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS

• Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN

• Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR

• Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS

• With the voices of: NICK AFKA THOMAS, OMRI ANGHEL, ANDREW POLK, MINDY ESCOBAR-LEANSE, STEVE ROUTMAN, STEFAN RUDNICKI

• Theme Music by TYLER CASH

• Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO

• Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM

Learn more about “Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher” at DiversionPodcasts.com

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, The Good Assassin. Explore other parts of this story in the book: Buy The Good Assassin

Cukurs arrived in Montevideo a few days later. He was super excited. He probably hadn’t left Brazil in twenty years and now he was on a vacation with all expenses paid.

This was the important thing. Mio was starting to condition Cukurs, getting him to go in and out of strange houses.

This episode contains interviews with:

• Dr. Sarah Valente: visiting assisstant professor at The Ackerman Center at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Valente studies the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust in Brazil.

• Fernando Butazzoni: award-winning journalist and author of the 2020 book on Mossad's Cukurs mission, Los Que Nunca Olvidarán (Those Who Will Never Forget)

• Avner Avraham: former Mossad agent and renowned expert on Mossad operations

• Gad Shimron: former Mossad agent, journalist, author of several books on intelligence and history

GOOD ASSASSINS: HUNTING THE BUTCHER

• Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY

• Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN

• Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS

• Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN

• Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR

• Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS

• With the voices of: NICK AFKA THOMAS, OMRI ANGHEL, ANDREW POLK, MINDY ESCOBAR-LEANSE, STEVE ROUTMAN, STEFAN RUDNICKI

• Theme Music by TYLER CASH

• Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO

• Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM

Learn more about “Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher” at DiversionPodcasts.com

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Previous Episode

S1-E06: The Kill Team

The spy had gotten a step closer to the Butcher. Comparing Israel's mission to assassinate Herbert Cukurs to the US mission to assassinate Osama Bin Laden, the latter was revenge. But when Israel and Mossad decided to kill The Butcher of Latvia, it was to prevent more killing of Jews. Things were starting to heat up with the Statute of Limitations, which was the whole reason for the mission: to stop Germany from giving Nazi killers a free pass for their atrocities. Importantly, a famous Nazi hunter joined the cause: Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal was a master publicist and self-promoter and was obsessed with finding the men and women responsible for the Holocaust and bringing Nazis to justice.

“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, The Good Assassin. Explore other parts of this story in the book: Buy The Good Assassin

There was also the question of the assassination method. Mossad had many ways to take someone out, what they called “targeted killings.”

Yosef Yariv's job was to recruit the rest of the team that would fly to South America to join Mio and carry out the sentence on the Butcher. The team would need to train in how to bring down a strong, desperate man who has just realized he’s fighting for his life.

Yariv found a guy. His name was Imi Lichtenfeld. Lichtenfeld had created a street-fighting technique called Krav Maga (“close combat” in Hebrew), which allowed practitioners to inflict the most damage in the shortest possible time. In 1948, the Israel Defense Forces had adopted Krav Maga for training its recruits and named Imi Lichtenfeld Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness. In 1964, Lichtenfeld began to lead secret training sessions with the kill team.

This episode contains interviews with H. Keith Melton, intelligence historian and expert on espionage tradecraft and Eyal Yanilov, co-founder and Chief Instructor of Krav Maga Global.

Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY
Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN
Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS
Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN
Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR
Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS
With the voices of: NICK AFKA THOMAS, OMRI ANGHEL, ANDREW POLK, MINDY ESCOBAR-LEANSE, STEVE ROUTMAN, STEFAN RUDNICKI
Theme Music by TYLER CASH
Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO
Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM

Learn more about “Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher” at DiversionPodcasts.com

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Next Episode

S1-E08: The Ticking Clock

The spy was happy to be back home, but his mission wasn’t complete. The final act was still to take place in Uruguay. So in the Mossad apartment in the heart of Paris, the kill team started to plan the assassination. They were going ahead with the plan. The debate in the German Parliament was coming up in a few months. They all hoped a successful mission would influence it.

“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, The Good Assassin. Explore other parts of this story in the book: Buy The Good Assassin

There was a lot of work to do. The Mossad boss Yosef Yariv had collected all the documents the spy had sent from the field, including maps of Montevideo and São Paolo, information on hotels and renting cars. He’d written down what they'd to get through passport control and what problems the other team members might face. But they still didn’t have a place where the assassination could be carried out. They didn’t even know how it was going to be carried out.

Mossad wanted everyone to suspect that Israel had carried out the killing but it didn’t want any of its agents to get caught. What they were doing wasn’t legal. Cukurs wasn’t going to get a trial or have a lawyer, like Adolf Eichmann had got after Mossad kidnapped him. They didn’t want Mossad to be the story. They wanted Cukurs to be the story.

So the team members had to carry out the killing, gather their belongings, and head to the airport. They had to get on the plane and get safely back to Europe before Cukurs’ body was discovered. That influenced how the assassination would be carried out. It couldn’t be public. It couldn’t be loud. And the body had to be left out of sight, so that someone didn’t stumble on it and raise the alarm before the agents had left the country.

The team members were almost done with their training in Krav Maga, the Israeli fighting system. Imi Lichtenfeld was working them hard.

They were losing precious time. The clock was ticking and Germany’s vote on the amnesty statute was approaching fast. If the mission didn’t move forward soon, all would be lost.

This episode contains interviews with:

• Eyal Yanilov, co-founder and Chief Instructor of Krav Maga Global

• Fernando Butazzoni, award-winning journalist and author of the 2020 book on Mossad's Cukurs mission, Los Que Nunca Olvidarán (Those Who Will Never Forget)

• Avner Avraham, former Mossad agent and renowned expert on Mossad operations

• Gad Shimron, former Mossad agent, journalist, author of several books on intelligence and history

• Chris Costa, veteran of the Department of Defense. US Army counterintelligence, human intelligence, and Special Operations Forces, currently Executive Director of the International Spy Museum

GOOD ASSASSINS: HUNTING THE BUTCHER

• Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY

• Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN

• Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS

• Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN

• Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR

• Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS

• With the voices of: NICK AFKA THOMAS, OMRI ANGHEL, ANDREW POLK, MINDY ESCOBAR-LEANSE, STEVE ROUTMAN, STEFAN RUDNICKI

• Theme Music by TYLER CASH

• Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO

• Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM

Learn more about “Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher” at DiversionPodcasts.com

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Assassins - S1-E07: The Method of Death

Transcript

Speaker 100:00:07.360

Diversion Podcasts. This is Stephen Talty. 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 yo