Herberts Cukurs

Herberts Cukurs (17 May 1900 – 23 February 1965) was a Latvian aviator and deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, which carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews in the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial, multiple Holocaust survivors' accounts, including the testimony of Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to war crimes and crimes against humanity.Kaufmann, ''The Destruction of the Latvian Jews'', at 81

After being identified by a local Holocaust survivor in Brazil, who tried to alert authorities after seeing Cukurs' face on the cover a Brazilian magazine, Cukurs was investigated and ultimately assassinated in 1965 during capture by Nazi hunter operatives from the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.
One of the Mossad agents who killed Cukurs, "Künzle," and a journalist, Gad Shimron, authored a book on the experience, ''The Execution of the Hangman of Riga,'' in which they referred to Cukurs as "The Butcher of Latvia", which was later picked up by several other sources.

Biography

Aviation career (1930s–1941)

As a pioneering long-distance pilot, Cukurs won national acclaim for his international solo flights in the 1930s (Latvia-Gambia and Riga-Tokyo). He was awarded the Harmon Trophy for Latvia in 1933, and was considered a national hero, in analogous fashion to Charles Lindbergh.

Cukurs built at least three aircraft of his own design. In 1937, he made a tour visiting Japan, China, Indochina and India, flying the C 6 wooden monoplane "Trīs zvaigznes" (registration ''YL-ABA'') of his own creation. The aircraft was powered by a De Havilland Gipsy engine.

Cukurs also designed the Cukurs C-6bis prototype dive bomber in 1940.

After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, Cukurs was summoned to Moscow in an attempt to recruit him to build planes for the Soviet Union.

Participation in the Arajs Kommando (1941–1944)

In the summer of 1941, during the German occupation of Latvia, Cukurs became deputy commander of the newly formed Latvian Auxiliary Police unit, the Arajs Kommando.

In his book ''The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1945,'' Latvian historian Andrew Ezergailis writes that Cukurs played a leading role in the atrocities that were committed in the Riga ghetto in conjunction with the Rumbula massacre on 30 November 1941. Also available in English as: Andrew Ezergailis, ''The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944: The Missing Center'' (1996), . After the war, surviving witnesses reported that Cukurs had been present during the ghetto clearance and fired into the mass of Jewish civilians.

According to other eyewitness sources, Cukurs was also the most recognizable Latvian SD man at the scene of the Rumbula massacre. Ezergailis states that "although Arājs' men were not the only ones on the ghetto end of the operation, to the degree they participated in the atrocities there, the chief responsibility rests on Herberts Cukurs' shoulders." Cukurs was described as follows:

Later, Ezergailis retracted these interpretations, saying that in light of new documents, it would be wrong to claim that Cukurs had participated in the Rumbula shooting or the burning of the Riga synagogues. During interviews with the press, Ezergailis stated that there is no evidence that Cukurs had been at the pits at Rumbula, and that it has not been proven that Cukurs was "the most eager shooter of Jews in Latvia".

However, according to eyewitness accounts, Cukurs had participated in the burning of the Riga synagogues and the killing of Jews that he had dragged out of their houses, locked inside the synagogue on Stabu Street, set it on fire and shot with his revolver anyone who broke the windows from inside and tried to get out of the burning building.

''Time'' magazine reported at the time of Cukurs' death in 1965, his crimes included setting the Riga synagogue fire, executing over 1,200 Jewish civilians (including infants) forced to stand over a lake (so victims fell into the water) in just one of many massacres he carried out, kidnapping and raping Jewish girls and young women at the Arajs Kommando Headquarters, and his participation in the Rumbula massacre in a forest near Riga. Multiple eyewitnesses said they saw Cukurs snatching infants from the arms of their mothers and shooting them.

Postwar flight and assassination (1944–1965)

Cukurs retreated to Germany with German forces and after the war fled to Brazil via the ratlines. The Brazilian Consulate in Marseille issued the visa for permanent residency on 18 December 1945. The visa did not list the name of the Latvian Jewish woman Cukurs kidnapped and pretended was his wife, but it identified three minor children: Gunārs, Antinea and Herberts.

Once in Brazil, Cukurs established a business in São Paulo, flying Republic RC-3 Seabees on scenic flights. While living in South America, he neither hid nor tried to conceal his identity.

Cukurs was assassinated by Nazi hunting Mossad agents, who persuaded him to travel to Uruguay under the pretense of starting an aviation business, after it was learned that he would not stand trial for his participation in the Holocaust. An acquaintance named "Anton Künzle", in reality the disguised Mossad agent Yaakov Meidad who had taken part in the capture of Adolf Eichmann

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