Herberts Cukurs
Latvian aviator and Nazi war criminal (1900–1965) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Herberts Albert Cukurs (17 May 1900 – 23 February 1965) was a Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator. He served as the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist unit that carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews during the Holocaust.[1][2] Although Cukurs never stood trial, the accounts of multiple Holocaust survivors, including Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to personally supervising[3] and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for the duration of the German occupation of Latvia.[4][5][6] His crimes included shooting Jewish children and babies in captivity,[7] burning Jews alive,[8] and sexually assaulting Jewish women.[8]
Herberts Cukurs | |
---|---|
Born | (1900-05-17)17 May 1900 Liepāja, Courland Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Latvia) |
Died | 23 February 1965(1965-02-23) (aged 64) |
Cause of death | Assassinated by the Mossad |
Nationality | Latvian |
Other names | The Butcher of Latvia The Hangman of Riga |
Occupation | Aviator |
Known for | Involvement in the Holocaust |
Spouse | Milda Bērzupe |
Children | 4 |
Details | |
Span of crimes | 1941–1944 |
Country | German-occupied Latvia |
Target(s) | Jews |
Two decades after World War II, Cukurs was identified in Brazil by a Holocaust survivor, who attempted to alert the authorities after seeing Cukurs' face on the cover of a magazine. Following the discovery, Cukurs was investigated and, in 1965, assassinated by Nazi hunters who were working for Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel.[9][10] In the aftermath of the assassination, Israeli journalist Gad Shimron and one of the Mossad agents ("Künzle") who killed Cukurs authored a book on the experience, titled The Execution of the Hangman of Riga. In it, they referred to Cukurs as the Butcher of Latvia, a name later used by several other sources.[11][12][13][14][15]