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Herberts Cukurs (17 May 1900 - 23 February 1965) was a Latvian aviation pioneer and deputy leader of the Arajs Kommando militia during World War II. Although he never came to trial, multiple eyewitnesses have linked Cukurs to the mass murder of Latvian Jews during The Holocaust. He was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad in 1965 in retaliation for his atrocities. His assassination is the subject of the nonfiction book The Execution of the Hangman of Riga, authored by the Mossad agent who killed him.
Biography
Prior to the war, Cukurs received national acclaim for his international solo flights in the 1930s and was awarded the Harmon Trophy for aviation in 1933. He built at least three aircraft of his own design, including a wooden monoplane with which he made an international flight to Japan, Chine, Indochina and India. He also designed the Cukurs C-6bis dive-bomber in 1940.
During the 1941 - 1944 occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany, Cukurs served as deputy leader of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist group linked to the genocide of the Jewish population of Latvia. Cukurs has been linked by eyewitnesses to several of the most infamous atrocities committed by the group. He was present during the liquidation of the Riga Ghetto, the area where Latvian Jews were forced to inhabit, and is reported to have fired into the crowd of Jews during the event. He was also one of the main perpetrators of the Rumbula Massacre, during which 25, 000 Jews were murdered by the Arajs Kommando and the Einsatzgruppen. Cukurs was at the Ghetto just before the victims were marched from there to killing pits and gave orders to the soldiers who carried out the massacre. Several witnesses identified Cukurs as being one of the perpetrators of the burning of synagogues in Riga in 1941. According to survivors, Cukurs was the leader of the soldiers who burned the synagogue on Stabu Street and had dragged Jews out of neighbouring houses and locked them in the synagogue before setting it on fire, shooting several who attempted to break the windows and escape.
When Latvia was liberated in 1944, Cukurs fled to Brazil using the ratlines. He took up residence in São Paulo, making no attempt to hide his identity under the assumption that no-one there would recognise him. He was wrong; a Jewish resident recognised him as a Holocaust perpetrator in 1964 and sent a photograph of him to Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Mossad had only four years earlier abducted and tried Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann, but this time they decided to make an example out of Cukurs by assassinating him. Mossad agent Yaakov Meidad, under the alias Anton Künzle, befriended Cukurs and convinced him to travel with him to Uruguay, where he lured him into a recently-rented apartment and shot him twice in the head. Several documents pertaining to his crimes and a note pronouncing the death sentence on Cukurs were left next to his body.