He seemed very strong, quite physically fit.
48 hours after sighting his target, Agent Kunzel returns to the marina.
This time to meet with Herbert Sugers.
I decided to hire him for sightseeing flight over S.
Paulo.
Sukus is a very good pilot.
In the 30s it was a national hero in Latvia because he uh built an airplane flew from Ria to Gambia in West Africa non-stop flight.
Zukas was indeed the Latvian Lindberg the most famous man of daring do in Lapia and that part of the world at the time.
After the flight the Lapian Nazi invites the Israeli spy for a drink.
He took me to his captain’s cabin.
I saw a gun on his boat.
I got tense because for Sukus there was no problem to murder.
Anton Kinsler started telling Sukus that he’s a businessman showing him he has money has connections.
Zukers sees Kunzel’s obviously a man seemingly of great wealth.
The Zukas on the other hand has made very very little money running his flying boat higher pleasure flight business but he lived extremely modestly and he had uh financially a very very tough time.
I told him that I had come to invest capital in South America in tourist business you are connected to it that would interest me to talk to you and that’s his way of tugging at Zukas’s greed.
Zuker admits quite quickly to Konzel that he has this incredibly dark past.
He said, you know, they say I am a war criminal.
His remark that I’m a Nazi criminal could be a way of testing to see who is the guy in front of him and Kunler should know.
He didn’t react, you know.
Okay, so people say you are a Nazi criminal.
I mean, okay.
He asked counselor what were you doing during the war? I knew he was a captain in this case.
I I started I was a little lower.
So I made myself a loiterant and I said and I also was wounded on the eastern front and suku said really.
I open in my shirt why I had an operation in Tel Aviv hospital and I said I got wounded on the Russian front.
He had some sort of mole or something removed and of course he claimed this was some sort of wound that he had received.
And of course, all this helped build up the story that he had indeed been a serving officer of the fatherland.
And Zuk started to believe it all.
He said, “You know, why don’t you come to see me during the week in my home?” I said, “I don’t know when I shall come back.
” Kunzel knows in order to get his man, he doesn’t want to, like the suitor at a disco, go in straight away and and lay his intentions straight up.
So, he plays the long game.
I wanted to let him boil in his oil.
Not so quick.
who goes slow, goes far and goes safe.
Kinsler went back to the hotel and he sent a message back to headquarters in Tel Aviv.
It was in Secret Inc.
The message said, “The fish has swallowed the bait.
[Music] I left him in doubt and after a week or so came back.
Sukos invites Kinsley to have dinner with his family.
He lived in a house which looked like a fortress.
It’s a fortified house with bobbed wires around and dogs and the search lights.
It was defined enough to show him, look, I’m well protected.
It’s really going into the lion’s lair.
No backup team, no protection.
If the family is suspicious that he’s maybe a Mossad agent, they can kill him, throw away his body, nobody will know about it.
I meet his wife, his son.
Sukus shows him his medals from the war.
He showed him his collection of guns.
Handguns, a mouser, a bareta, you know, different calibers.
I thought it might be a warning.
He thought, “I like you, but be sure to know that I know how to protect myself.
” Zukers wants to always make out that he’s the big man.
And at the same time as Kunel is trying to subtly impress Zookers.
Zuckers is not so subtle in the way he tries to impress Kunzel.
He tries to make out, I’d be a good business partner for you.
And he claims he has this plantation outside town.
[Music] He took me close to the jungle.
It’s quite a long drive and obviously, you know, people will need a little rest break.
Kunzel suddenly realizes because he’s circumcised, this could be a problem if Zukers sees this when they uh urinate on the side of the road.
Kunza was very cunning about it and he worked out that if Zuckers actually had seen his penis and and inquired as to why it lacked a foreskin, he was going to say, “Ah, well, I caught Gonaria in a military brothel on the Russian front and one of the forms of treatment was to be circumcised.
[Music] At the plantation, the stakes are suddenly raised.
Zuka says, “Hey, I want to have a little shooting match, a little competition with you.
” He had a sporting rifle with him.
I thought it might be my end.
Could Zukers have been more cunning than him? Could he have lured him up to the banana plantation to kill him? So they set up a target.
Zooker shoots first and he gets a very nice grouping and Kunzel goes, “Well, it’s the type of practice got from shooting Jews running away from him on the streets of Ria.
” Kunzel then is given the rifle and said, “Do you still know how to shoot?” I said, “Yes.
” Sukus didn’t know that Anton was a real marksman.
I was the first in Israel to volunteer for the British army.
Kinsler made five or six beautiful shots.
He shoots within a 3 cm grouping.
It’s like that classic moment between two men and one had got the better one than the other.
So he said you’re all right.
Zukas admits Kunzel has the better shot.
It’s a key moment in the hunt.
And it occurs to Kunel, well I can just do the job now.
I shoot to course hide his body.
Mission accomplished.
Nobody will know.
I decided not to execute it.
I was afraid I might be miscovered.
In Brazil at the time, there was still capital punishment.
Imagine to yourself a Jewish Mossad agent being hanged because he was trying to execute a Nazi.
Zukers suddenly accepts that Kel probably is what he says he is.
He started to call him her Anton in order to say, “I understand you are the boss.
” Psychologically, it strengthened Sukur’s confidence.
Over the following weeks, the Israeli spy gets closer to the marked man.
He takes him for a round of of night life, you know, glamour.
He notices Zukus is very in control.
He nurses his drinks and he’s very nervous about those around him.
And at one point he even suspects one of the waiters I think of being Jewish and and thinks that maybe this guy is following him.
He was very very wary of anybody trying to approach him because he he he knew of course that Aishman was kidnapped by the Mossad and at the time there were stories that the Mossad is hunting Nazis all over the world.
Zukaz is borderline paranoid.
Anton Kinsley continued all the time slowly to implant the seeds of trust in Tukur’s mind.
Sentence here, sentence there about his financial abilities and his companies.
The moment I am in action, I’m very cool.
I was confident.
Zukos trusted me.
He keeps feeding Zuker’s little titbits that we maybe will set up some company here to do this.
Maybe you could get involved, Herbert, me old friend.
But Kunel can tell that there is that suspicion there.
So he’s very careful not to promise him too much.
And Sukus is getting greedier and greedier.
The kaching sound is going in his head.
He’s thinking there’s some cash here.
Maybe this Mr.
Kinslay is his way out of lower income class to the world that Sukus believes he should belong to like his heydays in the Second World War.
On the first day of the occupation, I was 16 years old and there was a knock at the door and there was her circus and they said, “You’re a Jew.
You get outside.
Doesn’t matter what you were.
” That’s the last time I saw a dad and that was the beginning of the end.
Tukus came in and threw us out of my apartment.
He took all our belongings.
They built a ghetto in the outskirts of town.
Bob wired it called the Ria ghetto where they shoved us into the ghetto and I kissed my mom goodbye for the last time.
The next morning they were gone.
The Jews were driven out of the ghetto at Ria by Zukers and his men to the forest where tens of thousands of people were murdered.
Three people survived and luckily we have the testimony of some of those.
He wouldn’t just shoot adults, he would shoot children in front of their parents.
And there are testimonies which has him shooting a baby in front of um its mother.
Within 4 months I lost my mother and father.
My entire family was wrapped out.
They were killed in the mass graves.
You could hear screaming and hollering.
The children were hollering.
The women was crying.
We could actually hear the the guns.
Later on, Sukus occupied my apartment.
And at night time, he would have me come upstairs to my own apartment and play the piano while he was entertaining his girlfriends.
I could hear sukus laughing and drinking and having fun and there I am sitting and playing.
It was horrible.
Even though I survived, this is something I can never get [Music] over.
The Israeli spy spends more and more time with the Latvian Nazi.
They scout for new investments.
They plan future businesses.
Kunzel realizes after many more meetings with Zukas that things are going extremely well and he realizes that things are now getting into place in order to actually perform the final part of the mission i.
e.
the execution.
3 weeks after their first meeting, Kunzil tells Zukers he has to return to Europe to take care of business.
I said I shall send you telegram and I left for Europe.
I left him hoping he would be again a rich and important person.
But when Anton Kunel returns to South America, he will not be alone.
In Europe, Anton Kunzel plans the next phase of his operation against Nazi Herbert Zukers.
Kunzel goes back to Paris where he discusses with his fellow agents what’s the best place to kill him.
We decided that if we shall execute him, it would not be in Brazil, but in Uruguay.
There’s a big big Jewish community in Brazil.
And if this is seen as Jews killing a Nazi, then there’s going to be a backlash um against the Jewish population.
Uruguay was more democratic than Brazil at the time.
A very small Jewish minority.
It wouldn’t cause such a repercussion and also important no capital punishment.
Monte Vido, the capital of Uruguay.
They decide that’s the best place.
They decide to lure him into isolated place.
Someone from the team would read to him a charge that he was personally responsible for the murder of 30,000 Jews of Ria and execute him on the spot.
He’s a very very big solid guy and you see pictures of him and he’s got four arms the size of like you know boxers.
He’s a fearsome proposition.
They were expecting to have some kind of a fight.
A hit team is built up.
Four MOSAD people.
They are given course in man-to-man combat.
They spend a lot of time practicing their karate moves and how to do their martial arts.
The hit squad is primed.
The balding spy sends the hangman of Ria a letter urging him to come to Monte Vido.
As an incentive, he includes a check for plane tickets and expenses.
Kunzel decides I can say that we have a business opportunity we want to explore there.
We’re a big business.
We we can do this.
Zukas is reluctant because he’s very worried about leaving the country.
He feels threatened.
He feels unsafe because he won’t have the protection of his friends and family around.
He was always suspicious.
But for the impoverished Nazi, the money proves irresistible.
Sukus had no passports, so he had to file for an Brazilian passport.
and Kunel helps him with background letters and documents saying that he’s employing him as his associate.
A week later, Zuker sends a telegram to Kunul confirming he’ll meet him in Monte Vido.
The trap is set.
The team of Mosad agents fly out and they fly into different places at different times, but they all meet in Monte Vido in order to plan the next part of this mission.
And it was very hard for the agents to find the property they needed in which they could kill him.
But eventually they found up this little suburban area part of Monte Vido what seemed like the perfect property.
It was a one-story [Music] house.
The neighboring property there were builders working.
Murdering people can tend to make quite a lot of noise and clearly having a load of builders next door was not going to be helpful.
But time was tight, so they thought it’ll just have to do.
[Music] All that’s missing is the target.
To ensure Zucas doesn’t back out, Kunzel decides to meet him in Sa Paulo and travel with him to Monte Vido.
And at Sao Paulo, he steps off the plane and there’s Zukas, ready to greet him.
Zukas has a Super A camera and he’s filming him.
When I stepped down from the plane, he started in front of me and took my picture by tried to cover my face.
And Kunzel, of course, is absolutely appalled by this because like any good spy, he doesn’t want to be photographed.
He then says to Zuckers, “Hello, Herbert.
Have you got all your papers to go to Uruguay?” Zukas goes, “No, I haven’t got them yet.
Haven’t sort of um got round to it.
” I sharply spoke to him and said, “If you want business with me, never do this again.
Never send me a telegram.
You are ready and you’re not ready.
” Kunzel decides I need to behave like this man’s boss.
And it’s a great bit of bluff cuz it works completely.
I went on I say you send me a telegram to Monte Vido to my hotel in the meantime that he prepare visit.
Zukus eventually gets the paperwork sorted out.
Zukus get his passport and then he can fly to Monte Vido to meet his good business associate Mr.
Anton [Music] Kinsley.
Before he leaves, Zuckers does something odd.
He gives his wife the Super 8 film he took of Kunzel at the airport.
Was it because he just wanted, you know, to have some footage of a short balding mustached man? No.
Sukus had this cunning.
He was always suspicious of cons.
Sukus told his wife, “If anything happens to me, this is the man who responsible.
5 months after the MSAD mission was launched, the Latvian Nazi sends word he’s flying to Monte Vido, he meets the Israeli assassin at his hotel.
They check in into the very expensive hotel, which is also part of the plan, you know, to calm down Tukur to show him that everything is going according to plan from the beginning.
Sukurus had dual feeling towards Kunle.
On one hand, you know, he saw it as a as a chancy encounter with an Austrian ex officer in the Vermach who is a businessman and he’s promising promising promising all kind of good things for the future.
On the other hand, Sukur was a very clever person.
He was alert all the time.
He knew that after the war he will have to pay for his crimes.
He knew that he is not [Music] innocent.
Neil was very suspicious.
Zukuzi is still greedy for money and even though he’s got suspicions about Kunzel, he’s going to go along with it cuz he’s desperate for the cash.
So he says to Zukas, “Look, I really need your advice to help me find a new sort of business premises or satellite office.
So, uh, could you help me come and have a look around a few like potential buildings we could use as offices?” So, the two men do a lot of driving around in a VW Beetle, looking at various premises.
It’s a way of trying to make zukers just feel a bit more relaxed.
After going around Monte Vida for a while, Anton Kunler tells Tukulus, “I want to show you another place.
This is his last ride to the villa where they’re going to execute him.
” Anton Kinsle needed to signal the team that everything is going according to plan.
I left the car without enough petrol.
I stopped at a certain petrol station.
Another member of the team is waiting on the other side of the road.
He signaled him that everything is [Music] okay.
The lookout alerts the head squad to meet at the house.
[Music] They took off their clothes because they were expecting to have some kind of a fight.
They knew it would not pass without violent reaction from Tokos.
Things could be very messy and very bloody.
[Music] [Music] Kunlay walks first, you know, to show that he’s the boss.
If I open the door and say go in, he will know.
If I go in, he will come after me.
And he’s thinking, I can’t hear him behind me.
Is he Is he going to follow me? Is he suspicious? Is this the moment where suddenly Zukas runs up to me and just hits me in the back of the head and that’s me gone.
And eventually he hears footsteps and Zukers is is walking up behind him and he thinks it’s going to happen.
[Music] She opens the door, walks in, and suddenly the agents jump on him.
Zukus is fighting for his life.
He managed to rush through the door and the most horrendous fight takes place.
One jumped him and immediately threw him down.
He fought like a lion.
All these young Moscow agents were all being, you know, held off by Zukas.
Zukas reached to his own gun.
A hammer is produced.
Zukas pretty much crumples, but he’s not dead.
He started shouting, “Last me.
Let me speak.
” And two shots are fired.
into his head.
And that was the end of Herbert Zukers.
Agents in underpants, covered in blood, looking down at the hangman of Ria.
He was gone.
The plan to incapacitate Zukers and read aloud the judgment against him was abandoned in the struggle.
They had prepared in advance a huge trunk.
[Music] He was put in the box.
They attach a note to his bloodstained body saying considering the gravity of the crimes of which Helbert Sukus is accused notably his personal responsibility in the murder of 30,000 men, women and children and considering the terrible cruelty shown by Helbert Sukus is carried out his crimes.
We condemn the Serukus to death.
He was executed on 23rd February 1965 by those who will never forget.
He dressed up and each one went his own way according to plan and then they all make their way back to Paris.
The job is done.
Back in Paris, the Mossad team needs to get word out that Herbert Sukers has been executed.
We contacted paper agencies in Uguay to tell them that the body of this gruesome murderer will be found in a house in Mido.
He called a newspaper in Paraguaya.
The telephone call to the agency was received by a junior editor, never paid any attention to it.
And the people in the Mosada are waiting one day, two day, 3 days.
Nothing happens.
No one believes that this has happened.
And in the meantime, Zukat’s family are starting to get a little bit worried about what’s happened to their loved one.
This is the first time Herbert Zuker’s son has spoken on television.
For the first few days, we thought everything was normal.
Then after a few days, that’s when we began to worry.
So then somebody called up another agency in Antido and gave them full details.
And this time one of the editors decided this is serious enough and called the police.
[Music] 12 days after the execution, Monte Vivido police find the maggotridden body in the trunk inside the house on Cartahena Street.
The policeman opened the trunk and there was Zukers’s body.
It had bloated.
It was an absolutely vile thing to look at.
A thumb print from the body matches the print on Zuker’s passport.
As intended, the news travels like wildfire.
I was listening to the radio and heard they found a body in Uruguay.
I caught this terrible feeling.
A wave of anti-semitism breaks out.
Synagogues were burnt down in both Uruguay and in Sa Paulo.
There were lots of random acts of low-level violence, but there wasn’t any sort of massive reprisal carried out.
It seems Israel’s message is heard loud and clear.
4 days after the body is found, the German government reacts.
They extend the deadline on prosecuting Nazi war criminals.
But in Monte Vido, police have a homicide to solve.
The family showed pictures of Kunzel to the world’s media.
We gave them the picture that was taken at the airport.
It was all we had, but it was too late.
Interpol were called in to try and find out who this Anton Kunel was.
But of course, he retreated back to an anonymity of being a MOSAD agent in some town in the middle of Israel.
The case goes cold.
It would be 20 years before the MSAD admits responsibility for assassinating Herbert Zuckers.
I was very proud of the Israelis for doing that.
Even though it was horrible, I thought he deserved it.
You must always remember, we must never forget.
Despite testimony from witnesses like Sasha Seoff, Herbert Zuker’s family denies he committed atrocities against Latian Jews.
We have been waiting 60 years for some kind of proof against my father.
If the world can’t show any documents that prove his guilt, then declare him innocent.
My family has been suffering their entire life because of these lies.
To this day, the man responsible for Herbert Zuker’s death has never revealed his true identity.
Anton Kinsler came back to Israel.
Of course, his mustache was shaved off, glasses thrown away.
He continued to work for many years in the Mossad.
They got their man.
They did it efficiently.
Morally is problematic, but it is nevertheless brilliantly done.
So it was uh in many ways the perfect mission.
I am very satisfied.
It was never dull in a moment.
For years afterward, the story of Herbert Zukers became a whispered legend inside intelligence circles.
Some called it justice.
Others called it revenge.
But no one denied one thing: the operation changed the way the world viewed Nazi hunters forever.
Before the assassination, many believed the remaining war criminals had escaped punishment.
Nearly two decades had passed since the end of World War II.
Europe was rebuilding.
Governments were focused on the Cold War.
Former Nazis had quietly disappeared into South America, the Middle East, and even parts of Europe itself.
Some changed their names.
Others lived openly, protected by sympathetic regimes or hidden behind layers of bureaucracy.
Many survivors felt abandoned.
To them, the world wanted to forget.
The execution of Herbert Zukers shattered that illusion.
In hidden Nazi circles across Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile, fear spread rapidly.
Men who had spent twenty years believing they were untouchable suddenly looked over their shoulders.
Some stopped appearing in public.
Others changed addresses overnight.
Rumors circulated that Mossad agents were everywhere.
One former SS officer reportedly shaved his mustache, dyed his hair, and fled from Buenos Aires to a remote village in Patagonia after hearing about Zukers’s death.
Another allegedly began sleeping with a pistol under his pillow.
Whether the stories were true hardly mattered.
The psychological effect was enormous.
Israel had sent a message.
There would be no safe haven.
Inside Mossad headquarters, however, there was little celebration.
The operation had succeeded, but it carried a heavy emotional toll.
Several agents later admitted privately that the brutality of the mission stayed with them for years.
Anton Kunzel himself returned to Israel and disappeared back into ordinary life.
No parades.
No medals.
No public recognition.
That was the nature of intelligence work.
Officially, he never existed.
But those who knew him understood the immense pressure he carried throughout the mission.
For months, he had lived beside a man responsible for unimaginable crimes.
He shook his hand.
Shared meals with him.
Smiled at his jokes.
Sat beside him in bars and listened to him speak proudly about his life.
All while knowing exactly what he had done during the Holocaust.
The psychological strain was almost unbearable.
Years later, one intelligence officer reflected on the operation:
“To hunt monsters, sometimes you must sit across the table from them and pretend they are human.”
For Holocaust survivors, the assassination reopened painful memories.
Across Israel, elderly men and women listened to radio broadcasts describing Zukers’s death and remembered the ghettos, the shootings, and the screams from the forests outside Riga.
Some broke down crying.
Others sat in silence, staring into space as old nightmares resurfaced.
For survivors from Latvia, the name Herbert Zukers carried a special horror.
Witnesses described him as more than a collaborator.
He was often portrayed as enthusiastic in his cruelty.
Testimonies collected after the war accused him of humiliating prisoners, beating civilians in the streets, and participating personally in mass executions.
One survivor recalled seeing Zukers drag an elderly rabbi through the streets while laughing as soldiers mocked him.
Another remembered children being separated from their mothers during deportations while armed guards shouted and struck people with rifle butts.
The memories never faded.
Even decades later, many survivors could still describe the faces, the voices, the smells of those terrible days in chilling detail.
That was why the operation mattered so deeply to them.
Not because it could undo the past.
Nothing could.
But because it proved the dead had not been entirely forgotten.
Meanwhile, in West Germany, political pressure intensified.
Younger generations began asking difficult questions about how so many Nazi officials had escaped accountability.
Journalists uncovered cases of former SS officers working as businessmen, lawyers, and government employees.
The timing of Zukers’s execution added fuel to a growing fire.
German prosecutors extended investigations into war crimes.
Public debates erupted over statutes of limitations.
Demonstrators demanded that Nazi atrocities never be treated like ordinary crimes subject to expiration dates.
The fear of international embarrassment pushed politicians to act.
In that sense, the Mossad mission achieved far more than the elimination of a single man.
It reignited the pursuit of justice.
Yet controversy followed the operation everywhere.
Critics argued that extrajudicial killings undermined the rule of law.
Some questioned whether Zukers should have faced trial instead, like Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
A public trial would have created a formal legal record and allowed survivors to testify openly before the world.
Others countered that capturing Zukers alive in Brazil would have been nearly impossible.
There was no guarantee the Brazilian government would cooperate.
If arrested locally, he might even have escaped extradition.
Within Israeli intelligence circles, the debate remained unresolved for years.
Some believed the Eichmann trial demonstrated the power of legal justice.
Others believed certain crimes demanded different answers.
Herbert Zukers became the symbol of that moral gray zone.
Not everyone involved in the mission emerged unchanged.
One former operative later admitted he could still remember the sounds inside the house in Montevideo.
The crashing furniture.
The shouting.
The gunshots.
The heavy silence afterward.
Violence leaves scars, even on those who believe it is necessary.
The safe house itself became infamous after the body was discovered.
Neighbors spoke of strange noises on the day of the killing but said they were too frightened to investigate.
Builders working nearby later recalled seeing unfamiliar men entering and leaving the property in the days before the discovery.
By the time police arrived, the assassins were long gone.
Uruguayan investigators pursued leads for years but found almost nothing.
False names.
Fake passports.
Dead ends.
The mystery only deepened the legend.
Newspapers across the world compared the operation to a spy thriller.
Headlines described secret agents, coded messages, disguises, and international manhunts.
For many readers, it sounded unbelievable that such events were unfolding decades after the war.
But for intelligence agencies, it was a chilling demonstration of Mossad’s growing capabilities.
The operation also cemented Israel’s reputation as a nation willing to pursue enemies across borders and across decades if necessary.
Future adversaries paid close attention.
In the years that followed, Mossad would carry out other controversial operations around the world, but the killing of Herbert Zukers remained unique because of its emotional and historical weight.
It was not merely counterterrorism.
It was unfinished business from the Holocaust.
For Zukers’s family, however, the story looked entirely different.
His relatives insisted he had been unfairly demonized.
They argued that accusations against him were exaggerated or politically motivated.
Over the years, some nationalist groups in Latvia attempted to rehabilitate his image, portraying him as a patriot and aviator rather than a mass murderer.
These efforts sparked outrage among Holocaust historians and Jewish organizations.
Documents, testimonies, and wartime evidence painted a deeply disturbing portrait of his activities during the Nazi occupation of Latvia.
Still, the controversy never fully disappeared.
History is rarely as simple as people want it to be.
Even decades later, the case continued to provoke fierce arguments about memory, justice, nationalism, and revenge.
But one fact remained undeniable.
The operation ensured Herbert Zukers would never quietly disappear into history.
In Israel, survivors often repeated a phrase:
“The world may forget.
We do not.”
That philosophy drove many early Nazi hunters.
Some were lawyers.
Some were journalists.
Some were intelligence agents.
Others were ordinary survivors who dedicated their lives to tracking down those responsible for genocide.
People like Simon Wiesenthal spent decades gathering evidence and chasing fugitives across continents.
Without individuals like him, many war criminals might never have been identified at all.
The hunt for Nazis became one of the largest international manhunts in history.
And yet, countless perpetrators escaped justice entirely.
Some died peacefully in old age.
Some vanished forever.
Others reinvented themselves so successfully that neighbors never suspected their pasts.
That reality haunted survivors more than anything else.
The idea that men responsible for mass murder could simply move to another country and start over.
The assassination of Herbert Zukers challenged that idea.
Late in life, one Holocaust survivor reflected on hearing the news in 1965.
“I did not dance,” he said.
“There was no joy.
My parents were still dead.
My sisters were still dead.
But for one moment, I felt the world remembered us.”
That sentiment captured the complicated legacy of the operation.
It was not triumph.
It was reckoning.
And perhaps that is why the story still resonates today.
Not because it is a tale of spies and assassins.
But because beneath all the disguises, coded telegrams, and secret missions lies something far more human: the refusal to let unimaginable crimes vanish into silence.
The men who hunted Herbert Zukers understood they could never truly balance the scales of history.
No operation could restore the millions murdered during the Holocaust.
No bullet could erase the suffering.
But memory itself became a form of justice.
As long as names like Riga, Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Babi Yar were remembered, the victims would not disappear completely.
And somewhere in the shadows of postwar history, an aging Nazi in Brazil learned too late that the past was still hunting him.
The story did not end in that house in Montevideo.
In many ways, that was only the beginning.
As newspapers around the world published photographs of Herbert Zukers’s corpse being removed from the suburban home, another battle quietly erupted behind closed doors.
Diplomats demanded explanations.
Intelligence agencies traded rumors.
Journalists searched desperately for the mysterious man called Anton Kunzel.
But the deeper mystery was not who killed Zukers.
It was how so many men like him had escaped in the first place.
In the aftermath of World War II, Europe was shattered.
Millions were dead.
Entire cities lay in ruins.
Governments collapsed and borders shifted overnight.
Amid the chaos, thousands of Nazi officials vanished into the confusion.
Some fled through what became known as the “ratlines,” secret escape networks that smuggled fugitives out of Europe.
False passports were obtained through corrupt officials, sympathetic clergy, or underground contacts.
Many escaped through Italy before boarding ships bound for South America.
Argentina became one of the most infamous destinations.
Under President Juan Perón, the country welcomed numerous former Nazis, partly because of anti-communist sympathies and partly because German scientists and officers were viewed as useful assets.
Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile also became havens for fugitives seeking anonymity.
By the 1950s, entire expatriate communities existed where former SS officers lived openly among fellow Europeans.
Some even attended social gatherings together.
The idea horrified Holocaust survivors.
To them, it felt as though the world had moved on while they remained trapped in grief.
Many survivors carried unbearable memories in silence.
Some woke screaming from nightmares decades after liberation.
Others refused to speak about the camps at all.
Children grew up sensing invisible pain inside their homes without fully understanding it.
One survivor later described the feeling this way:
“It was as if the dead were screaming beneath the floorboards of history while everyone else danced above them.
”
The capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 changed something fundamental.
For the first time, the Holocaust became impossible for much of the world to ignore.
The televised trial exposed horrifying details of industrialized genocide to a global audience.
Witnesses described gas chambers, death marches, starvation, medical experiments, and mass shootings with devastating clarity.
Young people in Europe and America listened in shock.
Many had never heard such testimony before.
But after Eichmann’s execution in 1962, Mossad faced a difficult question.
What came next?
Capturing another high-ranking Nazi alive would require enormous resources and international risk.
Many governments were unwilling to cooperate.
Others quietly preferred leaving the past buried.
Some intelligence officers believed future operations should be faster and more direct.
Herbert Zukers became the testing ground for that new philosophy.
Inside Mossad, debates over morality intensified long before the operation even began.
A few senior figures argued that assassinations could transform killers into martyrs.
Others worried about damaging Israel’s international reputation.
But there was another argument that carried enormous weight.
Time was running out.
Witnesses were aging.
Survivors were dying.
Evidence disappeared every year.
Many war criminals had already escaped prosecution simply because courts moved too slowly.
The fear was simple: if action was delayed much longer, history itself would bury the crimes.
That urgency shaped the operation from the start.
Anton Kunzel understood this deeply because the Holocaust was not abstract to him.
It was personal.
Like many Jews of his generation, his life had been split into two worlds: before the war and after it.
Before the war there were families, schools, weddings, birthdays, ordinary routines.
Afterward there were ghosts.
Even those who survived often lost entire branches of their families.
Parents vanished into camps.
Brothers disappeared during deportations.
Grandparents were marched into forests and shot beside open pits.
Entire communities were erased.
And in places like Latvia, the destruction happened with terrifying speed.
When German forces invaded Latvia in 1941, anti-Jewish violence erupted almost immediately.
Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads worked alongside local collaborators to massacre civilians.
Synagogues were burned.
Jews were dragged into streets and beaten publicly.
Thousands were executed before ghettos were even fully established.
The forests around Riga became killing grounds.
Victims were forced to undress beside mass graves before being shot in waves.
Survivors later described hearing gunfire echoing continuously for hours.
Children clung to parents moments before execution.
The horror was almost impossible to comprehend.
And again and again, witnesses mentioned Herbert Zukers.
For survivors, his name became linked forever with terror.
That was why Anton Kunzel could never allow himself to forget who sat across from him during those dinners in Brazil.
Even when Zukers laughed.
Even when he spoke casually about business opportunities.
Even when he played the role of aging expatriate dreaming of financial success.
Kunzel knew what lay beneath the surface.
One former intelligence officer later explained the psychological discipline required for undercover operations:
“You divide yourself in two.
One part speaks and smiles.
The other part watches everything.”
Kunzel watched constantly.
He noticed how Zukers positioned himself near exits.
How he scanned restaurants for threats.
How he carefully controlled conversations whenever politics arose.
Paranoia had become part of his daily existence.
But greed weakened him.
That was the fatal flaw Mossad exploited.
Again and again, Kunzel dangled visions of wealth and status before him.
Business investments.
Tourist ventures.
International expansion.
For a man struggling financially in exile, the promises became irresistible.
Yet there were moments when everything nearly collapsed.
One evening in São Paulo, Zukers reportedly stared at Kunzel for an uncomfortably long time during dinner.
“You remind me of someone,” he muttered.
Kunzel felt ice run through his veins.
Had he been recognized? Had some tiny inconsistency exposed him?
But then Zukers laughed and waved the thought away.
The danger passed.
Barely.
Living under constant threat of exposure exhausted undercover agents mentally and physically.
Every gesture mattered.
Every word carried risk.
One wrong accent.
One incorrect military detail.
One moment of hesitation.
Death could come instantly.
And unlike fictional spies, real operatives rarely had dramatic escape plans.
If caught, they were alone.
That reality became especially frightening during the trip to the plantation.
Even decades later, historians debate whether Zukers truly intended harm during the shooting contest or whether it was merely a display of dominance.
But for Kunzel, the danger felt completely real.
He later admitted that he believed death was possible in those moments.
Standing in the jungle holding a rifle while facing a man accused of murdering thousands created a terrifying psychological tension.
The irony was extraordinary.
A Jewish Mossad agent pretending to be a former Nazi officer while engaging in a marksmanship contest with an actual Nazi war criminal hiding in South America.
It felt almost surreal.
Yet the mission continued.
Back in Israel, Mossad commanders monitored developments nervously.
Communication was limited and slow compared to modern intelligence operations.
Messages traveled through coded systems.
Delays created uncertainty.
For days at a time, headquarters sometimes had no idea whether Kunzel was alive or dead.
But gradually, confidence grew.
The target trusted him.
By early 1965, plans accelerated toward the final phase.
The safe house in Montevideo became the centerpiece of the operation.
Agents inspected entrances, windows, escape routes, and surrounding streets repeatedly.
Timing was critical.
If neighbors heard too much noise or police arrived unexpectedly, the mission could turn catastrophic.
Several operatives reportedly slept poorly in the days leading up to the execution.
Despite their training, they understood the enormous stakes.
This was not wartime combat.
It was a deliberate killing operation on foreign soil.
Some later described feeling trapped between justice and vengeance.
Others believed absolutely that Zukers deserved death.
The moral certainty varied from man to man.
But none doubted the horrors of the Holocaust itself.
As the day approached, tension inside the team became unbearable.
Then came the unexpected delay with Zukers’s travel documents.
For a brief moment, Mossad feared the mission might collapse entirely.
Had he changed his mind?
Had suspicion finally overtaken greed?
When Kunzel angrily confronted him at the airport, it was partly theater and partly genuine frustration.
Months of dangerous work hung by a thread.
Fortunately for Mossad, Zukers still believed money awaited him.
So he boarded the plane.
Historians later noted the tragic symbolism of that journey.
For years, Jews had boarded trains and transports under false promises during the Holocaust.
Now a Nazi boarded a plane under false promises himself.
History had turned in a grim circle.
When Zukers arrived in Montevideo, he remained cautious but hopeful.
Witnesses later recalled seeing two middle-aged European men driving around the city discussing business properties like ordinary associates.
No one suspected one of them was leading the other toward execution.
The final drive to the safe house became one of the most analyzed moments in Mossad history.
Some accounts suggest Zukers sensed danger during the journey.
Others claim he remained relaxed until entering the house.
What is certain is that once the attack began, chaos exploded instantly.
The operatives had underestimated his strength.
Despite his age, Zukers fought ferociously.
Furniture crashed.
Men grappled violently across the room.
Blood splattered walls.
At one point the entire operation threatened to spiral out of control.
The carefully planned reading of charges never happened.
Survival took priority.
When the gunshots finally ended the struggle, silence filled the room.
Several agents later admitted they felt no triumph in that moment.
Only exhaustion.
And perhaps relief.
The body was placed inside the trunk alongside the written statement explaining the execution.
The wording was deliberate.
Mossad wanted the world to understand why the operation occurred.
This was not random murder.
It was punishment for crimes against humanity.
Then came the escape.
Each operative departed separately to avoid detection.
By the time police discovered the body nearly two weeks later, the team was already far beyond Uruguay.
But Mossad could not control what happened next.
The anti-Semitic backlash in parts of South America alarmed Israeli officials.
Synagogues were attacked.
Jewish communities feared retaliation.
For a time, tensions escalated dangerously.
Yet among Holocaust survivors, reactions were very different.
Many saw the operation as proof that Jewish helplessness during the Holocaust would never be repeated.
That emotional shift mattered enormously in postwar Jewish identity.
Before World War II, European Jews often lacked power to defend themselves against state violence.
After the creation of Israel, that changed.
Operations like Eichmann’s capture and Zukers’s assassination symbolized something larger than intelligence work.
They represented the emergence of a state willing to pursue those who harmed Jews anywhere in the world.
Supporters viewed that as historical necessity.
Critics viewed it as dangerous vigilantism.
The argument continues even today.
Over time, the story of Herbert Zukers faded from mainstream headlines, overshadowed by new conflicts and crises around the world.
But among historians of the Holocaust and intelligence operations, it remained legendary.
Not because it was clean.
Not because it was morally simple.
But because it revealed the impossible choices left behind by genocide.
What should justice look like after crimes on such a scale?
Can courts alone answer horrors that destroyed millions of lives?
Does time erase responsibility?
No easy answers exist.
Perhaps that is why the mission still fascinates people decades later.
At its core, it was not only about one Nazi or one assassination.
It was about memory refusing to die.
And somewhere, buried beneath all the spycraft and secrecy, there remained the image of survivors standing at mass graves outside Riga, listening to gunfire echo through the forest while the world collapsed around them.
For those survivors, the operation in Montevideo was not the beginning of violence.
It was the echo of violence that had started long before.
An echo that traveled across oceans and decades until, one afternoon in 1965, it finally caught up with the Hangman of Riga.
