S1-E04: Acquiring the Target

<p>The spy surveils his target and finally meets Herbert Cukurs — The Butcher of Latvia — in person. Mio had known people like the Butcher earlier in his life. He’d grown up in Germany during the rise of Hitler. Now he was getting to know a Nazi again, being friendly, even drinking with him. Mio kept his parents in his mind constantly. He actually dreamt about them during the mission — bad dreams. So for Mio it was something he could not forget and he could not forgive. Mio said when he was given the mission in September 1964 to assassinate Herbert Cukurs, it was like reopening a book; the unfinished story of his parents and their fate during the war. He felt there was a final chapter to be written.</p><p><br></p><p>“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, <a href="https://geni.us/TheGoodAssassinBook"><strong><em>The Good Assassin</em></strong></a><em>. </em>Explore other parts of this story in the book: <a href="https://geni.us/TheGoodAssassinBook"><strong>Buy The Good Assassin</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p>As Mio was making contact with Cukurs in Brazil, on the other side of the Atlantic a man named Tuviah Friedman was headed to the German capital for a meeting with the Justice Minister. He had a presentation to give, and if he succeeded with it, it would make Mio’s mission pointless. Tuviah Friedman was a Nazi hunter. In fact, Friedman was considered one of the two leading Nazi-hunters in the world, second only to the more famous activist Simon Wiesenthal. </p><p><br></p><p>Friedman had grown up in Poland. He and his family had watched the Nazis arrive. The Germans soon put them in a ghetto. Friedman saw Jews being murdered around him; his father starved himself to death so that his children would have more to eat. Friedman’s younger brother, Herschel, and his sister Itka were taken away to concentration camps, and Friedman himself was transported to a sub-camp of Auschwitz. </p><p><br></p><p>Tuviah Friedman survived the Holocaust by the sheer ferocity of his wi