GOOD ASSASSIN

Book number: 92601 Product format: Hardback Author: STEPHAN TALTY

In stock

Bibliophile price £7.50
Published price $28


Sub-titled 'How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia'. The story starts in Riga with the rounding up of Jews, first into the ghetto and then to their brutal deaths. Central to the whole operation was Herbert Cukurs, who before the war had achieved hero status as an aviator flying a plane he had constructed himself. With the German occupation of Latvia, the synagogue on Gogol Street was burnt down, and herding into the ghetto began, where Jews had little food and no work. Births were forbidden in the ghetto and babies had to be killed. Zelma Shepshelovich was saved by a Latvian, Nank, who hid her in his flat. Cukurs prowled at night raping women and slaughtered Jews with his own hands in the massacre of 19 Waldemars Street. Zelma was raped there, and she was the only woman who survived, saved by the intervention of her former nanny. After the war, when the Russians returned to the city, Zelma's testimony was important for the prosecution of the Nazi butchers and for providing evidence against Cukurs in particular. Somehow at the end of the war Cukurs escaped to Rio de Janeiro, and as the year 1965 approached he would be subject to a statute of limitation, meaning he could no longer be prosecuted. At this point Mossad stepped in and a brave agent, Jacob Medad, codenamed Mio, took on the persona of an Austrian businessman and set out for Rio to gain Cukurs's confidence. He grew a beard and got himself some glasses, and his attention to detail was such that they were not plain glasses but had lens curvature like a genuine pair. He could take no chances of being spotted as a fake. The second half of the book tells the story of how he gained Cukurs's confidence and delivered him to Mossad operatives. 304pp, photos.

Additional product information

ISBN 9781328613080

Customers who bought this product also bought

CRYPTOGRAPHY: The Key to Digital Security
Book number: 93563 Product format: Hardback Author: KEITH MARTIN
Bibliophile price £5.50
Published price £21.99
AIR POWER AND THE ARAB WORLD 1909-1955
Book number: 93208 Product format: Paperback Author: DAVID C. NICOLLE ET AL
Bibliophile price £3.00
Published price £19.95
LOST STORY OF THE WILLIAM & MARY
Book number: 93235 Product format: Hardback Author: GILL HOFFS
Bibliophile price £6.50
Published price £19.99
SACRED SWORDS: Jihad in the Holy Land 1097-1291
Book number: 89994 Product format: Hardback Author: JAMES WATERSON
Bibliophile price £2.50
Published price £19.99
BOUCHER AND CHARDIN: Masters of Modern Manners
Book number: 93373 Product format: Paperback Author: EDITED BY ANN DULAU
Bibliophile price £6.50
Published price £23
EXPLORING THE LIVES OF WOMEN 1558-1837
Book number: 92009 Product format: Hardback Author: DUCKLING, READ, ROBERTS
Bibliophile price £3.00
Published price £19.99

Browse these categories as well: Last Chance to buy!, War Memoirs, War & Militaria, Crime