Report: Latvia closes investigation into Herberts Cukurs, the ‘Butcher of Riga’

A court in Latvia has closed its case against Herberts Cukurs, the “Butcher of Riga” believed to be personally responsible for killing at least 30,000 Latvian Jews during the Holocaust, the Haaretz daily reports.

According to the report, the court said it could not find sufficient evidence of Cukurs’s involvement in Holocaust crimes to implicate him. Right-wing nationalists in the country have long sought to exonerate Cukurs and establish him as a national hero for his prewar accomplishments as a pilot.

The closure of the case may allow Latvia to seek to exhume his remains from Uruguay, where he was assassinated by the Mossad in 1965, and bring them for burial, Haaretz says. Other implications of the decision are not yet clear, it notes.

Cukurs is notorious for his involvement in the brutal persecution and mass murder of Jews in the Riga Ghetto and surrounding areas. Numerous witnesses and survivors have recounted his direct participation in atrocities, including beatings, shootings, and deportations.

After the war, Cukurs fled to South America via the ratline escape routes and lived in Brazil until 1965, when he was assassinated in Uruguay by Mossad agents as part of Israel’s campaign to track down and punish Nazi war criminals.