The Assassination of Herberts Cukurs was a Mossad killing in Montevideo in February 1965. In the book’s account, its significance extends beyond the death of a Nazi war-crimes suspect: news of the killing sharpened Josef Mengele’s fear that he, too, could be found, and changed the precautions he took to evade capture.

Cukurs and the Killing

Herberts Cukurs was a famous aviator associated with grave crimes against Jews during the Holocaust. In February 1965, his corpse was found in a crate in Montevideo. The account identifies the killers as a Mossad commando unit calling itself “those who will never forget.” It describes the killing as an execution carried out by the group, rather than a judicial proceeding.

A typed verdict had been pinned to the body. It presented the killing as punishment for Cukurs’s alleged personal responsibility for the deaths of 30,000 people and for the cruelty of his crimes. The document was the commando’s own declaration, not the outcome of a court hearing; its presence made the body a vehicle for a public claim of retribution as well as evidence of the killing.

The Effect on Josef Mengele

Cukurs’s death was especially consequential because Josef Mengele regarded him as a friend. When Mengele learned what had happened, he became more vigilant. He acquired additional dogs and more powerful binoculars, and spent longer periods watching the countryside from his lookout tower. The killing turned the possibility of capture into a more immediate presence in his daily routine.

One night, lights approached his property. Mengele armed himself and prepared for a possible arrival by pursuers, but his fear proved misplaced: the visitor was Roberto, returning from an evening out with friends. The episode shows how Cukurs’s death fed into Mengele’s suspicions even when an ordinary event could account for what he saw. His fear had practical consequences, but it also shaped how he interpreted uncertain signs around him.

Secrecy and Significance

Mengele also tightened the security of his correspondence with Germany. He relied on initials and intermediaries, routing sealed letters through a Swiss post-office box or, less often, a family friend in Augsburg; Hans Sedlmeier retrieved and forwarded them. Mail intended for Mengele in Brazil went to a post-office box under Gerhard’s name, and Mengele switched from handwriting to a typewriter because his distinctive script could identify him. The account thus links the assassination not only to heightened physical surveillance but also to more deliberate concealment of his communications.

The episode places Cukurs’s killing within the wider postwar pursuit of Nazi fugitives while keeping its immediate consequences particular: the death of a man Mengele knew altered the behavior of a fugitive already living under threat of discovery. For Mengele, Cukurs’s fate was a warning that the danger was not merely a matter of distant rumor; it prompted concrete changes in how he watched, moved, and communicated.