Herbert Cukurs, a former Latvian SS officer charged with responsibility for the extermination of 32,000 Jews in the Riga Ghetto during the Second World War, has admitted that he killed a number of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Latvia.
Cukurs made the admission in an interview published in the Brazilian influential paper “O Jornal.” Asked about the charges, the former Nazi told Eduador Ramalho, the paper’s correspondent, that “I cannot deny that I killed several Jews.”
Attorneys for Cukurs, meanwhile, are planning to appeal to President Juscelino Kubitschek to countermand a decision by Justice Minister Armano Falcao, rejecting an application for Brazilian citizenship filed by the former Nazi. Informed sources here indicated that President Kubitschek would turn down the appeal.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
