Weekly Kibbitz
Hitler Is Alive and in Hiding in the Final
Season of ‘Hunters,’ Amazon’s Series
About Jews Killing Nazis
Hitler in Argentina
The end of the fi rst season hinted that things were about to go seriously off the
rails, as the “real” Hitler and Eva Braun were revealed to be happily alive and
hiding out in Argentina — seemingly validating decades’ worth of baseless con-
spiracy theories about the Nazi leader’s supposed escape from his Berlin bunker
in 1945. (Also throwing things for a loop: the reveal that Pacino’s character, who
had presented himself as the hero’s Holocaust-survivor grandfather, was secretly
the Nazi “butcher” they had been hunting in disguise, and the man they killed
after a season-long hunt was the real survivor.)
In the second season, the disbanded Hunters reunite in 1979 to follow Hitler’s
trail to Argentina, where many real-life Nazis really did hide out. Meanwhile, in
fl ashbacks to 1975, Pacino’s Nazi “butcher” works furiously to cover his tracks
as he poses as a successful Jewish businessman and philanthropist in America.

Hitler-survival conspiracy theories seem to, well, keep surviving. In the
decades since the war’s end, many conspiracy theories regarding Hitler’s fate
have proliferated, and a good number of them coalesce around the unsupported
claim that he, like other top Nazi commanders, was ferreted out of Germany and
into South America via a secret underground network. “Hunting Hitler,” a recent
top-rated History Channel docuseries, milked three seasons out of the idea.

But, of course, there were Nazis who successfully escaped persecution at
Nuremberg by fl eeing to South America, and “Hunters” crafts its Hitler narrative
on the scaff olding of their real-life stories. The most infamous case involved
death-camp commander Adolf Eichmann, who hid in Argentina until Mossad
agents uncovered his location and kidnapped him in 1960s’ “Operation Finale”
to stand trial in Jerusalem.

The Kreisky-Peter-Wiesenthal Aff air
In the universe of the show, the fake Meyer played by Pacino is friends with
Wiesenthal, a seasoned Nazi hunter. When the two meet in 1975 in an early
episode of the second season, Meyer congratulates Wiesenthal on his recent
success in Austria.

4 JANUARY 26, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Logan Lerman and Jerrika Hinton in the second season of Amazon’s
“Hunters” This is a reference to a real-life 1975 political scandal, in which Wiesenthal
and a team of researchers revealed the past Nazi activities of Austrian politico
Friedrich Peter as the country’s Jewish chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, prepared to
off er Peter’s right-wing party a role in his ruling coalition.

Wiesenthal’s actions led to a falling-out between him and Kreisky, who
variously called him both a “Jewish fascist” and a member of the Gestapo. But
the Nazi hunters declared victory over having rooted out the SS past of a promi-
nent postwar politician. (Peter’s party never joined the coalition.)
‘Reclaiming’ Jewish-owned businesses in Europe
In an early scene of the second season, one of the disguised hunters walks into
an Austrian candy shop in 1979 and innocently inquires how long the shopkeeper
has owned it. The store has been in his family for generations, comes the reply.

But, the hunter muses, there is a strange indentation on the doorpost — almost
like a mezuzah. Could the shop have, in fact, been Jewish-owned before the
Nazis came to power?
It turns out the hunter is right, and the shopkeeper will pay dearly for his
denials. Again, the general arc of this narrative starts with real history, as there
are countless examples of Nazis having seized Jewish-owned properties and
businesses and destroyed the records of Jewish ownership, making it nearly
impossible for surviving Jews after the war to reclaim their properties.

Author Menachem Kaiser recently explored how Nazi property seizures altered
his own family history in the nonfi ction book “Plunder,” which won the Sami Rohr
prize for Jewish literature.

Frank Sinatra’s Jewish activism
As part of Al Pacino’s character’s disguise as a Holocaust survivor in postwar
America, he becomes an active philanthropist to Jewish causes. At one point,
he can’t help but brag that he convinced Frank Sinatra to make a hefty donation.

In fact, the famous crooner, despite not being Jewish himself, was a vocal and
documented supporter of Jewish causes. He was presented with awards from
Hebrew schools; visited Israel many times and helped build a youth center in
Nazareth; owned a $10,000 yarmulke; and even gave his son, Frank Sinatra Jr.,
the Jewish middle name of Emmanuel.

After Sinatra’s death, to avoid paparazzi, his body was hidden in a Los Angeles
Jewish funeral home. 1
— Andrew Lapin/JTA
Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video
When Amazon Prime released the fi rst season of “Hunters” in 2020, it advertised
its Nazi-hunting TV show as “Inspired by True Events.”
That was true only in the loosest possible sense of the term.

(Note: Spoiler alert for the fi rst and second seasons of “Hunters” to follow).

Starring Al Pacino and Logan Lerman, and produced by Jordan Peele, “Hunters”
told a bloody, souped-up, almost entirely embellished story of a Jewish-led team
of multiracial Nazi hunters in the 1970s trying to stop a “Fourth Reich” from rising
in the United States.

The show was immediately controversial: Series creator David Weil, the grand-
son of Holocaust survivors, had to defend it from the Auschwitz Memorial, which
harshly criticized “Hunters” for, among other scenes, depicting a human chess
game at Auschwitz that never took place.

Despite all that, “Hunters” still had some basis in reality. There were, in fact,
a handful of Jewish Nazi hunters active across the Americas at that time, most
famously Simon Wiesenthal (played in the series by Judd Hirsch), who did
succeed in bringing several prominent Nazis to justice.

Three years later, “Hunters” has, similarly, used the historical record as a mere
suggestion for its second and fi nal season, which debuts on Jan. 13 and tells an
outrageous story about hunting Hitler himself. Here’s how viewers can separate
fact from fi ction in season two.