Herberts Cukurs (17 May 1900 – 23 February 1965) was a Latvian aviator and deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, which carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews in the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial, multiple Holocaust survivors' accounts, including the testimony of Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

After being identified by a local Holocaust survivor in Brazil, who tried to alert authorities after seeing Cukurs' face on the cover a Brazilian magazine, Cukurs was investigated and ultimately assassinated in 1965 during capture by Nazi hunter operatives from the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. One of the Mossad agents who killed Cukurs, "Künzle," and a journalist, Gad Shimron, authored a book on the experience, The Execution of the Hangman of Riga, in which they referred to Cukurs as "The Butcher of Latvia", which was later picked up by several other sources.