Standing in a desolate field outside Munich, Robert Zagajski gazes out at the spot where his father’s battered body was found in 1983. He was 17 when his father was killed, but he still vividly remembers the horrors of the time. “To me, this place symbolizes pain,” he admits. As we see in these opening moments of Tito’s Mordkommandos, the thrilling new documentary from directors Phillip Grull and Frank Hofmann, Robert’s father, Djuro, was one of the 30 victims believed to be part of German history. The longest unsolved murder string on the Internet.
Like most of those killed, Giuro was a Croatian exile who was staunchly opposed to the socialist regime in Yugoslavia and had sought asylum on German soil. By the late 1960s, there were thousands of Yugoslavs like Djuro, all eager to take advantage of Germany’s booming economic potential and escape the bottlenecks of their birthplace. But for some, there is no escape, and their homeland takes the form of ruthless assassins sanctioned by the Communist Party and its leader, Josep Broz Tito.
Tito’s Murder Squad unpacks this twisted tale with all the suspense and intrigue of an international spy novel. The film follows a complex investigation that has confused and challenged German authorities for more than 30 years. Her efforts have the support of the victim’s family, who are striving to find a just end.
Justice will be hard to win as investigators try to uncover a long line of Yugoslav spies who have long been operating in the shadows in Germany. The filmmakers uncover a trove of secret documents and conduct a series of gruesome interviews with many of the key players on both sides of the story. They were vigilant in bringing to justice the Yugoslav agents who signed the death warrants and the assassins who carried out these dirty deeds. It’s a journey that continues to this day. But for someone like Robert Zagajski, it’s worth the wait to find out the truth behind what was taken from him long ago.
