Hunters season 1, episode 2 recap: The Mourner’s Kaddish

Jonah joins his first hunt but finds he isn’t prepared for the brutality needed to carry out the task. Morris begins to uncover the secret life of Nazis in America on Hunters.

This episode of Hunters opens in a concentration camp with a daring act of defiance. Several prisoners are made to play music for the Nazi officers, but then they brazenly transition to Hava Nagila. They are of course killed off one by one as they each refuse to stop playing it. But the rest of the prisoners have already seen their strength and resolve and have taken some solace in it.

Back in 1977 New York, the Hunters argue over whether or not to allow Jonah to join the gang. After all, he’s just a kid and Ruth wanted him kept away from the Hunt. As they argue, Jonah notices a coded message among Richter’s correspondence mentioning someone called Karl Holstedder. Looks like Jonah is their codebreaker.

The rest of the gang is introduced in a hokey Tarantino-esque bar mitzvah themed montage that feels really jarring and out of place. There’s not enough in the style of this series to smoothly incorporate this shift.

Anyway, Sister Harriet is former MI6 and head of logistic, Lonny Flash is a movie star and master of disguise, Roxy is a black power activist and criminal specialist, Joe is a Vietnam veteran and combat expert, Murray and Mindy are holocaust survivors and the gang’s engineering and weapons experts and Meyer is the bankroller and master plotter of the whole operation. He recruited them all with the help of a matchmaker who doubled as a local fixer.

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The gang sets about doing research on Holstedder in an archive room they called the Ark. Ruth built the Ark, unearthed classified documents, interviewed hundreds of survivors, all to guard against the extinction of truth and memory. It isn’t long before they find what they’re looking for, survivor testimonies of a Nazi radio engineer named Karl Holstedder.

He was the radio emcee at Buchenwald and would round up ten prisoners every Saturday and make them sing for their lives. If anyone was off-key, or off-tempo, or got the words wrong, they’d be dead. Only one was left standing every week, which after surviving the deadly fear and watching the murder of all those before you must not feel like much of a victory.

They find out where he is and set off on their Hunt. Sister Harriet outlines the plan and really shoe-horns in the jokes. Holstedder (John Hans Tester) works as an engineer at a radio station and Offerman’s role is to “do a little dance, make a little love, and get down tonight.” I know it’s supposed to be clever, but it sounds dumb.

Anyway, they confront him with his crimes and judge him to be guilty, but before punishment can be passed they discover a secret broadcasting room. They torture him to find out who he’s broadcasting to and what. He’s just given recordings and told to broadcast them, but he doesn’t know why or what’s on them. While the rest investigate, Jonah is left to guard Holstedder, which is already a mistake.

Jonah is uncomfortable about the violence involved in the Hunt and Holstedder can sense that. He manipulates Jonah into feeling sorry for him, claiming that he was just a young man who was following orders. He made the prisoners sing so that he could hear the music his guilt had made him deaf to. Jonah gives him a glass of water, which Holstedder breaks and uses to escape and threaten Jonah.

Joe rushes in and doesn’t hesitate to shoot Holstedder in the head. The bullet goes through the wall and into the secret room, damaging the equipment and ending the broadcast. The phone rings immediately. Whoever was monitoring the broadcast knows something is wrong and will likely send someone to investigate. They have to get out of there.

The Hunters go to a ceremony to say a Mourner’s Kaddish for Ruth. Jonah is plagued by guilt and traumatized by the violence he experienced that night. He asks Offerman if he can say a Kaddish for Holstedder too. I think Offerman is stunned and moved by Jonah’s empathy. Jonah rushes out of the ceremony and runs home. He can’t stop the ringing in his ears, a product of the guilt described by Holstedder. Jonah might not be cut out to be a Hunter. Maybe he has enough perspective to see that the Hunters risk becoming just like the monsters they hunt.

Morris confides in her local contact in Flordia, Detective Sommers (Tramell Tillman). Morris found an old photo of Gretel with Adolph Hitler, suggesting that she was a former Nazi chemist in hiding. She probably had something to do with the gas chambers and her murder was personal revenge. Morris doesn’t know what Nazis are doing in America, but she’s heading back to New York to find out.

Morris’s contact at immigration reveals that Gretel’s file is empty along with her brother Hans. Hans’s wife reveals that he died in a car accident six months ago, but that the car accident was some kind of explosion that blew his teeth clear out of his mouth. That sounds pretty suspicious. When tested on her feelings regarding Jews, Hans’ wife is subtle but clearly anti-Semitic. When Morris does some snooping around the house, she finds photos of concentration camp prisoners (including children) and a box of teeth. Looks like Hans was a bit of a Mengele during the war and not at all the war refugee he and Gretel claimed to be.

Morris goes home and is greeted by her partner, Maria (Julissa Bermudez). Not only is Morris black and female in 1977, but she’s also gay. What a time to be alive. Morris has been deeply affected by her investigation and is happy to take some comfort in her girlfriend. Later, she tells Maria the story of Hansel and Gretel and how she thinks that the witch in the story is really just a poor Jewish woman who was victimized by the Hitler youth.

Travis holds Sommers and his family captive in their home and terrorizes them to find out what Sommers knows about Gretel, why he was looking into her, and who else knows about her connection to Hitler. Threatened with the death of his pregnant wife and mother, he tells Travis about Morris. Presumably, Travis kills them all anyway.

The Colonel sets up a Senator and blackmails him into ending his filibuster against lifting sanctions on South American goods. Whatever the Nazis want, it’s coming from South America and they can’t bring it in unless they can change the laws to their advantage.

What did you think of this episode of Hunters? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!