The real story behind ‘Hunters,’ Al Pacino’s new Nazi-hunting Amazon series

(JTA) — “Hunters,” the new show co-produced by Jordan Peele and created by David Weil for Amazon Prime, tells the story of a crew of Nazi hunters in 1970s America. They are led by a mysterious man named Meyer Offerman, who has a thick Yiddish accent and is played by none other than Al Pacino. The series has garnered mixed reviews and raised questions about the ethics of Jews taking violent revenge. But there’s another lingering question: Were there that many Nazis in America in the 1970s that needed to be hunted down?  The show, which stars a gaggle of Jewish stars — Logan Lerman, Saul Rubinek, Josh Radnor and Carol Kane, who all play Nazi hunters — is very much an over-the-top fictionalization. It boasts an aesthetic that’s more comic book than history book, but its stories and plotlines are based on quite a few true events.  So let’s break down the fact from Nazi fiction about the post-Holocaust melodrama.