The Nakam (Vengeance) Group

As World War II wound down, small groups of Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish Brigade organized spontaneously to take revenge against Germans. The Nakam (Vengeance) group was formed by activists in the Bricha movement, most of whom had been members of Zionist youth movements. Established in Lublin in early 1945, it coalesced gradually as its headquarters moved to Bucharest, then to northern Italy, and finally to Paris. Its members, emphasizing the idea of collective vengeance in contrast to individual acts of revenge, decided to undertake complex and lethal operations against civilian population and SS members in Germany. They were prompted by the sense of duty to avenge the murder of millions of Jews and the wish to make a broad international impact and teach the enemies of the Jewish people a historical lesson.

They prepared three action plans:

• Plan A: poisoning water sources in several German cities, causing the death of millions of German civilians; the plan was ultimately defeated by the Jewish Agency in Eretz Israel.
• Plan B: poisoning Nazi prisoners who were interned in American prison camps near Nuremberg, Germany. One of the members of the underground group arranged his hiring by the bakery that provided the camp with bread. On the night of April 13, 1946, arsenic was injected into some 3,000 loaves of bread, causing 5,000 prisoners in the camp to fall ill but claiming no fatalities.
• Plan C: execution of specific Nazi criminals; this plan was not carried out.

The vengeful urge that gripped the members of the group as the war came to an end clashes with the values on which had been raised. Their schemes were motivated by their personal and collective experience during the war and their sense, as survivors, of being duty-bound to carry out the will of the dead for vengeance. For some, the idea of mass vengeance was an attempt at suicide akin to that of Samson against the Philistines; others joined the plot in the belief that an act of mass vengeance would create a worldwide deterrence.

The story of the Nakam group remained under wraps for many years. First reports about Nakam surfaced in the late 1960s but only in the 1980s was the existence of the group revealed. Its members have maintained silence over the years, both because their plans failed and because most of them took an active part in personal and national rehabilitation, feeling that clinging to life and sustaining their national and moral identity are the best revenge.