Nakam: The Holocaust Survivors Who Sought Full-Scale Revenge

388 Pages·2022·21.495 MB·English

by  Dina Porat

N A K A M
STANFORD STUDIES IN JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE
Edited by David Biale and Sarah Abrevaya Stein
N A K A M
THE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
WHO SOUGHT
FULL-S CALE REVENGE
DINA PORAT
Translated by
Mark L. Levinson
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
English translation © 2023 by Dina Porat. All rights reserved.
Nakam was originally published in Hebrew in 2019 under the title Li Nakam vʿShilem © 2019 Pardes
Publishing with support from Dr. Axel Stawski, New York, and Dr. Michael (Micky) Margalit,
Tel Aviv.
Th e publication of this volume was supported by a generous contribution made by Orna and Behzad
Kianmahd.
Documentation and testimony were collected with the kind assistance of Hava Zexer.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system
without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free, archival- quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Porat, Dina, author.
Title: Nakam : the Holocaust survivors who sought full-scale revenge / Dina Porat ; translated by
Mark L. Levinson.
Other titles: Li nak.am v.e-shilem. English | Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2023] | Series: Stanford studies in
Jewish history and culture | “Originally published in Hebrew in 2019 under the title Li Nakam
v’Shilem.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2022022185 (print) | LCCN 2022022186 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503630314 (cloth) |
ISBN 9781503633773 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Nakam (Organization)—History. | Nazi hunters—Germany—History. | Holocaust
survivors—Israel—Interviews. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Infl uence. | Revenge—Moral
and ethical aspects.
Classifi cation: LCC D804.195 .P6713 2023 (print) | LCC D804.195 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/18—dc23/eng/
20220518
LC record available at https://lccnloc.gov/2022022185
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022186
Designed by Elliott Beard
Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 11/15 Garamond Premier Pro
Cover design and illustration: Derek Th ornton | Notch Design
“Before us lies only one path to life—constructive vengeance.”
From the passage read on the summit of Masada during the Cha-
nukah 1943 hike of the youth movement Hamahanot Haʿolim, led
by Nahum Sarig and Azaria Alon. On his back, Alon carried a
large rock inscribed with the words “If I forget thee, Diaspora, let
my right hand forget her cunning.” The reading was published in
the December 1943 issue of Bamivhan, the movement’s periodi-
cal, and republished in Yitzhak Kafkafi ’s book Shnot Hamahanot
Haʿolim, volume 2, Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Tel
Aviv, 1995, p. 314.
“Your pure blood will forever be a mark of shame on Hitler’s
Germany. Rest peacefully where you lie. We the surviving
remnant will avenge your blood—our blood.”
From the writings in Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew placed by
survivors in 1944 on the mass grave of the 23,500 Jews of
Rovno who were tortured and murdered on November 7 and 8,
1941. Quoted in Rowno, a Memorial to the Jewish Community of
Rowno, Wolyn, ed. Arye Avatihi, Association of Rovno Jews in Is-
rael, Tel Aviv, 1956, p. 562.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
PART I
CONCEPTION AND PREPARATION
1 Lublin, January–March 1945 31
The Idea of Vengeance
2 Bucharest, March–June 1945 71
From Conception to Preparation
3 Italy, July–August 1945 99
The Jewish Brigade
PART II
ATTEMPTED VENGEANCE
4 Palestine and Europe, August 1945–March 1946 145
Kovner and the Yishuv
5 Paris, February–June 1946 195
The Haganah and the Avengers
viii CONTENTS
6 Germany, August 1945–June 1946 225
Life Apart from Life
Conclusion 275
APPENDIXES
Chronology 309
List of the Avengers 313
Notes 317
Sources 329
Index 347
Photographs appear after page 142.
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book had its birth in a promise. Aft er the book I wrote about the
poet and wartime partisan Abba Kovner was published,1 Yitzhak “Pasha”
Avidov (born Reichman) called me to his house for a talk and scolded me:
“You’ve written a whole thick biography with only one page about the group
of Avengers that Abba commanded and led, rest his soul. One page for an en-
tire year!” In vain I explained that the focus of the book was Kovner, who for
most of that year—between the summer of 1945 and the summer of 1946—
was a leader isolated from his followers. Avidov had served as commander of
the group, fi lling in for Kovner from the moment Kovner left .
His complaints subsided a little only once I gave my word, accompanied
with a handshake, that there would be a future book exclusively about the
Avengers—the Nokmim, as they called themselves in Hebrew—with de-
scriptions and analysis of the group’s experiences and dilemmas as they actu-
ally occurred, and chronicling, to the best of my ability, its members’ activ-
ities as they actually unfolded. I carried that obligation onward as much as
I could. I thank him deeply, and I am very sorry that it has come to fruition
only aft er his passing.
ix
x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Th ere were also misgivings among other members of the Nokmim, with
whom I had remained in close contact since the days of my work on Kovner’s
biography. Th ey had kept their secret for forty years, from the end of World
War II until the mid- 1980s, when they began apprehensively agreeing to
be interviewed and photographed, and to respond to accusations, meet to-
gether and record their experiences. Th is occurred only aft er great hesitation.
Th ey feared then, and still do, that neither the idea guiding their attempted
operation nor the methods they wanted to employ will be understood; that
instead of being remembered as moral people with Jewish and humanitar-
ian values, they will go down in history the way Shaul Meirov (subsequently
Avigur) described them: “rife with a spirit of rebellion [. . .] that derived from
deep feelings of inferiority” and eager for revenge without restraint.2 At the
time, he headed the Mossad for Aliyah B (a clandestine infrastructure for il-
legal immigration, to circumvent British limitations), and these words are
quoted in History of the Haganah: Th e Haganah was the major Jewish un-
derground force in British- ruled Palestine, and it operated the Mossad for
Aliyah B.
Until now, the story of the Nokmim has been told primarily by journal-
ists and on television. It has been covered in brief chapters in two books of
research, as well as a comprehensive article in a periodical,3 but it has never
been the sole focus of thorough research. Today, aged ninety and over, the
Nokmim want to see their story told in full. From their shelves and draw-
ers, they have brought out previously hidden diaries, letters, and writings in
small notebooks, yellowing pages written in Polish and Lithuanian, German
and Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, and they have graciously opened their
homes for lengthy interview sessions. Abba Kovner’s widow, Vitka Kempner-
Kovner, handed me a fi le from a metal closet in his workroom and said, with
characteristic plainness, “Here—take it.” It holds documents and corre-
spondence from the Nokmim group, and she had been keeping them undis-
turbed, ever since he died, the way he left them. It sends a fl utter through the
historian’s heart to hold decades- old papers that speak out across the years.
Th is book, then, is the fulfi llment of my promise to record the story of
the young men and women who gave of their strength and will and intended
to give their lives, if necessary, for vengeance against the Germans aft er the
Holocaust. At the same time, it is an attempt to answer the question that