Nakam: The Holocaust Survivors Who Sought Full-Scale Revenge

How should Germany’s slaughter of six million Jews during the Holocaust be punished? That fraught ethical question is at the heart of this definitive study of the Nokmim, or Avengers, a small paramilitary group of Holocaust survivors led by “poet and partisan” Abba Kovner who planned to kill millions of Germans by poisoning their municipal water supplies in 1945. Porat (The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David), the former chief historian of Yad Vashem, enriches her extended profiles of individual Avengers, many of whom had fought in partisan militias in the forests of Ukraine and Lithuania, with details about the reaction to their intentions by Zionist leaders who were more focused on rescuing and caring for survivors and maintaining support for international recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine. While the water contamination scheme did not happen, the Avengers poisoned German POWs near Nuremberg by brushing arsenic onto bread loaves; thousands were sickened, but it’s believed no one died. Porat succeeds in capturing the mindset of the Avengers (“After the most horrible event that had ever happened to this people in their long history, it was unthinkable to return to everyday life as if it had not occurred”) while making clear that “revenge was the heartfelt wish of a small, scattered, weak community.” This meticulous and empathetic study gives an overlooked chapter of Jewish history its due. (Nov.)