The Avengers: Nazi Hunters

“The Avengers” was a collective name for several groups of Jews—including Holocaust survivors, former partisans, and veterans of the Jewish Brigade—who organized during the final months of the Second World War and in its aftermath. They acted in a world that had been destroyed: most of European Jewry had been murdered, entire communities had disappeared, and no international legal system yet existed that could fully address the scale of the crimes. Some members sought to identify and kill Nazis and collaborators directly involved in the murder of Jews. Others, led by Abba Kovner, planned mass retaliation against Germans.

The Avengers were neither a single person nor one unified organization. The name refers chiefly to two centers of activity: the “Executioners” unit formed among Jewish Brigade personnel, and Nakam—also known as Din or “Revenge”—formed mainly by Jewish partisans and survivors of underground movements in Eastern European ghettos. Individual survivors also carried out private acts of revenge. Their story reveals the depth of Jewish loss after the Holocaust and the desperate struggle of survivors to reclaim agency, dignity, and a sense of justice.

The Jewish Brigade’s “Executioners”

In 1945, after the war, a secret group formed at the Jewish Brigade base in Treviso, northern Italy. It became known as the Avengers or the “Executioners.” Its core consisted of roughly ten people, while as many as forty confidants joined particular operations. Important figures included Meir Zorea, who commanded many of the missions; Mordechai Gichon, the intelligence officer; Yisrael Carmi, who organized operations; Yanush (Yohanan) Peltz; Haim Laskov; and Yehuda Klaus. Other participants included Moshe Bar-Tal, Yisrael Tal, Aryeh Atzmoni, Haim Miller, and many others. Veterans of the Palmach’s German-speaking unit, including Shimon Avidan and Yehuda Ben-Horin, later joined the network.

The unit operated mainly in northern Italy, Austria, and southern Germany. Its members gathered intelligence on Nazis and collaborators, cross-checked information, used false papers and uniforms, and sometimes staged arrests. Estimates suggest that over approximately six months they killed several dozen to a few hundred Nazis and collaborators, most of them relatively junior figures directly connected to the persecution of Jews. The precise number remains uncertain, and the activity was kept secret for many years.

The operations took place alongside other Jewish Brigade and Yishuv missions: acquiring weapons, smuggling them, assisting Aliyah Bet, and gathering intelligence. The brigade’s transfer from Italy to the Netherlands in late 1945 has been linked, among other factors, to these clandestine activities. During 1946, many members moved to arms procurement, illegal immigration, and defense work—tasks increasingly seen as essential to the establishment of a Jewish state.

Nakam and Plan A

The second group, more radical in its conception, brought together approximately fifty to sixty Holocaust survivors and former partisans. It emerged in Lublin, moved through Bucharest and northern Italy, and eventually operated from Paris. Its leader and principal ideologue was Abba Kovner, a leader of the Vilna Ghetto underground and partisan movement. His deputy was Yitzhak (Pasha) Abidov. Members included Vitka Kempner, later Kovner’s wife; Simcha “Kazik” Rotem; Yosef Harmatz; Bezalel Michaeli; Eliezer and Avraham Lidovsky; and Reuven “Rovka” Schneider.

The group sought what it understood as “a nation for a nation” revenge. Plan A called for poisoning the water systems of German cities, especially Nuremberg, a central symbol of the Nazi Party. Members infiltrated water facilities, gathered maps and technical information, and considered how to introduce poison while avoiding American personnel. Kovner traveled to Mandatory Palestine to obtain poison. According to the available accounts, he received chemical material with assistance from people connected to the Yishuv and the Hebrew University, along with false documents and money concealed in gold and toothpaste tubes.

In December 1945, while returning to Europe, Kovner was arrested after reaching the port of Toulon. He threw some of the poison into the sea and handed the remainder to an associate, who also disposed of it. Kovner was held in military custody in Egypt and Palestine for several months. The circumstances of his arrest remain disputed: some accounts suggest that Zionist figures betrayed him, while historian Dina Porat has argued that the arrest was more likely connected to suspicions that he was involved in illegal immigration. In any event, Plan A was never carried out.

Plan B: The poisoned bread

After Plan A failed, the group turned to a smaller operation targeting SS prisoners held at the American-run Langwasser internment camp near Nuremberg. Yosef Harmatz led the local cell. Aryeh Distel, a survivor of concentration camps, obtained work at a bakery supplying the camp, while members smuggled in arsenic acquired in Europe.

On the night of 13 April 1946, a mixture of arsenic and glue was spread on the underside of approximately 3,000 loaves of bread. The operatives tried to distinguish bread intended for German prisoners from the bread issued to American guards. Thousands of prisoners became ill. Contemporary reports and later sources give different figures: one contemporary report recorded 2,283 cases, while other accounts cite higher numbers. No deaths are known to have resulted from the poisoning. The failure may have resulted from the quantity of poison, the way it was distributed, or the fact that prisoners ate little of the affected bread.

A parallel operation against a camp near Dachau was abandoned before it took place after the group feared that an attack would expose the network and lead to tighter security. The result was devastating for the Avengers, and some members reportedly considered suicide. After his release, Kovner urged the group to come to Palestine. Most arrived in 1946, settling at Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh or later becoming part of Israeli society. Smaller groups attempted to continue operating in Europe, but faced severe logistical and financial difficulties. Most returned to Israel by the early 1950s.

Revenge, responsibility, and state-building

The Avengers operated within a profound conflict between the desire to punish those who had murdered Jews and the fear of harming innocent people. The Yishuv leadership canceled a planned operation by a group led by Simcha Rotem against a prisoner camp at Dachau, partly because of political and moral concerns. Jewish Brigade soldiers likewise had to distinguish between Nazis directly involved in murder and the wider civilian population. As the struggle to establish Israel intensified, many of the Avengers left clandestine operations in Europe for arms procurement, immigration work, and defense.

That transition was historically significant. People who had tried to punish the murderers of their families and communities became part of the security and public foundations of Israel. One of them, Haim Laskov, later became Israel’s fifth chief of staff. Others entered the Israel Defense Forces and the security services. The pursuit and prosecution of Nazi criminals gradually moved from survivor-led clandestine initiatives to state institutions, including the Israel Police and the Mossad.

The activities remained secret for decades and began to emerge publicly only from the late 1960s onward. The silence reflected both practical danger and the difficulty of confronting actions born of extreme trauma but carried out beyond the ordinary boundaries of law and distinction between guilty and innocent. The story of the Avengers is therefore not only a story of retaliation. It is also a record of how survivors moved from fury and dislocation toward community, institutions, and the construction of a state.

The Avengers in memory, scholarship, and culture

The story remained largely outside public memory for many years, but gradually became the subject of research, testimony, and art. Michael Bar-Zohar’s The Avengers (1969) was one of the earliest substantial documentary accounts. Historian Dina Porat’s study Vengeance and Retribution Are Mine (2019) drew on interviews with survivors and private documents, placing Nakam within the broader histories of the Holocaust, the Yishuv, and Israeli society.

Sculptor Nathan Rapoport, known for major Holocaust memorial works, also created a sculpture dedicated to the Avengers. Hanoch Bartov’s novel Puberty Wounds (1965) portrayed the moral conflict confronting Jewish Brigade soldiers as they entered Germany. Danny Seaton documented survivors’ testimony in the documentary Revenge (1995), and Yarin Kimor produced a seven-part documentary series. In 2021, the film Plan A adapted the water-poisoning episode for the screen. The story has also influenced fiction, including Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds and additional novels and television productions.

The importance of this documentation and scholarship does not lie in presenting revenge as a model to imitate. It lies in preserving a rare historical and human testimony. The Avengers help us understand what happened to survivors whose families and communities had been annihilated, how the question of justice was confronted after the Holocaust, and how private retaliation gradually gave way to the institutions of law and the state.

Why the Avengers belong in Moreshet

The Avengers merit inclusion in Moreshet because their story captures a decisive moment in Jewish history: the passage from the destruction of the Holocaust toward a struggle for dignity, security, justice, and renewed collective life. Their actions reveal the determination of survivors not to allow the murder of European Jewry to pass without response, while also exposing the moral and practical limits of mass retaliation.

The groups affected both their own members and the early development of Israel. Many moved from clandestine activity in postwar Europe into arms procurement, immigration work, military service, and the security establishment, helping build institutions of the Jewish state. Their story also broadens the way the Holocaust is remembered in Israeli and Jewish life: not only through the experience of victims, but through the choices of survivors who organized, testified, rebuilt, and helped create a future.

Moreshet.com preserves the story of the Avengers as part of Jewish and Israeli heritage—not to glorify violence, but to ensure that the questions they embodied remain available for study: what justice can mean after an unprecedented crime, how a wounded community protects itself, and how law, responsibility, and memory can shape a future after catastrophe.