Readings & Rereadings…

Final Reckoning

A true tale of heroism and violence, a burning quest for justice and revenge…

Rated: (3.5/5) on Apr 27, 2009

Post-war Europe, the Nazis have been brought down and brought to court. But surprisingly only 24 persons face trials for crimes against humanity. Sam Bourne, the pseudonym of Jonathan Freedland (a columnist with the Guardian), tells a shocking tale of Jewish vigilantes who don’t like the fact that the perpertuators of the Final Solution are unpunished.

These young vigilantes saw that the guilty were about to walk free. The world wanted to move on; the Americans, especially, were anxious to absorb western Germany into a new alliance against the Soviet bloc. But these fighters were not ready; before they could be at peace, they would first have to avenge the blood of their fellow Jews. They form a group that would come to be known as the Nokmim, Hebrew for avengers.

The story of what followed has been recounted in several books, most notably Rich Cohen’s The Avengers, which benefited from Cohen’s family connection with some of the group’s lead players, and Forged In Fury, written by the BBC’s former Jerusalem correspondent, Michael Elkins, and first published in 1971. One former member of this clandestine movement, Joseph Harmatz, wrote a revealing memoir, From The Wings, a decade ago.

These accounts differ on some details but agree on the essentials. Calmly, what Harmatz calls the Vengeance group set about implementing death sentences they themselves had passed. Perhaps posing as allied military police serving the postwar occupation authorities, they would identify a Nazi who had melted back into civilian life, stage an arrest and spirit him away. Some of these ex-SS men would be strangled, others hanged – all the better for passing off the death as a suicide. Hangings might take place in a garage, with the subject forced to stand on a car roof while his neck was placed in a noose attached to an overhead beam: an Avenger would drive the car away and the man would be left swinging.

Elkins describes former high-level Nazis found dead in roadside ditches, apparently cut down by a hit-and-run driver. Others met their end in car accidents caused by mysterious mechanical failures. One senior Gestapo man was waiting in a hospital bed for a minor operation when somehow kerosene got into his bloodstream. Estimates vary as to how many Nazis died in what Elkins calls this “first hunting season”, and the Avengers were understandably coy about naming specific names, but it seems as if dozens of Nazis were killed by Jewish vigilantes.

Sam Bourne spins a tale with the Avengers in the background to provide a thrilling tale, that kept me interested through the night.