By Joe Spier
CALGARY, Alberta, Canada — The headline in the April 20, 1946 edition of the New York Times read “Poison Bread Fells 1,900 German Captives in U.S. Army Prison Camp near Nuremberg.” What the Times did not report nor know was who the perpetrators were.
As World War II was ending, survivors trickled out of the Nazi death camps and Jewish partisan fighters walked out of the forests. Their lives in shatters, unwanted, the remnant of European Jewry yearned to go to what would become the Jewish homeland. That is except for a few who wanted vengeance. Abba Kovner was one of them.
On September 23, 1943, Kovner, aged 25, escaped into the Lithuanian forests from the Vilna ghetto as the Nazis began the liquidation of the ghetto that once housed 40,000 Jews. In the forest, Kovner who had been a leader of the Jewish underground in the ghetto, headed a Jewish brigade of partisan fighters who for the next 10 months, until liberated by advancing Soviet forces, fought the Germans with acts of sabotage, destroying power installations, water infrastructure, supply depots, trucks, trains, roads and bridges.
Upon the defeat of Germany and awareness of the true extent of the genocide inflicted upon the Jewish people, a compelling thought dominated the mind of Abba Kovner and of others, biblical vengeance and justice, an eye for an eye, to be meted out, not by the conquering countries but by those who had suffered the most, the Jews.
Kovner’s obsession solidified in the spring of 1945 at a Passover dinner of survivors and refugees held in Bucharest. Kovner spoke of the need for revenge. The war is over but not for the Germans. The Germans who killed the Jews must pay with their lives. He invoked Psalm 94 in which God deals with the enemies of the people of Israel: “He will repay them for their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness”. There, under the leadership of Abba Kovner, young Jewish fighters, men and women, formed a secret organization, which they called DIN, the first letters of the ancient Hebrew phrase: “Dahm Y’Israel Nokeam” (“The blood of Israel will take vengeance”). The members, which grew to about 50, became known as “HaNokmim” (in English “The Avengers”). For them Aliyah would be postponed. They would wield the sword of vengeance.
The leadership of DIN considered two alternate plans involving poison. Plan “Aleph” was a diabolical yet implausible scheme to exact upon the Germans the same fate inflicted upon the Jews, indiscriminate killing on a massive scale by poisoning the water supply of five German cities and Plan “Bet,” to assassinate those directly responsible for the genocide by poisoning captured Nazi SS officers held in American POW camps.
In September 1945, it was decided that Kovner would travel to Palestine to obtain the backing of the leadership of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community in Palestine) for the group’s plans and to obtain poison, which was difficult to acquire in Europe. Disguised as a member of the Palestinian Jewish Brigade serving in the British army, Kovner smuggled himself into Palestine. There he briefed the Jewish leadership who were appalled by the idea of massive killing and thus Kovner soon abandoned Plan Aleph.
Kovner could not even find help to implement Plan Bet. That is until he met with Chaim Weizmann, the scientist who would become Israel’s first President. Weizmann gave Kovner the name of a chemist and a letter of introduction. Now armed with poison, which he secreted in two canisters, Kovner, using a false name and wearing a Jewish Brigade uniform, boarded a ship for Europe.
On the fourth day of the voyage, as the ship entered Toulon, Kovner heard his assumed name being called over the loudspeaker with instructions to report to the captain. He was arrested by British soldiers but not before getting rid of the poison. Kovner was also able to get a message off to his group: “Arrested. Proceed with Plan Bet.” He spent the next four months in prison, until May 1946, first in Cairo and then in Jerusalem. The British never seemed to know the reason that Kovner was arrested; only that he was a threat. He was never questioned about his revenge plans. Kovner believed that he was betrayed by high-ranking members of the Yishuv who wished Kovner detained but not punished because they feared Kovner’s plan, if implemented, might prejudice the moral claim to a Jewish state.
The remaining leadership of DIN charged with executing Plan Bet, chose as their target, Stalag 13 outside of Nuremberg, which housed some 15,000 SS prisoners, the criminal elite, death-camp personnel, members of mobile killing squads and Gestapo interrogation specialists. The plan was simple yet difficult to implement; poison the bread that they ate.
Execution of the plan fell to Joseph Harmatz, the local DIN leader. Harmatz, a confidant of Kovner, had fought in the Vilna ghetto and in the forest with him.
Two pieces of crucial intelligence were learned. The bread for the camp was prepared by a single bakery and while the SS prisoners ate black bread, on Sundays the American guards ate a special order of white bread.
Julian Brooklyn turned up at the bakery and told the owner that he was a Polish DP who would be moving to Canada to work at a bakery owned by his father. He needed to learn the business and would work for free. He was hired. Brooklyn was in fact Lebke Distel, a Nokam, captured by the Nazis in Vilna, placed into slave labor until he escaped to the Russian lines, and now rooming with Harmatz. Every day Distel learned a new part of the business ending up baking bread.
At the same time, arsenic was purchased on the black market from French chemists and smuggled to Nuremberg by a member of the Jewish Brigade who strapped the poison to his body in hot water bottles. In turn, the bottles were sneaked into the bakery by Distel and hidden under floorboards.
Harmatz selected the night of Saturday, April 13, 1946 as the time for carrying out the mission. That morning, before anyone came to work, Distel let in a confederate, hid him in an empty flour barrel, and in the evening snuck in another member who hid in a storeroom. At night after all of the workers had left, the three members of DIN went to work painting the poison, a clear, odourless liquid, upon the loaves of black bread. They hoped to poison 9,000 loaves. Working in tandem, one setting out the bread, one painting the poison on the bread and one returning the bread to its proper place, after two hours they managed to poison 3,000 loaves when they heard a terrible banging.
It was storming outside; a shutter had come loose and was hammering into the building. The Nokmim knew that the German security guard would investigate and search the bakery. They placed several unpoisoned loaves into a bag and left the bag by an open window making it look like an attempted robbery which it did to the guard and to the policeman he called. The three fled, their job unfinished. They had only poisoned one-third of the loaves they intended. Then, according to plan, they made for the Czech border.
The next morning, as normal, loaves of black bread, poisoned and un-poisoned, together with the loaves of white bread for the American guards, were delivered to Stalag 13 and were eaten.
It is not known how many SS men, if any, died. American army authorities claim that 2,238 were taken ill but that none died. However, the U.S. had every reason to cover up deaths occurring under their watch. Harmatz believes that the number killed was between 300 and 400. Others put the figure as high as 1,000.
Joseph Harmatz and Lebke Distel eventually made their way to Israel. In 1999, after they appeared on a television show broadcast in Germany, in which they admitted their roles in the poison plot, the Public Prosecutor in Nuremberg opened a criminal investigation against them. The investigation was quietly dropped about a year later, the prosecutor citing; “statute of limitations laws” and “unusual circumstances”.
As for Abba Kovner, he did not return to Europe following his release from prison in Jerusalem. He called upon the members of DIN to come to Palestine to join the battle there. Most did. Kovner went on to serve as an officer with the Givati Brigade in Israel’s War of Independence. This man, who once considered killing millions of Germans, became a renowned and loved poet, receiving the “Israel Prize” for literature in 1970. Kovner passed away in 1987.
There were a number of Jewish ‘revenge’ attacks upon ex-Nazis following World War II. The poison attack upon Stalag 13 was the largest. The greatest revenge, the finest of all, however, occurred on May 14, 1948 when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed: “The establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel to be known as the State of Israel.”
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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history. You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com. Comments below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and his or her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)