- German legal authorities have begun an unprecedented
murder investigation into Jewish death squads responsible for the assassination
of suspected Nazis after the Second World War.
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- Many of the assassins became founder members of Mossad.
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- When two elderly Israelis admitted on German television
that they had been part of a death squad controlled from Tel Aviv who,
half a century ago had tried to poison with arsenic thousands of suspected
Nazis held in an American prison camps near Nuremberg, the city's senior
public prosecutor, Klaus Hubmann, decided he could not ignore the startling
claim.
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- The result is an unprecedented legal investigation that
Hubmann admits could have consequences even he cannot foresee.
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- Ultimately it could involve Israel's former prime minister,
Yitzhak Shamir, being questioned, along with Rafi Eitan, the former director
of operations for Mossad.
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- Both had been involved with Nokim, the Hebrew word for
Avengers. Founded by Holocaust survivors from World War Two, Nokim consisted
of Jewish death squads who roamed through Europe and the Middle East hunting
down Nazis.
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- "They didn't bother with legal trials. They just
executed any Nazis they found," Rafi Eitan has said. "For them
their actions were justified by the Biblical rule of 'an eye for an eye'."
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- Two of those who followed that rule are Leipe Distel
and Joseph Harmatz. Both were Holocaust survivors who had made their way
to Israel in 1945. They became founder members of Nokim. A year later they
returned to Germany. They found work in a bakery that supplied an American
prisoner-of-war camp. Another member of Nokim provided them with sufficient
arsenic to coat 3,000 loaves of bread.
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- Bread was the staple diet the Americans provided to their
prisoners.
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- But Distel, now aged 77, has publicly admitted on German
television that he had failed to ensure the loaves had been sufficiently
impregnated with arsenic to kill the prisoners. Instead thousands experienced
severe stomach ache - and hundreds were admitted to US army hospitals in
Nuremberg.
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- Recalling the episode, Distel said his only "regret"
was that "we failed to kill those Germans".
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- His self-confessed collaborator in the plot, Joseph Harmatz,
a sprightly 74-year-old, said from his home outside Tel Aviv that "the
aim of our action in Nuremberg was to show the world that we Jews were
not prepared to silently accept all the murdering that the Germans did
to us. We Jews acted with morality on our side. The Jews have a right to
take revenge on the Germans."
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- The survivors of the Nokim groups have become legendary
folk heroes for generations of Israelis. Just as Nazi SS members meet in
the Bierkellers of Bavaria to recall their killing work, so do the Nokim
meet on Israel's kibbutz. Scattered now throughout Israel, the old men
keep in touch, passing the hours reminiscing about when they hunted down
Nazis.
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- While principally operating in Europe, they made trips
to Damascus, Cairo and Morocco where former Nazis felt they were safe.
The Nokim rallying call was "vengeance has no boundaries".
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- A similar justification governed the actions of Yitzhak
Shamir. Learning that German rocket scientists were working in 1960 to
provide Egypt with long-range weapons capable of destroying Israeli cities,
he sent members of Nokim - by then enrolled into Mossad - to assassinate
the scientists.
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- The methods they used to eliminate the scientists were
more sophisticated than those devised by Distel and Harmatz.
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- In a rare interview with me some years ago, Shamir justified
his actions in words chillingly similar to those used by Distel and Harmatz.
"Revenge is all that matters. Do not talk of morality after what happened
to my people," he said.
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- The view is not shared by Nuremberg's senior public prosecutor,
Klaus Hubmann.
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- As he had his team of prosecutors press on with the painstaking
task of gathering evidence about Nokim's activities over half a century
ago, he will only say, "This is not a question of morality. Like murder,
attempted murder does not lapse. Neither will my office be influenced by
the fact that members of Nokim had been persecuted by the Nazis. This is
not an investigation into Holocaust survivors. It is an investigation into
what those survivors may have done.
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- "Our law says it is the duty of the public prosecutor
to investigate crimes, no matter how long ago they happened. And no matter
who the suspects or perpetrators are." In Berlin and Tel Aviv, the
German and Jewish authorities are watching closely the progress of the
investigation - and maintaining a firm policy of silence.
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- But in Israel, former members of Nokim are taking an
aggressive stance. One of its leaders, Itzhak Awidow, defiantly said this
week: "So the Germans are investigating? So what? No one who served
in Nokim would recognise the validity of such an investigation - let alone
lend it any support. Where were these German public prosecutors when we
wanted them to prosecute known Nazi war criminals?"
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- Support for such defiance comes from a surprising quarter.
Arno Hamburger is chairman of the small but influential Nuremberg Jewish
community. He believes that the city's public prosecutor is right to pursue
men like Joseph Harmatz and Leipe Distel.
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- "By their own admission these men broke the law.
If they had succeeded, they would have killed perhaps thousands of people.
They have no proof that all those prisoners were proven Nazis. Such acts
of revenge are no compensation for the proper process of law."
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- In Tel Aviv, Harmatz dismissed the German investigation
as "ridiculous. These people are stupid. Anyway, I don't recognise
Germany. And I certainly have no intention of going there. And there is
no way that the Israeli authorities will allow them to come here and question
us. We have all had too much of being questioned by the Germans."
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- But such outbursts have little effect on the dogged determination
of public prosecutor Klaus Hubmann to investigate the activities of the
Nokim over half a century ago. Sources close to the investigation suggest
that soon Hubmann may make a formal request, through the German Ministry
of Justice, for the right to question former Nokim members still alive
and living in Israel.
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- A reliable estimate suggests they number no more than
a hundred. But if two of them had not chosen to speak out on German television,
the chances are that their past activities would have remained long forgotten.
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- This material is Copyright Gordon Thomas © 2000
Gordon Thomas
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