Holocaust victim 'avengers' reunite on television broadcast

A group of elderly Holocaust survivors came forward Friday with accounts of a death squad they formed after World War II to take revenge on their Nazi persecutors, recounting a brazen operation in which they poisoned hundreds of SS officers.

In a broadcast on television's Channel Two, the survivors - some of whom fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising - recalled hunting down SS officers in the dead of night. Disguised as British or American officers, they would drag the SS men out of their homes and execute them, they said.

In their largest operation, the group, code-named "The Avengers," received a large amount of arsenic from Paris and laced loaves of bread fed to hundreds of SS officers imprisoned in an American camp after the war. They said they were also planning a broad operation in Dachau and Nuremberg, but the Jewish leadership in what would soon become Israel forced them to abandon the plan.

"I didn't see myself as a murderer, not then and not today," group member Simcha Rotem told Channel Two.

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I wonder if killing prisoners of war is a war crime, some people have been brought to justice some havent ..yet

I am glad to see people in here sticking up for the SS Officers who were just following orders when they raped, murdered and tortured.... and laughed while they did it.

I mean come on, they were just doing their jobs right?

I like to know that people are out there, who are so transcendental that they can just ignore having watched their family, friends.. hell their entire culture and peoples, wiped out without feeling anything.

I am sure that lots of people feel just fine with having their families butchered....

Of course it could seem that some people are only upset because it was Jewish people taking revenge against their oppressor.

¨Of course it could seem that some people are only upset because it was Jewish people taking revenge against their oppressor¨.

killing prisoners without a trial is uncivilized,and if others do it you dont have to copy them
a war crime cannot only apply to one side,are you suggesting they not be condemed because there jewish?

...then why were they not tried as such? Perhaps governments were going for the bigger fish and let others slide?

The people killed were not prisoners, they were walking the streets, except for the ones in the american camp. I can't say that I condone their behavior, but considering the fact that some still deny the Holocaust and support Nazis, I certainly understand their actions. Would they ever see justice?

I guess we can agree on that, i also cant condone the ¨avengers¨ vigillante actions, killing people without due process was something the nazis did also, i prefer the way simon wiesenthal brought the holocaust perpetrators to justice,

I, too, would prefer that they were brought to justice via the "Weisenthal" way. However, if a family, say the Byrd family, hunted down the killers of James Byrd and killed them, after they had been let off, I would find it VERY hard to convict a single one of them!

You also got something wrong. Nazis didn't kill "without due process," they killed "without regard." The difference? The Jews they killed did nothing wrong, other than being Jewish. The Nazis killed by the Jews...well, that should be obvious why they were killed. So, to conflate the two is not historically accurate.

Isn't that where you hit them over the head with a truncheon, throw a burlap bag over their head, then fly them to Israel, then try them and execute them?

This saved time. IMO they got what they deserved. You can only bully people to a certin point before the people you attempt to bully.. like through intimidation, strike back and kill you.

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An EYE for an EYE--

I'm sure they sleep well at nite</sarcasm>

No crime has ever been committed by an atheist or agnostic.

The only people who commit any crime at all in the entire world are people who are part of a religion.

:eyes:

So many SS officers, even camp guards, were never punished for their evil deeds. They came here, flourished in Europe... hell, even became head of Austria. imo, they delivered Justice, when no one else would, for things done to them personally, and to those they loved. I have enough Sicilian in me to understand this.

if a group of victims who survived 'Iraq' decided to poison a US military camp then? or a town that services a base? or people who happen to work in an office building in enemy lands?

Revenge is understandable, but not the best course and it is still criminality.

Our government has done horrible things in Iraq, but even that can't be compared to the systematic murder, starvation, and torture of at least six million Jews. SIX MILLION. Then, to see the very people who did this to you become mayors, go back and open their shops, live a normal life, with everything and everyone intact. This si not criminality. Sorry. I can completely understand this. What do you do when the law won't help you? When the LAW is now the group of people who did this to you? Hmmm?

And, the analogy of the military camp is disingenuous. If the people the Iraqis killed were all people who had raped and murdered their families, laughing while they bashed babies' heads against the walls, joking as they shot old ladies in the head just because of who they are... then no, I wouldn't have a problem with it, because in this hypothetical case, the law would also be absent. The same for the office building. 9/11 has nothing to do with what the "Avengers" did. But I KNOW you KNOW that. The people they killed were the actual people who made the Holocaust happen. A better analogy would be Bush, or Cheney, or the Joint Chiefs.

And, this wasn't revenge.

It is so easy for Americans to act all self-righteous about things like this (David Irving, etc.). WE have NEVER been affected by anything like this. Ever. Only the Native Americans have tasted this. WE have no right to sit in judgment of these people. We don't know. I had a friend growing up who's grandmother survived Auschwitz. Her whole family died there. Understand> EVERYONE. HUNDREDS of people -- she was the ONLY person in her entire family who survived. She would have every right to put a bullet through an SS officer's brain while he knelt in the mud and begged for mercy.

very very horrible things and continue to do all that and more, just like the Germans who knew damn well what was going on...and did nothing.

But your right, it's not the same thing--this revenge took place AFTER war, while the US continues to seek 'payback' under the declaration of a false war...you're right, it probably more like Mussolini in Ethopia.

like the US troops in Vietnam - which could not be more different from the case of the swaggering SS. It's the warmonger sponsors and leaders who will be facing eternal torment.

...only actual nazis, those who had a direct hand in the systematic torturing and killing.

Anyone else who ate the bread, or did the guards not eat bread?

surely understand, to say the least. As for criminality, that is a man-made thing. "I was just following (lawful) orders" was not even an acceptable excuse at Nuremburg.

Though Ms. Peel is quite fetching... Still, I prefer the leather bodysuit. What were we talking about. Oh yeah, hunting down SS officers and killing them.

We have murdered the murderers.

Personally, I feel that it doesn't matter who a person murders, it matters that a person murders. Revenge doesn't ever seem to do anything but perpetuate more revenge. However, it's most definitely not my place to say in this situation - I have got no right to an opinion on this one, none.

However, I can see that their story could make an excellent film. It would be a hell of a thing to show the story of this group of people, who as the article says spent the war fighting the Nazis and continued to do so after the war was over. The popular concept now is that Jews were universally passive victims of the Holocaust, which in itself dehumanizes Jews and makes them the object of history rather than the subject of history. A story which put SS veterans as captive victims and a group of Jewish resistance fighters as calculating aggressors would be morally murky, shocking, contrary to the expected, and no doubt controversial enough to get enough free press to open big.

Can you imagine that story in Spike Lee's hands?

because death is the least of the worries and torments those SS scum will have met - are facing and will for all eternity.

...did they kill these people for having commited war crimes or just for having been members of the SS?

preparedness on the part of the wearer to torture and or murder, men women and children without mercy - not from a demented fear and desperation, but laughing and joking.

A bunch of Nazis were sentenced to death, another bunch of Nazis were sentenced to prison terms and yet another bunch were acquitted. Clearly, something other than wearing "the uniform" was considered of graver importance.

What all of those had in common, though, was they all had a trial in which evidence was presented. Do you think that was a bad thing?

and the rest of the US branch of the nazi's

I cannot imagine the torment that these people went through, to witness the slaughter and KNOW that you could be next.
If I had went through that, if it didnt drive me insane, I would have done the same.
Those monsters deserved to die, and the more suffering that they went through, the better.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/113550307924350.xml&coll=2

Sunday, December 25, 2005

With a fading memory and few witnesses, a former Cleveland real estate agent will face trial next spring in his homeland, accused of heinous acts against Jews.

To Nazi hunters, Algimantas Dailide's trial means justice, even if it comes 64 years since Dailide's work in Vilnius, Lithuania...

A federal judge in Cleveland found that Dailide worked for the Nazi-backed Saugumas, the Lithuanian security police, arresting Jews in Vilnius in 1941 and helping to determine who would work heavy-labor details and who would die. Dailide was 20 at the time.

He says he was a simple clerk. Records show, however, that Dailide also carried a pistol and helped stop a truck filled with people trying to flee. Nearly 55,000 Jews were killed at Vilnius...

well done, gentlemen
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi