Jewish World War II “Avenger” Joseph Harmatz, who led an effort by Jews to seek revenge against Nazi tormentors, has died. He was 91.
His son, Ronel Harmatz, confirmed his death on Monday, according to CBS News.
Harmatz was a Holocaust survivor and considered one of the last remaining Jewish “Avengers” known for carrying out a mass poisoning of former SS officers in an American prisoner-of-war camp in 1946, CBS News noted. The poisoning sickened more than 2,000 Germans, but didn’t cause any deaths.
According to CBS News, three members of Harmatzs’ group coated about 3,000 loaves of bread with arsenic with a goal of killing nearly 12,000 SS personnel.
To many, Harmatzs’ actions made it known that the days when attacks on Jews went unanswered were long gone.
Harmatz, who was born in Lithuania, lost family members during the Holocaust, which is partly why he remained unapologetic about his actions. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Harmatz spoke about the vengeance that he and his group sought.
“We didn’t understand why it shouldn’t be paid back,” he said.
When asked about the goal of the attack, Harmatz simply put it this way: “Kill Germans. As many as possible.”
Harmatzs’ group consisted of about 50 people, both men and women, who felt the need to retaliate against the Nazi’s, not wanting the crimes committed against their people to go unpunished, CBS News noted. About 6 million Jews were killed during WWII.
Following the war, Harmatz immigrated to Israel where he worked at the Jewish Agency as the director general of World ORT, a Jewish educational organization, Fox News noted.