Germany pursues Holocaust avengers

By Louise Potterton in Nuremberg

TWO Holocaust survivors who sought revenge after the Second World War by trying to poison thousands of Nazis taken prisoner by the Allies are being investigated by German legal authorities with a view to prosecution for attempted murder.

Prosecutors in Nuremberg, where war crimes trials of German leaders were held 53 years ago, have launched the inquiry involving two Jewish men who confessed recently on a German television programme to their involvement in a plot to murder Nazi functionaries and members of the SS.

Lithuanian-born Leipke Distel, 77, and Joseph Harmatz, 74, who both live in Israel, said they had been members of a Jewish group called Nakam (Revenge) who in 1946 disguised themselves as workers in a bakery and coated 3,000 loaves of bread with arsenic. The poisoned bread was then delivered to the Langwasser prison camp in which the Nazis were held captive.

But gang members placed insufficient quantities of arsenic on the bread to do the job effectively. Thousands of prisoners suffered severe stomach ache, and hundreds were admitted to hospital for medical attention, but none died.

Mr Harmatz believes the investigation to be "ridiculous". He said:

"I think the investigators are stupid. Perhaps it was a mistake for us to make the story public but we wanted to admit what we had done. I don't recognise Germany at all. I have no intention of going there. And the investigators can't come here."

Mr Distel said: "The aim of our action in Nuremberg was to prove to 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 had a right to take revenge on the Germans."

But Klaus Hubmann, Nuremberg's senior public prosecutor, said: "If somebody confesses in public to an attempted murder, then we have to take action." He said that political or moral aspects played no part in the decision. The fact that the crime was committed more than half a century ago was irrelevant to the legal authorities. He said: "Like murder, attempted murder does not lapse."

The former leader of the Nakam group, Izchak Awidow, said: "What is there to investigate? We admit that we did it." Ewald Behrschmidt, a spokesman for the Nuremberg public prosecutor's office, said the investigation would not be influenced by the fact that the men had been persecuted by the Nazis. He said: "We are not investigating Holocaust survivors. The investigation is into suspects who are thought to have tried to kill more than 2,000 people."

Mr Behrschmidt said that no matter how understandable such an action might be from a personal point of view, feelings could not be taken into account by the justice authorities. He said: "Our law says it is the duty of the public prosecutor to investigate crimes such as murder no matter how long after the event. And no matter whom the suspect may be. We have a duty to find out what happened."

The move is also supported by Arno Hamburger, the chairman of the Nuremberg Jewish community, who said: "The justice ministry is completely right to take this case in hand. What the men did was in no way correct. One can in no way put oneself on the same level as murderers by rash acts of revenge."

He said, however, that it was understandable that these kinds of ideas could be hatched by people who had undergone the horrors of the Holocaust and seen their friends and families killed. Meanwhile, the producer of the programme that prompted the investigation, Jim Tobias, has refused to help the authorities with their research, citing journalistic integrity.

Mr Tobias said: "I'm not co-operating, It's not my job, I'm a journalist. I find it remarkable that the same justice department which dragged its feet against Nazi criminals should expend so much energy against Jewish culprits."

Klaus Hubmann, the public prosecutor, said: "We're just in the first examination stage. At the moment application for extradition is not an issue. In such cases foreign states do not extradite their own citizens. But the limited chances of getting hold of someone should not hinder our investigation."

The Israeli government in Tel Aviv has so far made no comment.