--- title: "These Jewish assassins targeted former Nazis to avenge the Holocaust" date: "2019-01-28" modified: "2020-10-22" authors: - name: "Blake Stilwell" job_title: "Editor-In-Chief, Air Force Veteran" link: "https://www.wearethemighty.com/authors/blake/" url: "https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/jewish-assassins-avenging-the-holocaust/" categories: - "History" - "War History" - "World War II" --- # These Jewish assassins targeted former Nazis to avenge the Holocaust ![]() The reprisals against German members of the Nazi party didn't end after the Nuremberg Trials. It was a well-known fact that many high-ranking members of the party survived World War II, the trials, and the Red Army's wrath. The Jewish people that were left did their best to seek justice, but none were as dedicated as the *Nokmim* – "[The Avengers]()." --- Without a doubt, the most famous of the Nazi hunters after World War II was Simon Wiesenthal, [who ferreted out some 1,100 Nazi war criminals](). Wiesenthal was a survivor at the Mauthausen death camp when it was liberated by American troops in 1945. As soon as his health was restored, he began to work in the War Crimes Section of the United States Army, gathering evidence to convict German war criminals. The operative words here being evidence, convict, and war criminals. ![]() *You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.* The *Nokmim*, as they were called, were not about to let anyone who committed those crimes against their people just walk free for lack of what a court determined was sufficient evidence. Wiesenthal would get the biggest names who escaped justice – those like Adolf Eichmann. The *Nokmim* would get the SS men, the prison guards, the Gestapo foot soldiers whose names might not be in history books. As former anti-Nazi partisans who had fought in an underground movement for years before the war's end, they were no strangers to killing. "We had seen concentration camps," Vitka Kovner [told the Yad Vashem Magazine]() of her time fighting Nazis in occupied Lithuania. "And after what we witnessed there, we decided that even though the war was over, we had to take revenge for the spilling of Jewish blood." ![]() *Vitka Kovner-Kempner (far right) was a resistance fighter in the Vilna ghetto in modern-day Lithuania.* (Jewish Women's Archive) With that goal in mind, they acted. Former Nazi SS officers and enlisted men were found hanged by apparent suicides for years after the war's end. Brakes on cars would suddenly become inoperative, causing deadly accidents. Former Nazis would be found in ditches, victims of apparent hit-and-runs. One was even [found in his hospital bed]() before minor surgery with kerosene in his bloodstream. One extreme plan even involved killing six million Germans as retribution for the Holocaust using a specially-designed, odorless, colorless poison, but had to settle for poisoning the bread at a prison camp for former SS men using arsenic. [That plan may have killed up to 300 of the convicts](). ![]() *Some of the leaders of the Nakmim movement would later lead brigades in Israel's 1948 Independence War.* But the group was comprised of more than just partisans. It may have even included British Army volunteers of Jewish descent who could move freely through the postwar world. No one knows who exactly was part of the group, but it was clear [that their reach extended worldwide](). ## Author Blake Stilwell is We Are The Mighty's Editor-in-Chief, covering military news, entertainment, and history, along with veteran education, employment and entrepreneurship. He is a former U.S. Air Force combat cameraman with degrees in Graphic Design, Television and Film, International Relations, Public Relations, Business Management and Middle Eastern Affairs. After leaving the military, he began working in film and television production in New York and Los Angeles, work that included ABC News, NBC Olympics, and HBO Sports. He then spent two years in Washington with White House Communications, before joining the Near East Foundation. At NEF he served as an International Development Fellow, then Communications Officer, and finally, Media Officer for the Middle East and Africa. Based in the Palestinian Territory, he coordinated strategic communications between eight country offices, international media, and government and NGO partners. He began a career focused on writing and editing in 2015 with We Are The Mighty. He left in 2019 for Military.com, but returned as Editor-in-Chief in 2025. Blake’s work has been seen on CBS News, Fox News, CBC, The Chicago Tribune, Task & Purpose, Military Times, Recoil, Skillset, American History, and was shockingly even used in a Supreme Court argument. He is an avid traveler and small business owner in Ohio, where he spends most of his energy fixing up a very old house. ### Author social links [Facebook]() [Twitter]() [Instagram]() [LinkedIn]()