Joseph Harmatz

Joseph Harmatz (; 23 January 1925 – 22 September 2016) was a Lithuanian Jew who fought as a partisan during World War II. After the war, he joined Nakam and plotted acts of revenge that were aimed at killing Nazis and other Germans to avenge Jewish deaths during the Holocaust. After emigrating to Israel, he headed World ORT, a Jewish non-profit organization that promotes education and training in communities around the world.

Early life Born into a prosperous family in Rokiškis, Lithuania, on 23 January 1925, Harmatz was transferred to the Vilnius Ghetto, together with his family, after the occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany. His youngest brother and all of his grandparents were killed and his older brother died during a military action. His despondent father committed suicide. Left alone with his mother at the age of 16, Harmatz left the ghetto through the sewers and joined a band of guerrillas fighting the Nazis.

Nakam After the war, Harmatz became part of Nakam (Hebrew for Revenge), a group of 50 former underground fighters led by Abba Kovner that was dedicated to efforts to avenge the deaths of the six million Jewish victims of Nazi extermination efforts in the Holocaust. Harmatz told The Observer in 1998 that the goal of Nakam was the death of as many Germans as possible, with the group planning "to kill six million Germans, one for every Jew slaughtered by the Germans", acknowledging that the effort "was revenge, quite simply. Were we not entitled to our revenge, too?" Nearly 2,000 prisoners were sickened; they were described in The New York Times as being "seriously ill", though American authorities thought that the arsenic had got onto the crust of the bread by accident and had been used as an insecticide. United States Army investigators found enough arsenic to have killed 60,000 people and Nakam claimed several hundred victims, but declassified documents obtained by Associated Press in 2016 stated there were no deaths. Harmatz's son would later say that his father had no regret for his attempts to kill these Germans, saying that he was only "sorry that it didn't work".

A resident of Tel Aviv, Harmatz died on 22 September 2016, at his home at the age of 91. He was survived by two sons.