A new hour-long documentary film to be shown on Channel 4 this weekend reveals extraordinary first person-testimony from a secret organisation of Holocaust survivors who have been dubbed ‘The Jewish Avengers.’
The broadcast will be the first time that a tape recording made in 1985 of the key members of the team - including leader Abba Kovner – discussing the plan is heard by the general public
One of the most remarkable and shocking stories from the recordings is a planned revenge attack on the German people planned by the team in 1946. They claim to have infiltrated water filtration works in Hamburg, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Munich in a bid to poison up to six million German civilians.
Testimony from the tapes alleges that two future presidents of Israel, Chaim Weizmann and Efraim Katzir, were involved in helping the ‘Avengers’ acquire the poison.
Another of the team’s revenge attacks centred on the 50,000 SS officers held at the time in POW camps in Nuremberg and Munich. The film suggests that this second attack may have at least partially succeeded.
The film features extraordinary testimony from the last surviving members of the group, including Auschwitz survivor Yehuda Maimon, Simcha Rotem - the last survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Hasia Warshawski - a woman so traumatised by events that she has never spoken before in public and shares her memories in this film for the first time
Commissioning Editor, Rob Coldstream said, “We are proud to have this remarkable film. Both intensely moving and deeply shocking it packs a real emotional punch - and by flipping the traditional Holocaust narrative on its head asks profound questions about the nature of justice.”
Dinah Lord, MD of production company Caravan Media and co-Executive Producer of Holocaust: The Revenge, added: “This is an incredible story that very few people will know, told from the first-hand perspective of the last survivors directly involved and based on extensive research which has unearthed remarkable new evidence.”
Holocaust: The Revenge Plot, airs at 9pm on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, on Channel 4 and will be available on-demand after broadcast.
