Joseph Harmatz — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Joseph Harmatz (Hebrew: יוסף חרמץ‎; 23 January 1925–22 September 2016) was a Lithuanian-born Jew who fought as a partisan fighter during World War II. After the war, he joined Nakam and plotted acts of revenge that were aimed at killing Nazis 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.

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?"

Harmatz and his associates targeted Stalag XIII-D, a prisoner-of-war camp built on what had been the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, that was being used to intern 12,000 members of the SS, many of whom had been involved in running concentration camps and other aspects of the Final Solution, Nazi Germany's policy of deliberate and systematic genocide across German-occupied Europe. In April 1946, a member of the group got a job as a baker and used arsenic to poison 3,000 loaves of bread that were to be fed to the prisoners. 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 casualties. 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". In his 1998 book From the Wings, Harmatz alleged that the poisoning plot had the approval of Chaim Weizmann, though David Ben-Gurion and Zalman Shazar were both against the plan.

An earlier attempt to poison the water in a number of German cities failed after Kovner was arrested by British forces on a ship on which the poison had been hidden, and had been thrown overboard to prevent its capture. According to his son, Harmatz was thankful in retrospect that the plot to poison the water supplies in German cities had failed, saying that it would have harmed efforts to create an incipient State of Israel and would have led to charges of moral equivalence between actions of Germans and Jews. Another effort to kill Nazi war criminals on trial at Nuremberg failed when the group was unable to find any U.S. Army guards willing to participate.

After making aliyah to Israel, he founded the ORT network, a non-profit Jewish organization promoting education and training in communities around the world.

From 1967 to 1979, he served as the CEO of the ORT Israel network. When it was established, the network, founded as part of the global ORT organization, included a total of two schools: the first, a school in Jaffa, and the second, the vocational school in Jerusalem on Haneviim Street. Thanks to Harmatz' hard work, the network developed from this humble beginning into the largest educational network in Israel - a role model in the world for new educational initiatives. In the late 1960s, Harmatz appealed to social organizations to donate a central computer to ORT, a donation that catapulted ORT schools toward the computerized age long before the first personal computer hit the market. Its vision of the future placed the network at the forefront of technological education. During Harmatz' tenure, the pedagogical center named after Moshinsky - a model for other training and teaching centers around the world - the Hermelin College, and ORT College in Jerusalem, were established.

From 1979 to 1993, he served as CEO of World ORT.

During his tenure as CEO, the ORT network flourished. Following the large increase - from 12,000 - 13,000 students initially – during the period of Harmatz' management, the number of students reached 70,000. He considered this figure a huge achievement.

From: Wikipedia

Never say this is my last way [Hebrew]

What can I write about this multidimensional man whose life was equal to that of ten men or more? He was quiet; always wore a casquette, seemed to me to be in his early 80s, his voice was soft, and it was very difficult to hold a conversation with him in the midst of all our soprano voices / Shira Malkin

Joseph Harmatz wore many hats: He was a Holocaust survivor, a fighter in the Ghetto Vilna Underground, a partisan and a commander in the forests against the Germans, a survivor, a member of the Nakam (Heb: Revenge) Group in Europe, a prisoner in Atlit, CEO of ORT Israel, and later ORT's global director, a writer, a scholar and a warm family man.

What can I write about this multidimensional man whose life was equal to that of ten men or more? And why should I write about him, since, if you "browse" on Google you can find the entire story of his life in interviews and documents.

But, as in most of the articles I share with my readers, a personal thread is interwoven in the casual encounters and the surprising experiences connecting isolated and remote links into a full circle.

This is the story:

For several years now I have been taking part in the birthday celebrations of my female cousins ​​whose grandparents were brothers and sisters, and all from Lithuania. I am the only female cousin born in Israel since my grandfather, the youngest of nine children, made aliyah to Israel in the last second before the outbreak of World War II, on March 1939, and joined my parents, Zionists who made aliyah as early as 1935. All his other brothers and sisters emigrated to Rhodesia and the USA. Part of the second and third generation decided to make aliyah in the early 1960s, thus over time, the female family group was formed. Eventually, a female cousin of a female cousin was added, and she brought the direct "cousin", the only man in female meetings, and this was Joseph Harmatz.

During my first meetings, he always sat at the other end of the table in various restaurants where we celebrated birthdays, and I did not get to talk to him directly. He was quiet, always came with a casquette, seemed to be in his early 80s; his voice was soft and it was very difficult to hold a conversation in the midst of all our soprano voices, the dominant female cousins, ​​... until ... at the last meeting a few days ago, Juliet, his direct female cousin, asked me to give him a "ride" to the lunch being held in honour of her birthday at the "Reviva and Celia" restaurant.

I reached his address and he came down wearing his casquette, refused to get into the car first, and insisted on playing the gentleman. We arrived first at the restaurant, and sat at the long table alone, and continued the conversation we had started during the journey with a mutual desire to continue it during another meeting.

A few days later, I was invited to his apartment in Ramat Aviv. It was the apartment of a scholar, with a large library containing the best of Russian and Hebrew literature and poetry, books on history and war, and many of them about the Holocaust and Eastern European Jewry, especially on Lithuania. Art pictures decorated the walls, along with many souvenirs and objets d'art, and family photos. A computer, hardly ever used, stood in the study, since Joseph probably wrote his books using simpler means...

I did my homework before I came and read about him and his exploits, his childhood and adolescence of which he was deprived because of the war, the ghetto and the cruel separation from his father and his two brothers.

However, listening to Joseph, sitting face to face, tête à tête as they say in French, was a rare experience.

Joseph Harmatz, whose name was interpreted by Zalman Shazar as an acronym for: sage, rabbi, and spiritual leader, known among his friends and family as Yulek, was born in 1925 the middle son of an economically established family in the town of Rokiškis in northeastern Lithuania.

He received a Jewish education in a heder, at the "Yavne" elementary school, and then at the Lithuanian Gymnasiums in Vilna. The family moved to Vilna in 1941 where his father bought three factories - not foreseeing the terrible future.

On June 19, 1941, Joseph completed his final year exams at the Lithuanian Gymnasium. The evening after the prom, he and eight of his Jewish friends went up the mountains for an alumni hike, where they heard the bombings which signaled the beginning of the war in Lithuania. The descent from the mountains back to Vilna marked for them the end of the period of their youth that ended cruelly in the blink of an eye.

This was the start of the saga of the fight against the Nazis, the organization of individuals and groups, the attempt to preserve morality, the tremendous desire to protect loved ones, physical and mental toughness, sudden maturation, the preservation of humanity on the one hand, the constant weighting of what prevails over what, and on the other what comes first; and having no choice, develop an ability to make swift decisions, to be flexible, and the instinct to choose correctly.

The formation of a person's character as a result of all this, greatly contributed to his life after the war when he was recruited for secret missions in Europe, then in Israel, and in immensely important civilian roles again in Europe.

I will leave to the reader details of much of his deeds and contributions by recommending his books, and especially the last one which I eagerly devoured in several hours:

"Never Say," A Life Story by Yosef Yulek Harmatz

Nevertheless, I will outline his hardships and heroism, noting a number of stories and anecdotes that Joseph himself told me with enthusiasm and emotion, and that also have interesting closures, especially his own, but some of mine as well ...

The high school prom took place on 19.6.41, and the next day it became clear that the German army was approaching the outskirts of the city. On July 22, 1941, the Germans occupied Lithuania. Joseph heard that the police were looking for him because they thought he was a Communist, and he hid for about three months in the apartment of a family friend. On September 5, 1941, all the Jews of Vilna were entered into the ghetto - Joseph, his parents Deborah and Abrasha, and his younger brother Ephraim, as well. His older brother, Zvi, had previously enlisted in the Red Army.

Luckily, Joseph obtained a permit to work outside the ghetto. One day, while he was outside, there was an Aktion and a large number of Jews were taken to Ponar - about 13 km from Vilna - and murdered in cold blood. His family was not included in that Aktion, but the disappearance of so many people affected the morale.

One day the father disappeared. To find out what happened to him, Joseph took off his yellow badge, snuck out of the ghetto and went to the city to the house of a friend of the family, where it became clear to him that his father had been there, had left a letter and disappeared. In a letter addressed to the family he wrote: "My dear, I cannot stand this anymore. I'm going away and hope you survive this period in peace." It was clear he had chosen to end his life.

Life in the ghetto became unbearably difficult. Even then, when Joseph was about sixteen and a half years old, his strong character was revealed. As he wrote in his book, he reached the decision that: "It cannot be that Jews will continue to sit quietly and wait for death, will not organize, steal weapons, hide in basements and practice; it cannot be that no one will get up and rebel. Someone must act – and I dare give it a name: the Underground."

And more: "The periods of rebellion were the literary and historical heritage on which we all grew up. This heritage whispers to me all the time, even though I am young: if I live, then I have to prove that I am alive."

Despite his young age, Joseph was aware of the elements of his character that guided him at various times throughout his life: "Luckily, my self-assurance in the fight contributed significantly to my operational ability."

Through a communist friend, Joseph joined the Underground. He smiles at me and adds: "Like the rest of my Zionist friends, we knew how to sing Hebrew songs and dance the Hora, but not how to hold guns and rifles. In the Underground, I learned to shoot and also throw grenades ..."

As a cover, he continued to work at the Vilna railway station in extremely difficult conditions, especially in winter.

He and his young friends had to fill the work quota of their older friends who were not physically able, lest they be executed.

Itzik Wittenberg

Itzik Wittenberg was the Underground commander. The ghetto commander was a Jew called Gens, whose daughter during the past year had studied with Joseph at the gymnasium in Vilna. Gens was fair to the Jews in the ghetto in contrast to Dessler, the hated Jewish police commander.

Joseph lived in difficult conditions in the Underground along with four other families and in a very crowded place. Gens knew about the Underground but did not create problems and from time to time the ghetto administration invited the Underground command to exchange information. On these occasions, Joseph and his men were always on guard. At one of the meetings on July 15, 1943, from their lookout, they saw Dessler leave the building and walk towards the ghetto's gate. He was whispering with two Lithuanian policemen who joined him with their weapons and were walking towards the Underground's command headquarters. After a few minutes, the policemen were seen leading Itzik Wittenberg out in handcuffs.

Joseph, the group's commander and his friends attacked the police and managed to free Wittenberg, dressed in women's clothes, and immediately smuggled him to a hiding place. It turned out that the Gestapo had tortured a Pole - one of the members of the Underground whose name was revealed - who informed them that Itzik Wittenberg, the Underground commander, was present at that same meeting that took place in the ghetto's offices.

The ghetto administration and the Judenrat incited the entire ghetto against the Underground. The pressure was enormous, searches were extensive, and the threats to exterminate the entire ghetto caused many of the Jews to hand over Wittenberg. He finally gave himself up to prevent the ghetto's conditions to deteriorate, and with a cyanide pill he had hidden in his clothes, he committed suicide the next day.

The closing of a small circle for me: In 1966, on my return from New York after graduating from acting and theatre studies, I was accepted to the Habima Theatre. In my short career there, I acted in the play "Itzik Wittenberg" adapted and translated from the Yiddish play "The Ghetto Bird" written by Hava Rosenfarb and directed by Israel Becker. The role of Itzik Wittenberg was played by Misha Asherov and I had a small but prominent part under my theatrical name Sia Liran, with Raphael Klaschkin, Zipora Peled and others.

The closing of another circle for Joseph: Years after the war, while in the country, he received a phone call from a person in the US who told him he was Itzik Wittenberg's cousin, and had been looking for him for a long time. Since then he stays in touch calling Joseph every two weeks to ask about his health.

On July 18, 1943, the liquidation of the ghetto began. With the help of the Underground, Deborah, Joseph's mother, was sent to Riga, and his younger brother Ephraim to work in Estonia. Abba Kovner replaced Itzik Wittenberg as the Underground commander and decided to transfer it to the forest. Their personal motto was "We will not go like sheep to the slaughter."

The Underground managed to take four groups out of the ghetto and Joseph joined the last group that had to escape through the sewers. It was a difficult journey, wet, full of stench, of dangers and accompanied by ingenuity, heroism and courage with the forest as its objective.

Throughout the march, intensified in Joseph the feeling of revenge, the desire to fight and harm the murderers who had not yet surrendered. The book written by Joseph is accompanied by the motif of revenge and he often mentions it: "The desire to defeat the ones who uprooted my life, shattered my childhood and, without hesitation, took away and never returned my loved ones."

As a partisan in the forest he fought with his comrades, carrying out mainly acts of terror and sabotage against the German railway system and setting up ambushes for German convoys with the help of villagers who provided the intelligence. The partisan battalion numbered about 200 men and was under the command of the Russian army fighting the Germans. The partisans were aided by Russian paratroopers who parachuted a variety of weapons and ammunition. The partisans hid deep underground where they also preserved the meat of cows and pigs stolen from the villages, slaughtered and froze them in the cold of winter in preparation for summer. Fairness also guided the acts of theft of Joseph and his friends..... If a rural family had two cows, only one was stolen, if four, two were stolen. Families were never left destitute ...

Joseph shows me a photo of himself in uniform with a belt and a buckle in the middle. "Take a good look at the buckle," he tells me, "it is written there in German: "Gott mit uns", (God is with us) and above it the eagle, the well-known Nazi seal. I took it from a German soldier I had killed. "This buckle reminded me of the Germans' acts of horror and their crimes every time I fought and encountered German soldiers; and it helped me to completely suppress feelings of self-doubt."  In July 1944, Joseph and his friends were ordered to liberate Vilna. They executed collaborators. When I asked if he had any problems of conscience, Joseph replied: "It was part of our job; sometimes thoughts came to my mind about this killing and questions as to whether it was justified. Since at that time it was clear to me that they had destroyed my family in many ways, the answer was simple. Feelings of revenge were stronger than any other feelings."

As a first step after the liberation, Joseph returned to Rokiškis to look for his family, where he met an acquaintance who told him about the death of his older brother Zvi who had served in the Red Army. He did not receive information at that time about his mother and younger brother.

For a while, Joseph's work in the Vilna Ministry of Building Materials for the purpose of rehabilitating the city was very successful and he was promised a very senior position, but he decided to leave and make Aliyah to Israel. The operation was sophisticated as his departure was planned under the guise of a trip to clarify a delay in the shipment of timber from Bucharest that had gotten stuck in Transylvania, hence he received a permit to leave Vilna. In the story, he recounts all his adventures and the tricks he used, like the forging of document, name changes, trips down circuitous roads, and impersonation of Greeks from Thessaloniki the last Auschwitz survivors allowed to leave. Therefore, Joseph and his comrades in the operation also tattooed their forearms themselves to resemble them, and as they passed the Russian gendarmerie, they spoke Hebrew that sounded to the police like Greek. Proudly, Joseph rolls up his sleeve and shows me the tattoo that only recently began to lose color. "For everyone else, the amateur tattoo did not last."

 Most importantly, in Bucharest he met his mother who had survived. She did not elaborate on what happened to her but told him about Ephraim who was murdered in September '44 when he was only 17 years old.

"HaNokmim" (The Avengers) - The Period in Europe

The feeling of revenge runs like a Leitmotif in Joseph's life. At the end of the war, Joseph witnessed the removal of thousands of bodies that had been murdered and buried in a mass grave in Ponar. This sight, and the loss of his father and brother, only increased his desire for revenge, even after the war.

Joseph joined his mother on the Aliyah B program, and she was sent to Israel with his promise of joining her at a later stage. He was calm sending his mother to Israel as he was drafted into the "Nakam" (Revenge) group along with friends from the Underground and the partisans. The aim was to take revenge against the Nazis by mass poisoning of the Nuremberg water system.

It was to happen parallel to the Nuremberg trials, and involved very precise, detailed, planning. Abba Kovner was sent to Israel to check the situation and the reaction of the leaders in Israel regarding the plan. He met with Ben-Gurion's right hand in security matters, Shaul Avigor, with Haim Weizmann from whom Kovner asked for poison and money ... Weizmann referred him to Bergman, his deputy, who referred him to the brothers Ephraim and Aharon  Katchalski , later Katzir ...

The poison was prepared and placed in metal boxes and tubes and Kovner planned to transport it by sea. The plan was disrupted for many reasons, Kovner was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned, but soon released, but the plan sank into the sea along with the poison and the tubes. However, Joseph, meanwhile, was appointed commander in place of Abba Kovner, who decided to continue with another plan - the poisoning of Nazi prisoners incarcerated in American camps in Nuremberg. This time it was decided to infiltrate the bakery in the Stalag XIII-D POW camp and inject the arsenic poison into thousands of loaves of bread. A militant named Arieh Distell was sent to work in the bakery; the poison was tested on a cat and a dog that died immediately and so on April 12 the plan went into effect. There were many deaths and illnesses. The resulting numbers are different and contradictory, however the damage was great.

Joseph and his friends fled to the Czech Republic, and due to political motives it was decided to give up on the Dachau poisoning.

The Closure

Joseph tells me with a mischievous smile about his trip to New York in 1987. While waiting for his suitcase, he met Ephraim Katzir the president of ORT Worldwide, an appointment which Joseph backed. They immediately decided to share a taxi to the hotels and Joseph told Ephraim about his intention to visit Abba Kovner hospitalized at the Sloan Kettering Hospital. For Katzir, the mention of Abba Kovner's name brought to mind the poisoning affair, and he began to tell Joseph how Haim Weizmann and Professor Bergman directed Kovner to him and his brother Aharon. He was very surprised to learn that Joseph had been involved in the plan and even received the command to continue from Abba Kovner after he was arrested. Katzir had no idea of what had happened.

Joseph made Aliyah to Israel from the Czech Republic and this ship's voyage also ended in detention in the British camp at Atlit, in June '46. Haganah members who had heard about his heroism and actions helped release him and prevented his exile to Cyprus. He met his mother who found a job caring for Zalman Shazar's daughter and decided to live in Tel Aviv next to his mother. He began accepting his new identity as an Israeli. They managed to buy a small apartment with the help of relatives from Rhodesia. He later met Gina and married her and had two sons.

After years of working for the Sochnut (The Jewish Agency), he went on a mission to Geneva and remained there until 1960. He learned French and mainly dealt with semi-illegal immigration from communist countries and eventually with the Aliyah of North African Jews.

He received three medals from the Ministry of Defense: for his part in the Underground in Vilna Ghetto, his combat as a partisan in the war against the Nazis in the Lithuanian forests from 1942-1943, and his participation in the Haganah and the 1948 War of Independence, and for his activity in Geneva to help the aliyah of North African Jews.

He made connections with presidents, prime ministers, businessmen and philanthropists, and raised a large amount of money. He moved from Geneva to Paris and was welcomed by French ambassadors to Israel and even nominated for the French Knighthood. He was also honoured with a decoration "for cultivating trade and friendship between Israel and France."

He was later appointed CEO of ORT in Israel in place of Yaakov Oleisky, and later as Chairman of World ORT. World ORT's administration moved from Geneva to London and Joseph with his family moved to this city. He developed good relations and full cooperation with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and with David Young the ORT Director in London. With the years, 15 colleges were established throughout the United Kingdom. His wife Gina passed away in 1987, and he decided to continue his position in Britain for three more years. Among the colleges he established should be noted the academic college in Karmiel which was inaugurated in 1993 as "ORT Braude" in honour of Max Braude, with about 5,000 students.

His contributions in the field of education and the establishment of ORT colleges in Israel and around the world, including the Soviet Union, are enormous. It is impossible to contain all his achievements in one article, and it is worth reading the other book that Harmatz published: "Life with ORT" which is written in Hebrew and English, one page in Hebrew and its translation in English on the opposite page. An ORT College in his name was established in Givat Ram, Jerusalem, and is one of dozens of schools and colleges for vocational education established in Israel and around the world. The same college for the training of teachers in technological and engineering professions in Givat Ram was also established, with the assistance of his colleague and friend Professor A.D. Bergman, who was asked by Haim Weizmann to help Joseph and Kovner with the poisoning of the water systems in Nuremberg and the bakery, and who referred him to Ephraim Katzir . . .

I look at Joseph, his eyes somewhat smiling, somewhat sad, but expressing satisfaction. "I worked hard; I loved to work, but never became involved in politics. I never committed myself; I knew I could lend a hand and help, but never dealt with nonsense. Sometimes, it seems unreal to me that I managed to do so many things. It seems to me that my life could have filled that of ten people if not more"...

My wife died of an illness from which I knew she had been suffering even before we were married. This did not stop me from tying my life to her. I loved her, and we managed to start a family, travel all over the world and live a good life together. When the disease finally became terminal, I was by her side all the time. I do not regret any step I have taken in my life."

Joseph Harmatz: sage, rabbi and spiritual teacher, as Shazar interpreted his name. It suited him well. He was a wise man, for whom theoretical and professional education was of supreme value; he pursued justice as well as revenge; a man quiet on the outside with enormous mental powers on the inside, and all in a gentle, strong, stable, sensitive, humane and true style. Where do you find such people today?? I wonder … and am still wondering.