In nineteen hundred forty five Among the Jews who were left alive There came a visionary man Who turned his wrath into a plan
Abba Kovner was his name As a partisan he earned his fame He was a vilna rebel Jew A poet warrior through and through
He met some surviving ghetto fighters Zionists and socialists conspired They gathered in a Lublin flat And round the kitchen table sat
They gave themselves a Hebrew name And with this word they did proclaim That vengeance is what god would will, Were there a god, and so they’d kill
Six million Germans You might say it was insane Six million Germans That it was misdirected pain Six million Germans They didn’t want the war to end Six million Germans They wanted one thing- Nakam: Revenge
For every Jew the Nazis gassed For every racist law they passed For every wrong that wasn’t right For all the dead Nakam would fight
They formed a band of forty strong To straighten out what had been wrong They chose to poison water mains Just as the Jews of old were blamed
In Nuremberg and Hamburg town Their agents worked the underground They took up jobs by the riverside And waited for the poison to arrive
And Kovner went to Tel Aviv To see what help he could receive But the Haganah did not agree To join in his conspiracy
Six million Germans You might say it wasn’t right Six million Germans An eye for and eye leaves all without sight Six million Germans They didn’t want to make amends Six million Germans They wanted one thing- Nakam: Revenge
So Abba Kovner headed back With viles of poison in his sack Upon an English navy ship But to his plan the brits were tipped
They took him into custody And the poison fell into the sea Kovner spent a year in jail And so plan A did not prevail
The rest of the group it was dispersed And all their backup plans were cursed But an agent in a bakery Secured some poison from Paris
As soon as the poisoned bread had risen He took it to an allied prison And various reports have said There were hundreds of SS prisoners dead
Six million Germans You might say that it was wrong Six million Germans But were their actions weak or strong? Six million Germans And who are we to judge and condemn? Six million Germans They wanted one thing- Nakam: Revenge
And so Nakam was all disbanded On Palestina’s shore they landed And Abba Kovner and his crew Became like many other Jews
They put aside their rage and hate And worked to build a Jewish state With Jewish towns and Jewish farms, Jewish guns and nuclear arms
Can vengeance put upon a shelf Be taken out later on someone else? Well be careful how you read this tale. ‘Lest your own prejudice prevail
For look around the world today And consider the role that vengeance plays ‘Cause history has its unpaid debts And is it better if we forget?
Six million Germans You might say it was absurd Six million Germans But what becomes of a debt deferred Six million Germans How could they just start again? Six million Germans They wanted one thing- Nakam: Revenge