Six Million Germans / Nakam - Daniel Kahn, the Painted Bird

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 once 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 an 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 vials 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

And Kovner spent a year in jail

And so plan A did not prevail

The rest of the group was all dispersed

And all their backup plans were cursed

But an agent in a bakery

Secured some poison from Paris

And As soon as the poison bread had risen

He took it to an allied prison

And various reports have said

There were 100's 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

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

Now can vengeance put upon the shelf

Be taken out later on someone else?

Be careful how you read this tale

Lest your own prejudice prevail

Look around the world today

And consider the role that vengeance plays

For 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 dream deferred?

Six million Germans

How could they just start again?

Six million Germans

They wanted one thing, Nakam: Revenge