Six Million Germans / Nakam lyrics

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 & through

He met some surviving ghetto fighters

Zionists & socialists conspired

They gathered in a Lublin flat

& round the kitchen table sat

They gave themselves a Hebrew name

& with this word they did proclaim

That vengeance is what God would will,

Were there a God, & so they'd kill

Six million Germans...

You might say it was insane

That it was misdirected pain

They didn't want the war to end

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 & Hamburg town

Their agents worked the underground

They took up jobs by the riverside

& waited for the poison to arrive

& 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

An eye for an eye leaves all without sight

They didn't want to make amends

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

& the poison fell into the sea

Kovner spent a year in jail

& so plan A did not prevail

The rest of the group was dispersed

& all their backup plans were cursed

But an agent in a bakery

Secured some poison from Paris

As soon as the poison bread had risen

He took it to an allied prison

& various reports have said

There were 100's of SS prisoners dead

Six million Germans...

You might say that it was wrong

But were their actions weak or strong?

& who are we to judge & condemn?

They wanted one thing, Nakam: Revenge

Sc so Nakam was all disbanded

On Palestina's shore they landed

& Abba Kovner & his crew

Became like many other Jews

They put aside their rage & hate

& worked to build a Jewish state

With Jewish towns Sc Jewish farms,

Jewish guns Sc nuclear arms

Can vengeance put upon a shelf

Be taken out later on someone else?

Well careful how you read this tale.

'Lest your own prejudice prevail

For look around the world today

& consider the role vengeance plays

'Cause history has its unpaid debts

& is it better if we forget?

Six million Germans...

You might say it was absurd

But what becomes of a dream deferred?

How could they just start again?

They wanted one thing, Nakam: Revenge

• Artist:Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird
• Album:Partisans and Parasites