Abstract
This paper explores two different modes of revenge practiced by Jewish soldiers and partisans in post-Nazi Europe. The first, revenge proper, involved the targeting and killing of individual war criminals. The second, vengeance, sought in its most extreme form, to repay the German people as a whole. The paper questions the common understanding of these events as spontaneous acts of violence emerging from a universal wish for justice. Vengeance and revenge are better understood as planned and historically bound attempts of modern-national Jews not only to achieve justice but more importantly to form a new Jewish identity based on active resistance rather than passive suffering. The paper concludes by suggesting some broader implications of this history, and offers to see vengeance and revenge as a vantage point from which Zionism and more generally the liberal nationstate and its promise for justice can be assessed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.