Żagiew ("The Torch", Die Fackel), also known as Żydowska Gwardia Wolności (the "Jewish Freedom Guard"), was a Nazi-collaborationist Jewish agent-provocateur group in German-occupied Poland, founded and sponsored by the Germans and led by Abraham Gancwajch.
[1][2] Many Żagiew members were related to the collaborationist Jewish organization Group 13, which was also led by Gancwajch.
Żagiew had over a thousand Jewish secret agents[3] and some were permitted by their Gestapo handlers to possess firearms.
[4] Żagiew's prime goal was to infiltrate the Jewish resistance network and reveal its connections with the Polish underground that aided and hid Jews in the General Government.
[5] Żagiew agents were also instrumental in organizing the Hotel Polski affair, in Warsaw, a German scheme to lure thousands of wealthy Jews, under false promises of evacuation to South America, into a trap and extort their money and valuables before killing most of them.