Punishing International Crimes Committed by the Persecuted: The Kapo Trials in Israel (1950s-1960s)

Abstract

This article deals with the legal and moral imperatives arising out of the Kapo trials, which took place in Israel between 1951 and 1964. Section 2 considers substantive aspects of the Israeli Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Law (adopted in 1950), as well as the moral quagmire embedded within this Law. Section 3 explores the dialogue that these trials advanced (and the dialogue that they failed to advance) in Israeli society. Section 4 offers some reflection on the reasons why these trials have been expunged from Israel`s collective memory. The authors also attempt to shed some light on the impact that this deliberate collective forgetting has had on the construction of Israel`s national identity and examine the central role that judicial institutions have played in reconstructing the past and providing meaning for the Kapo trials as a nation-building mechanism.