Punishing International Crimes Committed by the Persecuted: The Kapo Trials in Israel (1950s-1960s)
51 Pages Posted: 29 Feb 2008 Last revised: 24 Oct 2013
Date Written: March 1, 2006
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.
Keywords: International Criminal Law; Holocaust Trials; Crimes Against Humanity; War Crimes; Crimes Against The Jewish People; Genocide; Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law
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