Rivka Brot

Welfare workers volunteering with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a Jewish welfare organization, delivered crucial legal assistance to Holocaust survivors gathered in displaced persons (DP) camps in the American Zone of occupied Germany; however, today their story is largely forgotten. Their legal aid program embodied a unique relationship between social work and law. JDC relief workers developed a legal consciousness in response to the many injustices they witnessed in the DP camps, which allowed them to identify the gap between the basic support provided by relief programs, and the actual needs of the DPs. From this awareness they gradually developed a program of legal welfare, assisted Jews in their daily interactions with Americans and Germans, provided them with legal instruction and education, and protected them when conflicts arose. These JDC volunteers were fueled by a sense of moral responsibility and compassion for the Jewish DPs, who were forced to...

We do not believe in the most obvious and facile deduction: that man is fundamentally brutal, egoistic and stupid in his conduct once every civilized institution is taken away…. We believe, rather, that the only conclusion to be drawn is that in the face of driving necessity and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are reduced to silence.

ABSTRACT The article focuses on three “Holocaust trials”: the Kapo Trials (1950–70); the “Kasztner Trial” (1953–58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the “Kapo Trials” sank is not a product of the mere passage of time, but a systematic reconstruction located in the socio-political and legal contexts of Israel’s early years. The article shows that, when neglecting certain socio-legal conditions, the law can operate not only as a “lieu de mémoire” as Pierre Nora showed us but also as a site of forgetting.

Jewish Betrayal: The Court as an Emotional Arena in Legal Proceedings of Jewish Collaborators  (Hebrew)

The article focuses on the negative emotions expressed in the testimonies during the legal proceedings of Jews accused under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 1950, and offers a common denominator: those Jews betrayed the Jewish people. The article exposes the tension and discrepancy between the negative emotions and the legal categories of the Law showing that their roots lie in the State's decision to deal with the complexity of the unprecedented phenomenon of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis through "ordinary" criminal categories that were not intended to cope with the complex situations that the Holocaust called for Jews. The survivors- witnesses understood what the legislators missed, and during their testimonies formed alongside the individual legal discussion, a community accounting with the accused that was detached from the Law and the indictments. In this way, the survivors established the court as a public emotional arena in which they laid out their daily lives in ghettos and camps under the supervision of Jewish superiors.
The article offers a narrative analysis of the testimonies that allows to understand the unprecedented reality in the ghetto and camp, not only as a legal story intended to convict or acquit, but also as a historical story that seeks to breathe life into the legal categories, thereby joining the legal rules to create a more complete legal story. Focusing on the testimonies, the article contributes to the growing literature on the issue of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis which, until the early 2000s, did not receive any scholarly attention. The article also contributes to the current discussion of the place of emotions in criminal proceedings, seeking to challenge the assumption that the legal proceedings procedure allow to channel feelings into a legal language that is consistent with legislation and judgment. The article shows that the legal language has failed to touch the survivors and their lives in ghettos and camps.

The article focuses on three “Holocaust trials”: the Kapo Trials (1950-70); the "Kasztner Trial" (1953-58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the "Kapo Trials" sank is not a product of the mere passage of time, but a systematic reconstruction located in the socio-political and legal contexts of Israel’s early years. The article shows that, when neglecting certain socio-legal conditions, the law can operate not only as a “lieu de mémoire” as Pierre Nora showed us but also as a site of forgetting.

המאמר חושף את מערכת המשפט המגוונת והמורכבת שניסחו והפעילו היהודים העקורים באזור הכיבוש האמריקאי בגרמניה ואת היחסים "המשפטיים" בין מערכת המשפט הקהילתית בין משפט הריבון הצבאי. העיקרו של המאמר במשא ומתן שהתקיים בין שני הצדדים, היהודים העקורים והצבא האמריקאי, על חוקיותם של בתי הדין של היהודים בכלל, ועל השימוש בעונשי מאסר על ידי בתי דין אלה. המאמר מראה כי המאבק היה לא רק משפטי, אלא גם ואולי בעיקר חלק ממאבק חברתי-פוליטי של היהודים ל"הגדרה עצמית" כקהילה יהודית מובחנת.

The article exposes the complex and fascinating legal system
created by the Jews in displaced camps in the American
Occupation Zone in Germany. At the center of the article is the
tension between the Jewish displaced persons (DPs) and the
American Army and Military Government, about the question of
the legality of the Jewish camp courts, and the attempt to put it
in the correct legal and political context. The article focuses on
the relationship between the Jewish communal law and the law
of the sovereign, namely the Military Government Law. It aims
first and foremost to shed light both on the diverse and complex
legal system created by the Jewish DPs in the American
Occupation Zone and on the ‘legal’ relationship between the
Jewish legal system and the Military Government Law. The two
sides confronted over the scope of jurisdiction while the Military
Government applied on any person in the American Occupation
Zone including the Jewish DPs while the Jewish internal law
applied on Jewish DPs only. The insistence of the Jewish DPs on
legal autonomy reveals not only the role of law in reconstructing
Jewish community after the Holocaust but also its role in their
ongoing social-political struggle for national ‘self-determination’
and recognition as a distinct national collective. With the
dismantling of the DP camps and the emigration of Jews from
Germany, the struggle for legal autonomy ended naturally.
Indeed, it was a very brief chapter in Jewish history; however, this
does not detract from the importance of the political and legal
aspects of the Jewish struggle for recognition as a distinct
national collective. Within a short time, the Jewish DPs set up a
‘national laboratory’ of sorts for the purpose of reconstructing a
Jewish collective using the law as a significant measure.

Dapim: Studies on the Shoah Vol. 23 | 2009 103

Rivka Brot
Tzivia Lubetkin was one of the leaders of the underground in the Warsaw ghetto and a founding member of the Jewish Fighting Organization. Through her activities in the ghetto she became a national symbol in Israel. This paper examines the tension between Tzivia Lubetkin - the private persona and the public figure. This paper is based on four testimonies given by Lubetkin; two of which remained unknown for a long time. The first one was given in early June 1946, at Kibbutz Beit Oren, soon after her arrival in then Palestine. This account was revealed only after her death. The second, a well known account, was given a few days later at the United Kibbutz Movement conference in Kibbutz Yagur. The third account, also unknown, was given at a meeting of the Working Women Movement’s assembly on June 1946, where Lubetkin gave an account of the history of the women fighters in the Warsaw ghetto and elsewhere. The fourth account, her “formal” and most famous testimony was given during the Eichmann trial, on May 1961. Through an examination of these testimonies, this paper discusses how Lubetkin negotiated her public and private selves. These testimonies reveal that whilst she displayed a strict adherence to the sharp ideological division between the public and private sphere, she was also able to share experiences that conveyed her private deliberations and thoughts. This paper argues that the context in which the testimony is given plays an important role in determining what is said – both on a private and public level.

The tension between the historical sphere, namely the attempt to comprehend the complex reality of the ghetto and the camp, and the legal domain, which sought to reduce this complex reality to unequivocal juridical categories, lies at the center of the article. Analysis of the testimonies and the judgments in two legal proceedings of Jewish policemen at the Ostrowiec ghetto, that took place in Israel during the 1950's raises the question of whether it is possible to “relate” and to “understand” human situations whose protagonists cannot be readily and clearly categorized as evil or good, or as guilty or innocent within a judicial framework. The article comprises two main sections. The first presents an analysis of the testimonies and the judgment in the trial of the Head of the Jewish police, while the second analyzes the testimonies and the judgment in the trial of an "ordinary" policeman. Both cases manifest the tension between the historical and the juridical spheres; between the reality of the gray area and the binary nature of legal thought.
The article is part of: Jewish Honor Courts, Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and in Israel after the Holocaust, Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder eds., Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan (2015)

Based on my dissertation, the book offers legal-historical research on the legal confrontation with the phenomenon of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis in the Jewish displaced camps in Germany and the State of Israel. The Rehabilitation Court, established by the Jews in the DP camps in the American Zone of Germany, collaboration was defined as harmful acts against Judaism", while the punishments ranged from prohibiting a public office to declaring a person of being a traitor to the Jewish people. The verdicts reveal a unique communal creation in which one can identify an understanding of the horrific reality in the ghettos or the camps. In the State of Israel, the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment), 1950 aimed at prosecuting Jews rather than Nazis. Some fifty Jews, man, and women were tried under this law until the early 1970s. The book shakes the dust off the worn-out files in the archives to revisit the historical, legal and social phenomenon that was an integral part of the Holocaust.