The Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law () is a 1950 Israeli law passed by the First Knesset that provides a legal framework for the prosecution of crimes against Jews and other persecuted people committed in Nazi Germany, German-occupied Europe, or territory under the control of another Axis power between 1933 and 1945. The law's primary target was Jewish Holocaust survivors alleged to have collaborated with the Nazis, in particular prisoner functionaries ("kapos") and the Jewish Ghetto Police. It was motivated by the anger of survivors against perceived collaborators and a desire to "purify" the community.
The law criminalizes crimes against humanity, war crimes, and "crimes against the Jewish people", as well as a variety of lesser offenses. It has a number of unusual provisions, including ex post facto application, extraterritoriality, a relaxation in the usual rules of evidence, and mandatory death sentence for the most serious crimes laid out in the law.
Under the law, around forty alleged Jewish collaborators were put on trial between 1951 and 1972, of whom two-thirds were convicted. Such trials were highly controversial and have been criticized by judges and legal scholars due to the moral dilemma of judging someone who was also persecuted and under threat of death at the time the offense was committed. Three non-Jews were prosecuted under the law, including the high-profile cases of Adolf Eichmann (1961) and John Demjanjuk (1987). Although both Eichmann's and Demjanjuk's lawyers challenged the validity of the law, it was upheld by both Israeli and United States courts.
Background
The Holocaust was a genocide committed primarily by Nazi Germany that claimed the lives of six million Jews living in Germany and German-occupied Europe. Many Jews were forced into Nazi ghettos where a Jewish leadership (known as Judenrat) and Jewish Ghetto Police were appointed to execute Nazi orders. Refusal to hand over other Jews to the Nazis to be killed could result in execution. The Jewish Ghetto Police was perceived as "the most hated Jewish organ during the Holocaust", according to Rivka Brot. In Nazi concentration camps, a small number of Jews were recruited to become prisoner functionaries known as "kapos", which had the responsibility of supervising other prisoners and executing the orders of concentration camp guards. Not all prisoner functionaries were collaborators; some were considered to have "behaved honorably". Becoming a kapo could mean the difference between a chance to survive and near-certain death. However, among other survivors functionaries are remembered for their brutality; survivors often charged that Jewish kapos were "worse than the Germans".
Following World War II, some alleged collaborators were subject to extrajudicial violence and even murder from other Holocaust survivors. In order to maintain order, postwar Jewish communities in displaced-persons camps set up "honor courts" that would judge alleged collaborators, handing down sentences of public condemnation and social ostracism. Similar clashes also erupted in Mandatory Palestine and informal honor courts were operated by landsmanshaften (organizations for immigrants from a certain country) and the World Zionist Congress. After World War II, many Holocaust survivors immigrated to Israel; by the late 1950s, they consisted one-quarter of the population.
While some Holocaust survivors preferred to leave the past behind them, others thought that the new state should be pure of collaborators with the Nazis. Beginning in 1948, some Holocaust survivors brought petitions to the Israel Police alleging that other Holocaust survivors were Nazi collaborators, but there was no legal basis for prosecution in these cases. According to legal scholars Orna Ben-Naftali and Yogev Tuval, the drafters of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law saw its purpose in pragmatic terms as assuaging the anger among Holocaust survivors in Israel. This is disputed by other writers who argue that there were only a few dozen complaints among a large number of survivors, which could not be considered popular demand. Understanding of how the Nazi genocide was carried out was limited in Israeli society at the time the law was passed.
Legislative history
An "Act against Jewish War Criminals" was drafted in August 1949 by Deputy Attorney General Haim Wilkenfeld. On 26 December 1949, the Crime of Genocide (Prevention and Punishment) Law was introduced to the first plenary session of the First Knesset. A law without retrospective application that would codify the 1948 Genocide Convention into Israeli law, it was eventually passed on 29 March 1950.
On 27 March 1950, Minister of Justice Pinkhas Rosen introduced the bill to prosecute Nazi collaborators, now renamed "Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law", to the Knesset with an expanded scope that, in theory, would enable the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators as well as collaborators. Rosen said, "It is assumed that Nazi criminals, who could be charged on the basis of the crimes included in the law, would not dare come to Israel." Instead, "the law will apply less to Nazis than to their Jewish collaborators who are here in the State of Israel", Rosen said, invoking the Hebrew phrase "let our camp be pure", derived from Deuteronomy 23:14. Some Knesset members, including Hanan Rubin and Eri Jabotinsky, believed that Nazis might eventually be tried under the law either via extradition or other means. However, the majority saw the provision for the prosecution of Nazis as symbolic rather than a genuine possibility.
Knesset members debated exactly what form the punishment of Nazi collaborators would take. Nahum Nir and Yona Kesse argued for an institutionalized version of the honor courts that would be heard by a jury (in Israel, all trials are heard by a judge) and perhaps dispense moral rather than legal punishments. This proposal was rejected both out of a desire for harsh punishments and to avoid fragmenting the legal system. Ya'akov Gil, the former chief rabbi of the Jewish Brigade, sponsored a successful proposal to add the offense "crimes against the Jewish people" to the law, in addition to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Lawmakers explicitly rejected a proposal by Zerach Warhaftig (United Religious Front) that would have distinguished offenses by Nazis and collaborators. Wilkenfeld explained, "If a Nazi in a concentration camp beat inmates, and a Jewish kapo in the same camp did the same – how can we create a provision for each of them?" Warhaftig rejected this, saying "The Nazi was a murderer and the Jew was forced to act as he did". He was in the minority; the final version of the law made no distinction between acts committed by an SS guard and a Jewish prisoner.
Mapam politician Yisrael Bar-Yehuda strongly rejected a suggestion to permit excusing conduct under duress or in self-defense: This attitude was based ideologically on his party's close association with the Zionist youth movements that led ghetto uprisings, often in opposition to the Jewish leadership. From this point of view, anyone who joined the Judenrat or the Jewish Ghetto Police, or became a kapo, was automatically considered a traitor. This strict view was opposed by members of other parties, including Warhaftig, who did not see joining such institutions as a criminal act in of itself. In the end, the Knesset adopted a strict and limited form of exculpation, also rejecting Bar-Yehuda's suggestion that anyone who served in the underground should be granted immunity.
The law originally carried a 20-year statute of limitations from the time the offense was committed for offenses less serious than murder, which was retroactively repealed in 1963.Section 12(b), 1963 amendment
Provisions Article 1 covers crimes against humanity, war crimes, and "crimes against the Jewish people", all of which carry a mandatory death sentence unless an extenuating circumstance under Section 11(b) can be proven, in which case the minimum sentence is 10 years in prison. The definitions for crimes against humanity and war crimes are very similar to the definitions in the Nuremberg Charter, except that the time period covered is extended to the beginning of the Nazi regime rather than the outbreak of World War II. "Crimes against the Jewish people" is based on the wording of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Unlike the Genocide Convention, "destroying or desecrating Jewish religious or cultural assets and values" ( cultural genocide) and "inciting to hatred of Jews" (as opposed to incitement to genocide) are included in "crimes against the Jewish people". To be prosecutable under the law, the crimes must have been committed in an "enemy country" (Nazi Germany, German-occupied Europe, or territory controlled by another Axis power).Section 16 The law is limited to one victim group (Jews), one time period (1933–1945), and one location (Europe), whereas the Genocide Convention is of universal applicability.
Articles 2 to 6 define offenses that do not carry a mandatory death penalty. Article 2 covers various "crimes against persecuted persons" which are derived from the standard criminal code and applied as if they had been committed in Israel. Article 3 outlaws "membership in enemy organization"; its language parallels the Nuremberg Charter's language against criminal organizations. Article 4 covers offenses committed "in a place of confinement... against a persecuted person", which are also derived from the Israeli criminal code. This article was intended to cover crimes by functionaries in concentration camps and ghettos which were not severe enough to fall under Article 1. Article 6 criminalizes "delivering up persecuted person to enemy administration", which according to Ben-Naftali and Tuval was primarily aimed at the actions of Jewish councils. Article 7 criminalizes the blackmail of persecuted persons, with an up to seven-year sentence if the accused "received or demanded a benefit (a) from a persecuted person under threat of delivering up him or another persecuted person to an enemy administration; or (b) from a person who had given shelter to a persecuted person, under threats of delivering up him or the persecuted person sheltered by him to an enemy administration". According to Ben-Naftali and Tuval, these last two articles are the only ones that make an (implicit) distinction between perpetrators and collaborators.
Article 10 enumerates the circumstances that would lead to the acquittal of the defendant: if he acted to save himself from the danger of immediate death, or if his actions were intended to avoid worse consequences. Such circumstances did not excuse any of Article 1 crimes or murder. Article 11 lays out the only two circumstances that can be taken into account for the mitigation of sentencing: "that the person committed the offence under conditions which... would have exempted him from criminal responsibility or constituted a reason for pardoning the offence", assuming that the accused tried to mitigate the consequence of the offence, or that it was committed with the intent to avoid a more serious outcome.
Several provisions in the law are considered "exceptional": It applies to past events (ex post facto law) that occurred before the creation of Israel; The law applies extraterritorially to crimes committed exclusively outside of Israel; A mandatory death sentence is instituted for crimes under Article 1; Trying a defendant twice for the same offense is allowed; Many usual defenses are banned, including the necessity defense; The court may deviate from the usual rules of evidence "if it is satisfied that this will promote the ascertainment of the truth and the just handling of the case".
Trials Kapo trials