| Description |
1 online resource (276 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
In December 1945, a Polish-born commuter on a Tel Aviv bus recognized a fellow rider as the former head of a town council the Nazis had established to manage the Jews. When he denounced the man as a collaborator, the rider leapt off the bus, pursued by passengers intent on beating him to death. Five years later, to address ongoing tensions within Holocaust survivor communities, the state of Israel instituted the criminal prosecution of Jews who had served as ghetto administrators or as kapos in concentration camps. Dan Porat brings to light more than three dozen little-known trials, held over the following two decades, of survivors charged with Nazi collaboration. Scouring police investigation files and trial records, he found accounts of Jewish policemen and camp functionaries who harassed, beat, robbed, and even murdered their brethren. But as the trials exposed the tragic experiences of the kapos, over time the courts and the public shifted from seeing them as evil collaborators to victims themselves, and the fervor to prosecute them abated. Porat shows how these trials changed Israel's understanding of the Holocaust and explores how the suppression of the trial records--long classified by the state and to this day withheld by Yad Vashem--affected history and memory. Sensitive to the devastating options confronting those who chose to collaborate, yet rigorous in its analysis, Bitter Reckoning invites us to rethink our ideas of collaboration and justice and to consider what it means to be a victim in extraordinary circumstances.-- Provided by publisher |
| Contents |
From revenge to retribution in post-Nazi Europe -- Tensions among survivors in mandatory Palestine -- The Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law -- Preliminary court examinations -- Weighing the actions of Jewish collaborators -- Can a Jewish kapo commit a crime against humanity? -- The first doubts about the kapo trials -- Judging a Nazi and reframing collaboration -- Absolving ordinary functionaries |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
World War, 1939-1945 -- Collaborationists.
|
|
World War (1939-1945) |
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Collaborationists. |
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Collaborationists -- Public opinion.
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Public opinion. |
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War crime trials -- Israel -- 20th century.
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War crime trials. |
|
Israel. |
| Chronological Term |
20th century |
| Subject |
Kapos -- Europe -- History.
|
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Europe. |
|
Kapos. |
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Israelis -- Attitudes.
|
|
History. |
|
Israelis -- Attitudes. |
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Nazi concentration camp inmates as guards -- Europe -- History -- 20th century.
|
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Nazi concentration camp inmates as guards. |
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Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
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Israelis. |
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Concentration camps.
|
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Internment camps. |
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Jewish Holocaust (1939-1945) |
|
HISTORY -- Holocaust. |
| Chronological Term |
1900-1999 |
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Porat, Dan, 1964- Bitter reckoning. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019 9780674988149 (DLC) 2019011292 (OCoLC)1089967132 |
| ISBN |
9780674243125 electronic book |
|
0674243129 electronic book |
|
9780674243132 electronic book |
|
0674243137 electronic book |
|
9780674988149 print |
|
0674988140 print |
|
