IN THE SHADOW OF EICHMANN.

The article focuses on the kapo trials in Israel during the early 1960s, particularly the 1963 trial of Hirsch Barenblat, a Jewish police commander in the Będzin ghetto accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust. These trials, conducted under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law passed by Israel’s First Knesset in 1950, sought to address the complex issue of Jewish complicity in Nazi crimes. Barenblat was initially convicted for his role in deportations and handing over Jewish children but was later acquitted by the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled that the judiciary was ill-equipped to judge the moral ambiguities faced by Jewish leaders under Nazi oppression. The trials sparked debate about victimhood, collaboration, and moral responsibility, but discussion of Jewish collaboration largely became taboo in Israel until archival materials became accessible decades later.