Kapo Trials: How Israel Judged the Jewish Collaborators
The kapo trials of the early 1960s confronted a difficult question: how should Israel judge Jews accused of complicity in the Holocaust?
In September 1960 Hirsch Barenblat – a 45-year-old conductor at the Israeli Opera – gave a performance at the Tel Yitzhak Kibbutz auditorium. As Barenblat sat, fingers poised over the piano’s keyboard, he was interrupted by a voice from the back of the room: ‘Kapo! Nazi! Murderer!’ Momentarily frozen, Barenblat snatched his score and left the stage, seeking refuge in his dressing room. It was there, moments later, that the Tel Yitzhak leadership arrived to inform him that they would not allow a Jew accused of collaboration with the Nazis to perform in their kibbutz. Three years on he would find himself on trial, formally accused of the crimes first levelled at him at the Tel Yitzhak concert.
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