The Nazi Collaborator Who Served Ice Cream in Tel Aviv
The historical episode in which Jews were put on
trial in Israel for aiding the Nazis – the subject of a new book by
Holocaust scholar Itamar Levin, called “Kapo on Allenby” – took place in
the 1950s, between two other post-Holocaust events of great
significance: the Nuremberg Trials, which took place in Germany in the
late 1940s, and the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, in 1961.
The
phenomenon of Jews standing trial in Israeli courts on charges of
abetting the Nazi genocide was exceptional and, naturally,
unprecedented.
In
1950, the Knesset passed a law allowing for the punishment of Nazis and
Nazi collaborators. One section of the law related to placing Jews on
trial for crimes they had committed against Jewish prisoners during the
Holocaust.
At
the end of that year, shortly after the law went into effect, the (now
defunct) newspaper Herut reported that “120 individuals suspected of
committing crimes against the Jewish people have been located in
Israel,” and that while there were seven or eight Christians among them,
most were Jewish. The newspaper reported that the suspects included a
doctor from a clinic in Hadera and a waiter from Tel Aviv’s Café Pasaz.
Most of this evidence never made it to court, and some of the
accusations, it transpired, were linked to personal vendettas that had
nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Levin
estimates that about 40 indictments were issued during the 1950s under
the law against Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Documentation still exists
for 23 of these indictments, with 9 ending in acquittals and 14 with
convictions. The average sentence handed down to those found guilty was
17 months in prison. Official records regarding the rest of the cases no
longer exist. Some of the files were simply lost over the years, others
damaged in a flood at the court archives, while others were destroyed.
Much of the material that did survive is now in poor condition.
Charged with crimes against humanity
Levin
found the indictments that led to trials in the Israel State Archives –
these documents had been handwritten by judges in the 1950s. Levin
complemented his research by studying the newspapers that covered the
trials, where he uncovered headlines like “Defense Ministry official
accused of being kapo” and “Woman brought to maternity ward recognized
by nurse as kapo from Vilna ghetto.” (“Kapo” referred to Jews who worked
inside the death camps and ghettos on behalf of the Nazis.) The
testimonies of those accused of being kapos are hard to read, even so
many years on. Murder, beatings, humiliations, and severe and arbitrary
abuse are some of the accusations that appear among these files and
court transcripts.
In
August 1951, Moshe Pochich – who was vice commander of the Jewish
police in the Ostrovitz ghetto in Poland and ran the labor camp that was
built outside the city – became the first Jew to stand trial in Israel
for being a Nazi collaborator. One of the charges listed in the
indictment against him was war crimes, based on the fact that he
systematically beat many ghetto residents and labor camp workers, and
handed many on to the Nazi regime. He was also charged with crimes
against humanity, for “cruelly abusing camp prisoners and beating them
indiscriminately.”
Pochich, who had subsequently helped Holocaust
survivors in the camps in Germany and then worked for the government in
Israel, was attacked with his wife outside the courthouse. “It’s a
disgrace that you walk freely in Israel,” someone shouted at his wife.
Prosecution witnesses said he had prowled the ghetto like a “predator.”
They described how he handed over a child to the Gestapo, revealed the
hiding place of a father and daughter to the Nazis, as well as the
hiding place of another woman who was later murdered. A witness also
told of how Pochich buried another Jew alive.
The
judges, however, acquitted him of all charges, and wrote about the
legal difficulty in hearing such cases. They did not accept the claims
on either side: not the prosecution’s claim that he was a power-hungry,
cruel man; nor the defense’s claim that he was an innocent man who would
turn the other cheek and was incapable of harming anyone.
Troubling
testimonies of Jews’ behavior during the Holocaust came during the
trial of Elsa Trank, who, as the elder of her block in Birkenau, was
responsible for maintaining order. She was tried for crimes against
humanity. She was arrested after another survivor recognized her selling
ice cream in a bakery on Tel Aviv’s Nahalat Binyamin Street. When asked
her name, she provided it and admitted that she was responsible for
block 7 in Birkenau.
At
the trial, witnesses testified that she would “threaten to send us to
become smoke.” Others described her violence against other prisoners:
“Her relations to other women were as bad as bad can be. She beat all of
the women, particularly the elderly and weak – the ones who could not
defend themselves,” claimed one witness.
The
indictment against her stated that Trank abused female prisoners by
waking them up three hours before inspection and forcing them to kneel
while waiting for inspection. Those who fainted in the meantime were not
permitted water.
Under
questioning, Trank said she was a prisoner like everyone else, and was
forced to obey the Germans’ orders. Her sentencing also described her
situation as complex, stating that “she herself was also persecuted,
like the others.” At the end of her trial, Trank – who was only 26 at
the time of her trial – was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment.
Another
suspect to stand trial was Reya Hanes, who was a kapo in Birkenau. One
survivor testified at her trial that Hanes ordered her to bring over
some bread, but she couldn’t do it because she was too weak. “The
defendant said that if I was sick, then there was the crematorium,” the
witness recalled. The defendant also allegedly hit her for dropping a
loaf of bread. “The defendant beat me for this. A horrible beating, with
all her strength, on my entire body,” the witness stated.
Even worse than the Nazis
Yaakov
Honigman, who served as a kapo at three different labor camps, was said
to have abused prisoners “in a terrible, horrible, unforgivable
manner.” The indictment against him was the most comprehensive of its
kind to be issued against a Jewish collaborator. It included 25 separate
charges – unparalleled in all other cases except Eichmann’s – and
included murder, beatings and abuse.
The
testimonies, as expected, were particularly harsh. Yaakov Neufeld, a
witness, stated that Honigman’s “job was basically to kill Jews. He was
the worst person, and the writer has not yet been born who can describe
his actions. I spent that entire time in Germany and met many Nazis, but
none of them scared me as much as Honigman did.”
Honigman
wielded a leather-encased iron club, which he used to beat prisoners
waiting in line for soup. “He would severely beat people for the
slightest thing, and would stop only when his hands were covered in
blood,” said one witness.
Honigman
was 33 when he stood trial. “There was never a case in which a Jew was
beaten and killed by another Jew,” he said, denying the allegation
against him. He did, however, admit that he beat prisoners, but said he
only did so if they got into a fight. He was sentenced to seven and a
half years in prison, which was slightly reduced on appeal.
Mordechai
Goldstein was a police officer in the ghetto and labor camp at
Ostrovitz. He was accused of many crimes, including “turning persecuted
individuals over to a hostile regime.” This charge was based on how he
would close the doors and windows with nails, while he himself escaped,
while the Nazis were preparing a shipment of prisoners to Auschwitz.
Goldstein, who owned a box factory in Lodz and was a former yeshiva
student, said in his defense that his wife and daughter were killed by
the Nazis, and that he “didn’t beat people without reason.” He was
sentenced to a month in prison.
Yehezkel
Ingster was the only Jew to be sentenced to death for crimes committed
during the Holocaust. Ingster was responsible for a block at the
Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Germany. He was convicted of murder,
abuse and causing the death of prisoners. “He served as the monster for
the camp administrators. I saw him beat prisoners every day by hand,
whip and club, and anything else he could get his hands on,” said one
survivor during the trial. A prosecution witness spoke about “the worst
hell imaginable” with regard to Ingster’s actions. He was convicted of
crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. However, the Supreme
Court accepted his appeal and commuted his sentence to jail time. He was
ultimately pardoned, but died a few days after his release.
Haaretz Correspondent
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