| Title |
Collaborator or would-be rescuer? : The Barenblat trial and the image of a Judenrat member in 1960s Israel. |
|---|---|
| Contributors |
Agmon, Hadas Danziger, Asaf |
| Host Item |
Yad Vashem Studies 39,1 (2011) 117-167 |
| Description |
Discusses the Barenblat trial, held in Tel Aviv in 1963-64, as well as the biography of the defendant, Hirsch Barenblat, born in 1914 in Poland. During the German occupation, Barenblat was imprisoned in the ghetto of Będzin, and in 1942 he became deputy commander and then commander of the Jewish police in the ghetto. He played an active role in the deportation of Będzin's Jews to Auschwitz and in other acts of collaboration with the Nazis. In December 1943, Barenblat, as a participant in the Jewish resistance in the ghetto, escaped to Slovakia and then survived the war in Budapest. In 1960 he was identified in Tel Aviv and brought to trial under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law of Israel. The witnesses were split on whether Barenblat should be regarded as a Nazi collaborator and a war criminal or as a rescuer. The witnesses for the prosecution focused on his sending Jews to labor camps and the children of the orphanage to Auschwitz, and taking part in the mass selection in August 1942 and the arrest of Jewish refugees who arrived in the city in late 1942. The defense witnesses stressed his rescue of some Jews from deportation and his connections with the resistance. The court rulings reflected the witnesses' vacillations: while the District Court convicted Barenblat, the Supreme Court exonerated him. Some years after the trial, Barenblat emigrated to Germany. Contends that the Barenblat trial was an important milestone in the perception of the role of the Judenrat. Beside the historical school which viewed the Judenrat as an instrument of the Nazi system, another school of historians emerged which stressed the councils' activities on behalf of the Jewish community, and held a more balanced view. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) In Hebrew: "יד ושם קובץ מחקרים" לט,1 (תשעא) 101-140 |
| Language |
English |
| Credits |
באדיבות יש ושם – רשות הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה Courtesy of Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center |
| National Library system number |
990005079900705171 |
| Links |
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries |
When using this material, please acknowledge the source of the material as follows:
באדיבות יש ושם – רשות הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה Courtesy of Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
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