| Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 5710–1950 | |
|---|---|
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| Knesset | |
| Passed by | Knesset |
| Passed | 1 August 1950 |
| Signed by | David Ben-Gurion Pinchas Rosen Yosef Sprinzak |
| Signed | 9 August 1950 |
| Legislative history | |
| Introduced | 27 March 1950 |
| Status: Current legislation | |
The Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law (Hebrew: חוק לעשיית דין בנאצים ובעוזריהם, תש"י-1950, romanized: Ḥok la-assiyat din ba-Natzim u-ve-ozrehem, 5710-1950) is a 1950 Israeli law passed by the First Knesset that provides a legal framework for the prosecution of crimes against Jews and other persecuted people committed in Nazi Germany, German-occupied Europe, or territory under the control of another Axis power between 1933 and 1945. The law's primary target was Jewish Holocaust survivors alleged to have collaborated with the Nazis, in particular prisoner functionaries ("kapos") and the Jewish Ghetto Police. It was motivated by the anger of survivors against perceived collaborators and a desire to "purify" the community.
The law criminalizes crimes against humanity, war crimes, and "crimes against the Jewish people", as well as a variety of lesser offenses. It has a number of unusual provisions, including ex post facto application, extraterritoriality, a relaxation in the usual rules of evidence, and mandatory death sentence for the most serious crimes laid out in the law.
Under the law, around forty alleged Jewish collaborators were put on trial between 1951 and 1972, of whom two-thirds were convicted. Such trials were highly controversial and have been criticized by judges and legal scholars due to the moral dilemma of judging someone who was also persecuted and under threat of death at the time the offense was committed. Three non-Jews were prosecuted under the law, including the high-profile cases of Adolf Eichmann (1961) and John Demjanjuk (1987). Although both Eichmann's and Demjanjuk's lawyers challenged the validity of the law, it was upheld by both Israeli and United States courts.