Kapo on Alenby the story of the Jewish Kapos in WW2

The Yated this past week had excerpts of a new book called "Kapo on Alenby"  written by Holocaust Scholar Itamar Levin.

The excerpts discussed the Jewish Traitors during WW2.
But for some reason the  Yated refused to name the collaborators, even though the book clearly did.

When one hears the word “Kapo” perhaps the term “Capo de tutti capi” comes to mind a term usually in reference to a mafia Godfather hearkening back to the Roman legions. Unfortunately for many Israeli’s and Jews around the world the word “Kapo” carries a far darker meaning.

Holocaust scholar Itamar Levin in his new book, “Kapo On Allenby” details the indictment, prosecution, and conviction of Jews living in post World War II Israel for their crimes as ‘Kapo”. The German translation of “Kapo” is a prisoner functionary in a Nazi prison camp who was assigned by the SS to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks in the camp. The system was designed to turn victim against victim. Many “Kapos” were recruited from violent criminal gangs and were known for their brutality towards other prisoners.

In the 1950’s the Knesset passed a law allowing for the punishment of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, with one section of the law pertaining to Jews who had committed crimes against fellow Jews.The phenomena of Jews standing trial in Israel courts in the service of the Nazi death machine was unprecedented.

A now defunct newspaper reported at the time that approximately 120 individuals suspected of such crimes were located in Israel, all but 7 or 8 of them being Jewish. Suspects included a doctor from Hadera and a waiter from a Tel Aviv Café. The author estimated that about 40 indictments were issued which lead to 14 convictions and 9 acquittals.

One Kapo who stood trial and was convicted was a woman named Elsa Trank who was recognized by a former camp survivor selling ice cream in a bakery on Nahalat Benyamin St in Tel Aviv. Trank was responsible for maintaining order in her block at Birkenau and was tried for crimes against humanity.

At her trial, witnesses testified that ” she would threaten us to become smoke”. Others testified that her mistreatment of women was “bad as bad could be” describing her beatings of elderly weak women who could not defend themselves. Upon questioning Trank said she was a prisoner like everyone else and was sentenced to eight months imprisonment. Her situation was described as complex because she herself was persecuted.

Another kapo who served at three different camps was indicted on 25 separate charges, more than any other indictment except that of Eichmann. 
Yaakov Honigman’s job, according to a witness “was basically to kill Jews”. The witness said that the entire time he spent in Germany he met many Nazis but none scared him as much as Honigman. According to witnesses he would brutally beat prisoners stopping only after his hands were covered in blood. In his defense he said, “There was never a case in which a Jew was beaten and killed by another Jew”. He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

Ingster

Yehezkel Ingster was the only Jew to be sentenced to death for crimes committed during the Holocaust. He was convicted of murder, abuse and causing the deaths of prisoners. One witness described him as “the monster for the camp administrators”, another described Ingster as “the worst hell imaginable”.

He was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. Upon appeal the Supreme Court commuted his sentence to jail time and was ultimately pardoned. A few days after his release he died.

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.

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.

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.

Wiera Gran Vera

Polish actress, who was also known as Weronika Grynberg, Vera Gran and Mariol.
After the war, in 1945, Gran was charged in Poland by Adolf Berman Jonas Turkow with collaboration with the Germans during World War II. 
Wladyslaw Szpilman, told the court about their collaboration in Warsaw "aria" during the war from August 1943. Marek Edelman (Kommendant the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) said he learned 5/5/1945 about the collaboration of Gran Vera with the Gestapo. It was also learned that a death sentence was imposed against them by the army. (Armia Krajowa - AK), but Gran was not found, so it did not reach its fulfillment. 
In 1947, the Court of the Central Committee of Polish Jews Citizen (SAD Obywatelski przy Centralnym Komitecie Żydów Polskich) heard the case and Gran was found not guilty in 1949.



Abraham Gancwajch

Abraham Gancwajch was a prominent collaborator of the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto during the occupation of Poland in World War II, and a "capo" Jewish ghetto. 

Opinions on Gancwajch activities in the ghetto are controversial, although modern research concludes unanimously that he was an informer and a collaborator motivated primarily by self - interest.

Guttman Shmuel Landau

Guttman Shmuel Landau (also known as Lando or Gutman Landau Guttman, 1877 or 1878 - May 21 of 1942) was a leader, active in the Democratic Republic of Moldova and Romania Bessarabian Jewish community. He did social work and resided in  the city of Chisinau, where he was also a public and commercial official. He was a member of the legislature of the Republic of Moldova in 1918, He returned to prominence during World War II, appointed by the antisemitic regime of Ion Antonescu as Chairman of the Judenrat Chisinau, and made  responsible for the Chisinau ghetto. 
He did not help his fellow Jews but instead collaborated in the  suffering and  'deportation and indiscriminate killing, 

He committed suicide just before the deportation; his wife tried the same, but was rescued and they saved her life.