The illusive collective memory: Revisiting the role of law in Israel’s Holocaust narrative

Abstract

The article focuses on three “Holocaust trials”: the Kapo Trials (1950–70); the “Kasztner Trial” (1953–58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the “Kapo Trials” sank is not a product of the mere passage of time, but a systematic reconstruction located in the socio-political and legal contexts of Israel’s early years. The article shows that, when neglecting certain socio-legal conditions, the law can operate not only as a “lieu de mémoire” as Pierre Nora showed us but also as a site of forgetting.