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    “the Jews Are Coming”_ Vengeance and Revenge in Post-Nazi Europe

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    eli.scharlat

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    Law, Culture and the Humanities 2005; 1: 282-301 “‘The Jews are Coming’’: Vengeance and Revenge in post-Nazi Europe Shai Lavi Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, Israel This paper explores two different modes of revenge practiced by Jewish soldiers and partisans in post-Nazi Europe. The first, revenge proper, involved the targeting and killing of individual war criminals. The second, vengeance, sought in its most extreme form, to repay the German people as a whole, The paper questions the common understanding of these events as spontaneous acts of violence emerging from a universal wish for justice Vengeance and revenge are better understood as planned and historically bound attempts of modern-national Jews not only to achieve justice but more importantly to form a new Jewish identity based on active resistance rather than passive suffering The paper concludes by suggesting some broader implications of this history, and offers to see vengeance and revenge as a vantage point from which Zionism and more generally the liberal nation- state and its promise for justice can be assessed. Lau, Culture and the Huonanites 2005; 1: 282-301 Great is vengeance for it rests between His wo names, as itis said [in Psalms] “God of Vengeance Lord” (Tractate Brachot, 33:1, circ. 200 A.D.) Cursed is he who says “Vengeance!” Vengeance for the blood of a small child Satan has not yet created. (Bialik, A! Ha’shehitah [On the Slaughter], 1903) A recent book on the Nuremberg trials begins with a quote from Exodus on the famous lex falionis, an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”, and continues with Address for correspondence: Shai Lavi, Faulty of Law, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel Em: i slavi@post.tau.aci um grateful to Roger Berkowitz, Marianne Constable, Sara Khinsky; Roy Kreitner, Linda ‘Meyer, Orna Ber-Nafali and Joshua Price for ther helpful comments and suggestions. Shelly ‘Menachem's dedication and professional research asistance deserves special gratitude © Association for the Study of Le, Culeue, and He Huoanitis 2005 10.1191/1743872105tw0230a Vengeance and Revenge in post-Nazi Europe 283 the following observation: “It is the nature of man that, shocked and revolted by acts of wanton cruelty, he shall strike back at the perpetrator. That the end of World War II did not lead to reprisals against the German people — a life taken for a life destroyed ~ is a tribute to the calm judgment of men trained in law who channeled the fury of the hurt and the oppressed into a judicial forum.”? The text reveals a set of common assumptions regarding revenge. ‘The first, historical, assumes that the atrocities performed under the Third Reich were not revenged by their victims and that the Nuremberg trials and later trials such as Eichmann’s, were the only organized attempt to settle accounts with second world war criminals. The second, anthropological, views revenge as an attribute of basic human nature. While punishment is presented as civilized and rational, revenge is depicted as a spontaneous and natural response of victims to the harm. and suffering caused by the perpetrator. The third, progressive, assumes that the uninhibited and unmediated desire for revenge was replaced by the calm and rational judgment of law. Revenge is viewed as an unleashed energy that under the modern conditions of civilized nations can be tamed into the juridical form of punishment. This understanding of revenge, which can be traced back to Hegel,’ is implicit in many scholarly accounts.* In what follows, I wish to question these assumptions. First, historical records challenge the common belief that Jews did not take revenge in post- Nazi Europe. Indeed, in the months following the war, throughout Europe, Jewish groups and individuals attempted to revenge the systematic extermination of their people. Two forms of revenge can be identified, which I will distinguish as revenge proper and vengeance. The two share in. common the will of the victim as victim to respond violently to the harm and suffering inflicted by the perpetrator. In this sense, both vengeance and revenge differ from punishment under the rule of law, which seeks to punish the wrongdoer for his wrong, and does not accommodate the private desires of the victim. But there is also a difference between the two forms of victim- 2 Whitney R. Harts, Tirampy on Tia The Til of the Major German War Criminals atthe End of World Wir Tat Naronber, Germany, 1945 1946 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Pres 19999, p. 3. 3. Georg W.F Hegel, Hegl’s Pilaoply of Right (Osford: Onlord University Pres, 1952), T return o Hege'’s view of revenge in the conclusion, 4. Several studies ofthis kind offer a general overview of revenge in contemporary polities. See Trudy Govier, Forgiven and Reeage (London: Routledge, 2002}; Martha Minow; Betveor Vngeance and Pogivenes: Facing Histry afer Gavcide and Mass Violewe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990); Thomas Schell, Bley Reet: Entions, Natonaliom and War (Boulder, CO: Westview: Press, 1994), Others focus on the rise of revenge in particular historical settings such as post- WWIT France, see Herbert R. Lottman, The People’s Ange Justice and Revenge in Pst Liberation France (London: Hutchinson, 1986). For a discussion of postApartheid South Africa, see Richard A. Wilson, ‘Reconciliation and Revenge in Post-Apartheid South AMica’, Current

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