Forms of Complicity: History and Law in the Kastner Affair

The Kastner Affair (1953-58) was a watershed moment. As historians and legal analysists explained, "The first time an Israeli court had to confront the Holocaust, it was a Jewish leader who was put on trial, not the Nazi perpetrators." The judge's private comments demonstrate growing confusion about the legal and historical status of complicit parties, who do not answer clear ideological alignments and cannot be judged on the basis of "criminal intent." Indeed, complicity will be understood here as a spectrum of in-betweeness, a contextual form with weak intentionality. It floats between plan and its realization, cause and effect.