"The mission of retribution is not directly conceived in the sense of ‘an eye for an eye’; the enormity of the crime makes this unthinkable. The retributive mission of the Sh’erit ha-Pletah takes instead the form of a defiant affirmation of life and national rebirth."
--Samuel Gringauz, Commentary
Acutely aware of the uniqueness of their experiences during the Holocaust, the Jewish displaced persons (DPs) established agencies to record the events of the preceding years and to hold the guilty accountable for their actions. The form of retribution to the perpetrators was determined early on, as DPs initially turned their attention to Jewish kapos and collaborators.
"Ober-kapo Arnold Caught: On the 30th of last month, the camp police caught and arrested in a Feldafing bunker the ober-kapo from Mulldorf, Arnold." --Dos Fraje Wort, November 2, 1945, p. 3.
The DPs created Courts of Honor, non-legally binding tribunals that tried kapos and Jewish collaborators, including Jews who had cooperated with Nazis as members of the Judenrate (the Jewish councils in wartime ghettos). The sense of hostility against collaborators remained strong in the DP camps, as survivors frequently reviewed their histories, and organizations sponsored by refugee agencies and the Central Committee of Liberated Jews gathered testimony.
Speaking at the first ceremony, in June 1945, marking liberation from Nazism, Dr. Zalman Grinberg, one of the first acknowledged spokesmen of the Sh'erit ha-Pletah, explained the Jews’ position on retribution:
"Hitler won the war against the European Jews. If we took revenge, we would descend into the lowest depths of ethics and morality to which the German nation has fallen during the past ten years. We are not able to slaughter women and children. We are not able to burn millions of people. We are not able to starve hundreds of thousands."
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