"Law and Community: Trials of Jewish Collaborators in Displaced Persons Camps in Europe and Israel: A Comparative Study"
Professional Background
Rivka Brot is a PhD candidate in the faculty of law at Tel Aviv University (Israel), where she received an LLM and an LLB in law. She holds a BA in political science and anthropology from Haifa University (Israel). During her Matthew Family Fellowship, Ms. Brot conducted research for her project “Law and Community: Trials of Jewish Collaborators in Displaced Persons Camps in Europe and Israel: A Comparative Study.”
A former practicing lawyer, Ms. Brot has received numerous grants and awards, including the Israeli Law and Society Association Prize, the Haim Tzadok Scholarship, the Raul Valenberg Prize by Tel Aviv University, and grants from Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem. She has given several conference presentations about her research on the prosecution of Jewish collaborators in Israeli courts and on the trials of Jewish collaborators at DP camps in Europe.
Her publications include “Tzivia Lubetkin: Between Private and Public; Body and Symbol” in Dapim Journal: Studies of the Holocaust (2009) and “Benjamin Wilkomirski: ‘Fragments’ of Identity” in Zmanim, A Historical Quarterly (2010), both in Hebrew, and Julius Sigel: A Kapo in Four (Legal) Acts in Dapim Journal: Studies of the Holocaust (2011), in Hebrew and English. A native speaker of Hebrew, she is proficient in English and Yiddish.
Fellowship Research
During her tenure at the Center, Ms. Brot researched the place and function of law in different societies through an analysis of how the legal community contended with Jews accused of collaborating with the Germans during the Holocaust. Her analysis was based on a comparison between the trials of suspected Jewish collaborators conducted in the courts established in the displaced persons camps in the American Zone of occupied Germany following the Holocaust and the trials of collaborators conducted in the courts in Israel mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. She utilized a variety of archival resources at the Museum as well as at the US National Archives and UN Archives.
Ms. Brot was in residence at the Mandel Center from August 1 to January 13, 2011.