Law to punish Nazis and Nazi helpers

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Basic data
Title: Law to punish Nazis and Nazi helpers
Abbreviation: NNCL
Type: Parliament Act
Scope: Extension to enemy states (legal definition in Art. 16)
Legal matter: International criminal law
References : Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 57 of 26 Av, 5711
(9 Aug 1950), p. 281.
Issued on: August 1, 1950
Entry into force on: August 9, 1950
Last change by: Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 404 of Av 26, 5723
( Aug 16, 1963), p. 140.
Effective date of the
last change: 		August 16, 1963
Weblink: Text of the law
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The law for the punishment of Nazis and Nazi helpers (Hebrew חוק לעשיית דין בנאצים ובעוזריהם, Chok Le'Asiat Din BaNatzim Uve'Osrehem ) of August 1, 1950 is an Israeli criminal law that criminalizes Nazi violent crimes.

The abbreviation NNCL is derived from the English translation as nazis and nazi collaborators punishment law .

It was brought into the Knesset by one of the founding fathers of the State of Israel , then Justice Minister Pinchas Rosen .

scope of application

Unlike the Israeli Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of March 1950, the NNCL does not refer to the regulatory mandate in Article V of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide .

According to the convention, the contracting states should in particular provide effective penalties for people who are guilty of genocide . The NNCL retrospectively targets acts committed before the UN Convention was passed, while the Genocide Act seeks to prevent and punish future acts.

In addition, only the NNCL expressly records and defines - as a crime sui generis - crimes against the Jewish people (Art. 1 Para. 3 Letter b NNCL), whereas the Genocide Act (only) criminalizes genocide . However, as the broader term, genocide also includes those crimes that the NNCL defines as crimes against the Jewish people.

The NNCL, on the other hand, is limited in its geographical and temporal scope to Europe ruled by the German Reich between 1933 and 1945. The Genocide Act applies worldwide and in terms of time regardless of whether the Convention continues to apply.

meaning

Its most important function is to extend the foreign validity of criminal law to the territory of the German Reich , its allies ( Axis Powers ) and the areas occupied by the German Reich or its allies in World War II ("enemy states", Art. 16 NNCL). Crimes against the Jewish people , crimes against humanity and war crimes committed there during the Nazi rule between January 30, 1933 and May 8, 1945 or during the Second World War between September 1, 1939 and August 14, 1945 are reported with the Punished to death.

With reference to the Israeli Criminal Code Ordinance of 1936, crimes such as murder, kidnapping, robbery, rape, threat or forced labor that were committed in the relevant areas during the period in question are punishable as if they had been committed on Israeli territory (Art. 2 NNCL).

By establishing the jurisdiction of Israeli courts also for crimes committed outside of Israeli territory or faking the commission of the offense inside the country, the NNCL follows the principle of international law recognized in international criminal law .

content

Prosecution is permissible even if the accused has already been convicted of the same offense by another national or international court (Art. 9 NNCL). In individual cases, this could only be opposed by a bilateral or international agreement specifically on the question of competing criminal power, especially since there is no general principle of international law that would prevent the same offense from being prosecuted in another if convicted in one state.

The principle of free assessment of evidence ( Section 261 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) anchored in German criminal procedural law does not apply under Israeli procedural law. Rather, the taking of evidence and the evaluation of evidence are regulated in detail by law in the Evidence Ordinance for civil and criminal proceedings. Art. 15 NNCL allows the judges to deviate from these fixed rules in order to establish the truth and in the interests of individual justice and thus gives them a freedom of choice that is unusual in other criminal proceedings.

According to the original version of the law, the statute of limitations for crimes was no later than 20 years after they were committed (Art. 12 para. 2 NNCL). However, this regulation was retroactively repealed in August 1963 with Law 5723-1963.

use cases

The law gained practical importance in the Eichmann trial , which ended on June 1, 1962 with the execution of the death penalty . The defendant John Demjanjuk was acquitted in 1993 .

Between 1951 and 1964 there were also 29 trials in Israel against former Jewish kapos .

literature

  • Caroline Volkman: The prosecution of genocide according to the principle of universal law in international criminal law and in international criminal law . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 167-171 .

Web links

Commons : perpetrators of the Holocaust  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Crime of Genocide (Prevention and Punishment Law), 5710-1950
  2. ^ UNO Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of December 9, 1948 amnesty.de. Retrieved February 22, 2016.
  3. ^ Albin Eser , Ulrich Sieber , Helmut Kreicker (eds.): National prosecution of international crimes - National Prosecution of International Crimes. Volume 7: International Criminal Law in a Country Comparison. Berlin 2006.
  4. ^ Evidence Ordinance (New Version), 1971 ( Memento from July 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Murderous Eyes. In: Der Spiegel. 31/1993, August 2, 1993. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
  6. ↑ Hired helpers. In: Der Spiegel. 27/1999, July 5, 1999. Retrieved February 18, 2015.
  7. ↑ Ben-Naftali, Yogev Tuval: Punishing International Crimes Committed by the Persecuted. The Kapo Trials in Israel (1950s – 1960s). In: Journal of International Criminal Justice. Volume 4, 2006, pp. 128-178.