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A kapo was a type of prisoner functionary () at a Nazi concentration or extermination camp. They were, whether voluntary or coerced, collaborators who worked under the Schutzstaffel (SS) to carry out administrative tasks or supervise the forced labour of inmates. In addition to being given authority over their fellow prisoners, they would often enjoy comparatively better conditions at the camps, such as increased food rations or less physical brutality from SS guards. Due to their privileged status and actions, kapos were highly resented and were frequently lynched by other prisoners when the camps were liberated by the Allies over the course of World War II.
In the aftermath of World War II, there were many instances of kapos being prosecuted alongside Nazis for their role at the camps. Most notably, the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, which was passed by the State of Israel in 1950, was primarily aimed at providing a framework for prosecution of Jews who had served as kapos during the Holocaust. These efforts were spurred by the collective anger of Holocaust survivors towards Jewish collaborators, whose elimination was regarded as necessary to "purify" the global Jewish community.
Since the Holocaust, the term "kapo" has come to be used as a pejorative in Jewish circles, characterized as "the worst insult a Jew can give another Jew" by The Jewish Chronicle.; ; ; However, kapos were not exclusively Jewish; Nazi authorities selected them from among any persecuted community in the camps.
During the 1946–47 Stutthof trials in Gdańsk, Poland, in which Stutthof concentration camp personnel were prosecuted, five kapos were found to have used extreme brutality and were sentenced to death. Four of them were executed on 4 July 1946, and one on 10 October 1947. Another was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and one acquitted and released on 29 November 1947.Bogdan Chrzanowski, Andrzej Gąsiorowski (Zeszyty Muzeum, 5), Załoga obozu Stutthof (Staff of Stutthof concentration camp) (PDF file, direct download 9.14 MB) p. 189 (13/40 in PDF). Muzeum Stutthof w Sztutowie. Zaklad Narodowy Imienia Ossolinskich, Wrocław, Warszawa, Krakow 1984. PL ISSN 0137-5377.
A small number of kapos were prosecuted in East and West Germany. In a well-publicised 1968 case, two Auschwitz kapos were put on trial in Frankfurt. They were indicted for 189 murders and multiple assaults, found guilty of several murders, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
According to teacher and researcher Dan Porat, the way in which former kapos were officially viewed – and tried – by the state of Israel went through four distinct phases. Initially viewed as co-perpetrators of Nazi atrocities, they eventually came to be perceived as victims themselves. During the first stage described by Porat (August 1950 – January 1952), those alleged to have served or to have collaborated with the Nazis were placed on an equal footing with their captors, with some measure of leniency appearing only in the sentencing phase for some cases. It was during this phase that Jungster was sentenced to death; six other former kapos were each sentenced to an average of almost five years in prison. Jungster’s death sentence had not been anticipated by either the legislators nor the prosecutors, according to Porat, and triggered a number of amendments to pre-trial charges in order to remove any indictment that would potentially carry a mandatory death sentence. During this second phase (February 1952 – 1957), the Israeli Supreme Court overturned Jungster’s sentence and essentially ruled that while Nazis could be charged with crimes against humanity and , their former collaborators could not. While prosecutions of kapos continued, doubts emerged amongst some of those in the public sphere as to whether the trials should continue at all. The official view remained that kapos had been Jewish collaborators, not Nazis themselves. By 1958, when the third phase began (lasting until 1962), the legal system had begun to view kapos as having committed wrongs but with good intentions. Thus, only those whom prosecutors believed had aligned themselves with the Nazis' aims were brought to trial. There were calls from some survivors that the trials should end, though other survivors still demanded that justice be served. The fourth phase (1963 – 1972) was marked by the Eichmann trial, one of the principal architects of the Final Solution, and of Hirsch Barenblat two years later. Kapos and collaborators were now seen by the courts as ordinary victims, a complete reversal from the initial official perspective. Eichmann’s prosecutor was very clear in drawing a line between the Jewish collaborators and camp functionaries, and the Nazis. Barenblat’s trial in 1963 drove this point home. Barenblat, Conducting of the Israel National Opera, was tried for having turned Jews over to the Nazis as head of the Jewish Ghetto Police in the Bendzin Ghetto in Poland. Having arrived in Israel in 1958–9, Barenblat was arrested after a ghetto survivor recognised him while he was conducting an opera. Found guilty of helping the Nazis by ensuring that Jews selected for the death camps did not escape, Barenblat was sentenced to five years in prison. On 1 May 1964, after having served three months, Barenblat was freed and Israel’s Supreme Court his conviction. The acquittal may have been due to the court’s aim of putting an end to the trials against kapos and other alleged Nazi collaborators.
While there is a popular perception that all Kapos were Jews, this is not so. Kapos were of various nationalities found in the concentration camps.Avishay Artsy, The Moral “Grey Zone” of Nazi Collaboration, May 22, 2022 USC Shoah Foundation Thesaurus (Abridged), p. 146
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