Staging International Law’s Stories: Kapo in Jerusalem

The Schutzstaffel coerced and enlisted detainees into the administration of the labor and death camps. These detainees were called Kapos. The Kapos constitute a particularly contested element of Holocaust remembrance. Some Kapos deployed their situational authority to ease the conditions of other prisoners, while others acted cruelly and committed abuses. This chapter explores one treatment of the Kapo, this being on stage: Kapo Be’Yerushalaim (Kapo in Jerusalem) (play, 2014 Motti Lerner; Hebrew, translated into English by Roy Isacowitz, derivative of a film of the same title). This chapter considers how this play speaks of victims who victimize others and narrates the pain that results. Recounting the story that this play tells—a very powerful one, forcefully voiced, of law, judgment, suicide, shame, and the deployment of violence to supposedly protect others—serves as a collected ‘picture book’ of the potential and limits of international law.