In the background of the ongoing war in Gaza, discussions are taking place under the media radar, on the difficult questions surrounding the legal procedure that should be used to bring the October terrorists to justice. The issues are difficult and very complex. There is no equal in the history of Israel for the magnitude of an event of this type – and it seems that the legal system will have to reinvent itself.
In the background of the day of remembrance for the Holocaust and heroism that we celebrated on Monday, our legal system can and should draw strength and encouragement from the story of a German-Jewish lawyer who tried to arrest Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party even before it came to power.
The story of Hans Litten is less well-known in the public consciousness and should be given more expression in view of this week’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, the seventh of October and everything in between.
Litten was a 27-year-old, German-Jewish lawyer who represented victims of the Nazi Party before it came to power.
His professional peak was in 1931 in the fight against the party, when on May 8 – exactly 93 years ago today – he succeeded in summoning its oppressive leader to the witness stand at the Berlin Criminal Court – even before Hitler was appointed chancellor.
The legal process led by Litten, to make the Nazi leader testify as a key witness about the crimes of his party operatives, could have jeopardized the political future of the Nazi oppressor. The young lawyer exposed and presented Hitler’s brutal methods, but in those years the German justice system bowed to the government and did not show a backbone and stand for the principles of the rule of law.
After the Nazi Party came to power
Two years later, in January 1933, the Nazi Party came to power. Hitler did not forget the humiliation he suffered in the interrogations by the young Jewish jurist and ordered that he be arrested. Despite the pleas of his family members to flee, Litten refused to leave Berlin, in order to continue representing the weak working class in the city, which was unable to escape.
Litten was arrested and for five years underwent severe torture. In 1938, when he was only 34 years old, he ended his life. A memorial was erected in his memory in Berlin and a street was named after him.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, the moving story of the attorney Hans Litten, to which I was exposed as part of a law course I studied with Prof. Yuval Albashan at the Ono Academic College. I don’t know how many have heard of the brave Jewish lawyer who went out to fight against the Nazi monster, but one can only imagine what would have happened and been prevented if the judicial system in Germany at that time was independent and prosecuted the Nazi oppressor.
So what will the legal process look like for the October 7 monsters? Who represents them? Will a special court be established? Can the death penalty be applied to them? These are some of the complex legal questions the Israeli justice system is facing, part of the greatest legal challenge it has known in its history.
What happened then in this regard was different than what’s happening now: Litten was fighting to bring the Nazi leader to justice while we have to bring these captive Hamas followers to justice.
But one thing is clear: The victory in this legal arena requires courage, heroism and composure like that of Hans Litten: to go all the way with the Nazis of the 7th of October.
The writer is a strategic consultant and law student at Ono Academic College.