ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to the extensive literature on emotions, while also investigating the legal documents in two ways. First, the People's Tribunal process was a way to construct "emotional communities." Second, the trials served as a civilized form for the expression of hate and reflected the emotional standards of the period. This chapter analyzes the actors in the process and attempt to explain how they influenced the rituals. The People's Court will be viewed as a form of transmitting trauma by means of the testimonies and through judgments and the justifications for such judgments. The People's Tribunal provided a space in which different social conflicts were staged while various parties struggled to define the meaning of the Holocaust and its consequences. The People's Tribunals were expected to start the process of normalization and to reconstruct social cohesion by determining the meanings of social interactions during World War II.
