Judenrat — Wikipedia

THE Juda (or Jewish councils , Jewish advice in German) were administrative bodies formed in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany. Composed of the leaders of the Jewish communities, they formed the government of these communities and served as an intermediary between the Nazi authorities and the population. These councils were forced by the occupier to provide Jews who were to serve them as slaves, and were forced to help the deportation of the populations to the extermination camps ^{[ first ] , [ 2 ]} .

The Judenräte were questioned by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem: report on the banality of evil as an example of what was the collaboration of Jews. This opinion was challenged and was the subject of controversy ^{[ 3 ]} .

It is widely accepted that the creation of Judenrat was inspired by the order of the SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, and more specifically by the report of the meeting of the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen and the main departments of the General Police Office , which was held under his presidency in Berlin the September 21, 1939 . However, the Jewish section of the SS security service where Adolf Eichmann worked in 1937 working in the creation of an imposed Jewish organization in 1937 (Forced organization) and strictly controlled through which the Nazi orders would be applied to the Jews.

The annexation of Austria in March 1938 constituted a golden opportunity. Sent to Vienna, Eichmann reorganized the Jewish community and was then authorized to establish the desired control body: the “central office of Jewish emigration”. Faced with the success of this structure, which succeeds in six months in triggering the emigration of nearly 50,000 Jews, it was suggested during the famous meeting of the main officials of the Reich, organized in the Göring office, the November 12, 1938 to create a similar instance also in “the old Reich”. The structure of power being different, this organization has another form: that of an organization across the country, called Reich Association of Jews in Germany (“Union of the Reich of the Jews of Germany”) who began to operate in February 1939 Before being legalized on July 4, 1939 .

In addition to what was happening in Germany proper, the Vienna model was applied both in the free city of Dantzig, under Nazi control, as in Prague, capital of the Bohemian-Moravia Protectorate (Czech territories) recently annexed. Thus, on the eve of the Second World War, two models of leaders had formed: one room (as in Vienna, Prague and Dantzig), the other on a national scale, as in Germany proper. It was always the specialists of the “Jewish question” in the security apparatus which pushed to the creation of this direction, but their preference went to the first model, local and not stipulated by law, which left a room for maneuver greater the supervisory authority ^{[ 4 ]} .

The first Judenrats were created during the occupation of Poland in autumn 1939 on the orders of Reinhard Heydrich, a few weeks after the start of the Second World War ^{[ 2 ]} . As the Nazi occupation expanded, the Judenrates were created in all occupied areas, with the exception of France, Belgium and Greece, probably because the Germans had decided to Do not annex these regions. But in these territories, the Nazis prescribed the Jewish community to create a council of elders in order to ensure the application of the occupant’s orders ^{[ first ]} .

The territorial area of ​​responsibility relating to the Judenrats varied without being able to determine a system for fixing the rules on this subject. A Judenrat could correspond to the territory of a city or a village or sometimes even a region. In Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia (ústredňa židov), in Romania and in the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia The judenrats extended to a whole region ^{[ 2 ]} .

In isolated cases, the Jews created their own self-government organ, even before a Judenrat was created. Such creations were made necessary, to organize, as far as possible, the life of the community, to have representative bodies for discussions with the occupants and to buy civil servants in order to protect the Jews, to move away Pillards and troublemakers and to regulate the sending of Jews to compulsory work. In Kamin-Kachyrsky, for example, an autonomous organ of this type worked for 3 months ^{[ 5 ]} .

The role of the Judenrats reveals large differences from one country to another or from one region to another. The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the ghettos during the Holocaust ^{[ 6 ]} clearly explains that the ghetto cannot be presented as a unequivocal and invariable phenomenon ^{[ 7 ]} .

A Judenrat, in accordance with the instructions of Heydrich, was created in each agglomeration including a Jewish population throughout the occupied territory. When the population exceeded 10,000 inhabitants, Judenrat included 24 members. When she did not exceed this figure, he understood 12. The head of Judenrat was often called “Judenalster” (German: German: Jewest ) – Jewish storage ^{[ first ]} .

Many Jews imagined that the status of member of the Judenrat guaranteed to a certain extent the very life and for this reason the framework of the Judenrat was extended as much as possible. In addition, the collaborators of Judenrat and the Jewish police received more rations, more advantages than other prisoners of the Ghetto ^{[ first ]} .

The President of Judenrat (the “Jewish Stroste”) was alone to be in contact with the German forces, which means that the population of the ghettos thought that the Germans were taking into account his opinion when in reality the Stoste transmitted and obeyed orders of the occupants. For most of the obligations imposed on the Judenrates, the Jewish councilors had no power and the German occupation forces had no account of their opinions and, at best, the Judenrat managed, with a little luck, to adjourn a time the continuation of the massacres of prisoners or the sending of Jews to extermination camps ^{[ first ]} .

In Europe, many social actions were undertaken by the members of the Judenrats, the active members of political parties and religious and benevolence organizations. In the occupied Soviet Union, the Germans also tried to create Judenrates in the Jewish communities concerned. As on the one hand, due to contacts during religious practice, local teachers or doctors knew all the Jews of the local community well, and that on the other hand, due to the discontent of the Jews with regard to the ‘attitude of Soviet power vis-à-vis Judaism, the Germans could expect that they correctly fulfill their function of Jewish storage or member of the Judenrat, where there was no religious authority, The Nazis often charged the responsibilities of a Judenrat these doctors or these local teachers ^{[ first ] , [ 2 ]} .

The Germans’ wish to appoint as a member of the Judenrat of the Jews known because of their activity, can be explained by several reasons.

• First, this gave them the possibility of strengthening their authority vis-à-vis the representatives of the ghetto and thus avoiding the possibilities of troubles.
• Secondly, the execution of Nazi orders by these leaders of Judenrat humiliated them, in the eyes of prisoners, and reduced their possibilities to organize rebellions.
• Thirdly, keeping authorities before the occupation, asleep the vigilance of the Jews and made it possible to delay the moment when the ghetto is liquidated.
• In fourth place, the honorability of the members of Judenrat made it possible to use it usefully as hostages, because when the Nazis ended up, without hesitation, to the life of these people it meant for the simple prisoners that their own life really represented nothing in the eyes of Nazis ^{[ 5 ]} .

In most cases, the Jews did not want to work as a member of the Judenrat. The main reason was that they did not want to take action against other Jews and did not like to cover themselves with dishonor, also also because the risks exceeded the supposed advantages linked to the function. And still because few people were able to endure the continual humiliations that work was inevitably brought within a Judenrat. In the city of Velikié Louki, for example, the president of Judenrat, a certain Labasse, aged 65, was forced to repeat the following sentence every day: “Me, the Jew Labasse, I announce to you … Jews are in their place… ”, etc. If only one Jew had missed, Labasse would have been mercilessly massacred. However, we had to take care of his Jewish brother in the inhuman conditions of the ghetto and finally the Jews agreed to work for the Judenrat in the hope of saving theirs ^{[ 2 ] , [ 5 ] , [ 8 ]} .

The president of Judenrat chose as members the Jews of the region, but the Nazis controlled their choice and the German administration still decided to last ^{[ 2 ]} . Sometimes the leaders of Judenrat were chosen at random. For example, in Vilnius, not finding rabbi on hand, the Germans entrusted the organization of Judenrat at the firstcomer serving in the synagogue; Similarly to Eupatoria in Crimea, the occupants entrusted to the first ten Jews who had fallen on their hand the functions of members of Judenrat ^{[ 5 ]} .

Assassination of Judenrats members [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The composition of the Judenrats changed quickly. The Nazis killed a large number of Judenrats members or sent them to death camps in the same way as they did with camp prisoners. In Western Europe 90% of ghettos leaders were killed and in the occupied part of the USSR we can consider that it was 100%. Those whose Germans were not satisfied or they suspected or who did not show themselves modest enough were immediately killed. The result consisted in that the leaders of the Jewish community who had been called during the creation of the ghetto, were constantly replaced by people who showed as only quality their limitless obedience. For example, the July 3, 1942 , the Germans ordered the Stoset of the Ghetto of Baranavitchy, Izakson, to draw up the list of prisoners in order to exterminate them. What he replied: “I am not God, to know who must live and who must die” – He was shot with others chosen without having participated in their choice. The chief of the LVOV ghetto, Joseph Farnèse, to whom the lists of workers were ordered for forced labor replied: “The community and its body were not created to send the Jews to death” – And was killed by the Nazis, but his successors Adolf Rotfeld, Edouard Eberson and Landsberg no longer resisted the decisions of the German forces ^{[ first ] , [ 5 ]} .

In the event of insubordination, the members of the Judenrates were immediately exterminated. In the LVOV ghetto, only one president of Judenrat died of natural death. The other three were killed by the Germans. In the ghetto of Minsk, two presidents of Judenrat were killed by the Germans, in the Ghetto of Vilnius, it was also two presidents and various members of the Judenrat who were killed. In the Lida ghetto, in the monastyrchina ghetto (oblast of Smolensk) and in Khislavichy (oblast of Smolensk) the first Judenrats, in full, were passed by arms by the Germans ^{[ 5 ]} .

It was not uncommon for the members of the Judenrat to commit suicide, desperate for not being able to save prisoners from death or deportation to extermination camps. This was the case of Adam Czerniaków, chief of the Warsaw ghetto, when he learned the deportation of the prisoners. Some members of the Judenrats killed Jewish resistance fighters. It is only in Greece and in the Netherlands that the status of Stroste really gave a chance of survival ^{[ first ] , [ 5 ]} .

The Judenrats took care in the first place of the move of the Jews of locations not populated towards the places where ghettos were created and where the Jews could either be installed, or gathered to then be evacuated to other ghettos, to others locations in the city or even towards extermination camps ^{[ first ]} .

Over time the functions of the Judenrats were extended and they carried responsibility for everything that was happening within the camp and the realization of the administrative and economic measures taken by the Germans against the Jews. This included the management of a household, the maintenance of the order, the repression of the smuggling, the food supply, the call for labor and the distribution of compulsory work, the collection of financial means and contributions, the choice of candidates to the work camps and the completion of the orders of the Nazis. Judenrat also controlled administrative structures within the ghetto, the Jewish police, the fire service, health services, social services, statistical accounts, the work of teaching structures and more synagogues ^{[ first ] , [ 2 ]} .

Food supply [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The Judenrates shared the food rations of misery reserved by the Germans for the prisoners of the camps. But in some ghettos, the Germans left no food available to prisoners. The Germans managed to hung the second means of mass elimination of the Jews (after the one who consisted in assassinating them). For example, in the Lodz ghetto out of 200,000 prisoners, half died of hunger. In the Kaunas ghetto, the Jews who worked for forced labor received 1,400 grams of bread and 250 grams of horse meat per week. Those who did not work: half of these quantities. In Baryssaw in the ghetto, the workers prisoners received 150 grams of bread per day, in the chpola ghetto prisoners were not fed at all, in the smolensk ghetto of hundreds of prisoners died of hunger ^{[ 2 ] , [ 5 ]} .

In many ghettos the Judenrats began to overcome famine, by organizing illegal transport of food for prisoners, by unauthorized purchases or product exchanges and their secret delivery in the Ghetto. For crimes of “smuggling” of products, the sanction was most of the time death by shooting. In the Ghetto de Vilnius, for example, it happened that Judenrat could by smuggling bring in the camp, an entire cart of products, bought from Lithuanians, hiding them in tall transport or in hears. It was very rare for Judenrat to obtain the official authorization of the Germans to bring in the camp of food bought outside. But, even in this case, only a small part of the products came to the camp. For example, in the LVOV ghetto the Judenrat had succeeded in combined efforts to obtain a ton and a half of products and drugs. But the police and the Germans intercepted most of this food ^{[ 5 ]} .

The Judenrates organized, as far as possible, the cultivation of vegetables on each piece of land, organized canteens for those who died of hunger. Thus, in the Brest-Litovsk ghetto, Judenrat managed to ensure a minimum of supply for 25% of prisoners. In Warsaw, Białystok and still elsewhere, Judenrates managed to provide, as much as possible, to the food, to the heating and the clothing of a part of the population of these ghettos ^{[ 5 ]} .

Medicine and hygiene [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

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Panel in the LVOV ghetto: “A clean child is healthy, a dirty child is sick”.

The Jews had to survive in the ghetto in conditions completely contrary to hygiene. The prisoners had to bear the promiscuity, hunger, cold, the absence of running water and discharge sanitary pipes, lice, purulent plagues, painful work. The disease in ghettos was the rule and not the exception. There were no enough doctors or enough medicines.

In such conditions, in such misery, medical aid and minimum hygiene assistance were a constant concern of Judenrates. The most basic measurement of hygiene was the installation of baths and many Judenrates could install it. There are cases where, if there was no request for baths, there was no question of food ration tickets ^{[ 5 ]} .

In some important ghettos, the Judenrates obtained authorization from the Germans to open a hospital, but in most cases, the occupants did not allow the Jews to organize medical care. In Kalouga, for example, the chief of the Ghetto Frenkel received only a refusal at his request to create a dispensary. But in the Vilnius ghetto, the hospital (despite a deficit of medicines) had four sections, including a radiology firm, a laboratory and a workforce of 150 people.

Mortality in the ghetto was 4 to 10 times higher than among the populations of other occupied areas. In the event of the risk of epidemic, the Germans, in most cases, completely destroyed the ghetto. But often the Judenrates managed to prevent these massive epidemics. Hospitalizing the infected patients was not possible, because the infection could come to the knowledge of the Germans. Consequently, Jewish doctors had to communicate falsified diagnoses and secretly treat the infected Jewish patients (especially for typhus) ^{[ 5 ]} .

Sometimes the Ghetto hospital proved to be a trap. For example, in 1941, in the Kaunas ghetto the Germans burned the hospital in which 60 people were: patients and medical staff. But Judenrat was forced to take the risk of creating a new one because despite the absence of medication and surgical instruments, Jewish doctors were engaged, at all costs, to cure sick prisoners ^{[ 5 ]} .

Painful moral problems were constantly in Judenrat and doctors. For example, each day had to decide which prisoner would first be given the drugs that the ghetto had. A painful problem resided in the ban on Jewish women in the ghetto, to give birth. The management of the ghetto was obliged, under penalty of death to communicate each case of pregnancy, and in this case the Nazis killed the whole family. If the existence of pregnancies or delivery facts were hidden, the ghetto was in great danger. It was therefore necessary to take all measures against childbirth, and doctors had to carry out abortions even on eight months pregnant women, to save the lives of children already alive as well as that of their parents ^{[ 5 ]} . In the agenda of the Judenrat Secretariat of Getto de Szawlach we can read:

“In addition to all humiliations and demoralizations we are forced to kill our own children. In these black days, there were three young women at the last stage of their pregnancy. Daily checks did not give the possibility of hiding them and saving the children to come. Desperate they asked the doctor to cause premature delivery and kill children born. What was done in private accommodation. Living and healthy children were born. One of them was of an unusual beauty. All died with the help of a syringe and were buried not in the cemetery but in a corner of the ghetto. It was better than by the hands of the Germans ^{[ 5 ]} … »

Fight for homeless [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

A lot of efforts from the Judenrats were devoted to finding a solution to the problem of without-logis prisoners, and everything was done so that no one stayed without shelter. It was very difficult to achieve this goal. For example, in the Warsaw ghetto, a third of the city’s population lived at 13 or 15 people in a single room, and the whole population of the city was housed in a surface representing 5% of the entire area. By inhabitant, in the Grodno ghetto was made available to a square meter of residential. In the Ghetto of the Oblast of Vélija Odessa, 500 Jews were piled up in a pigsty provided for 300 pigs ^{[ 5 ]} .

Culture and Educations in the ghetto [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Ghetto de Warsaw, May 2, 1941. Entrance to the “Eldorado” theater (rue Dzielna, 1) – Première in the comedy of Kalmanovitch “Rywkełe Dem Rebns”.

Despite everything, the Judenrats led a moral fight against the Nazis. The Jewish advice, as soon as the slightest opportunity was given to them, tried to take only a few measures in the cultural field. In the inevitable circumstances relating to death, concerts and shows helped many Jews survive in the face of despair ^{[ 5 ]} .

The Jews were not allowed to give teaching to their children. But in the ghetto the prisoners surrounded this ban as best as possible. In some rare ghettos, the Nazis authorized teaching. But the school then often became a trap and the Nazis claimed that the children were not “workers” to kill them. In school, they could capture them immediately and in large numbers. In the Kaunas ghetto for example, Judenrat, after many moral hesitations, decided not to create a school, but on the other hand began to organize the teaching for 500 prisoners divided into two schools despite the little space available in The ghetto. Even after the date of August 26, 1942 , when the Nazis prohibited any teaching in the ghetto the Jews of Kaunas continued to teach their children ^{[ 5 ]} .

Financial activity [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Cut of 10 Marks printed in the Lodz ghetto for internal use.

For the Judenrats, who led a perpetual struggle for life in the ghetto, the money always lacked to achieve what they wanted. The housing rehabilitation fund was not supplied; Hospitals had to buy medication; The orphanages lacked money to treat children; It was necessary to buy food products for those who were undernourished; In schools he lacked money for teaching. There was also money for the repair and maintenance of the streets, the water supply, the distribution of electricity, for sewers. Unforeseen events were continuously presented themselves. However, it was vital to spend to buy what was essential, try to save yourself from a certain death, by the corruption of the Germans and the police. Or at least, so as not to be arrested and to obtain a certain indulgence in cases of condemnation to forced labor ^{[ 5 ]} .

Money only came from a source: prisoners of the ghetto themselves. These, being between life and death, had to find the possibility of paying taxes in Judenrat in any case so that the latter can face the needs of the community. This is how the Judenrates found money but also by selling more expensive products that they had bought cheaper. They also asked for money for medical care and municipal services, or by imposing contraventions. They usually had to hold two funds: one, official, which they could present to Nazi controllers, the other to pay the bribes and buy goods illegally, all under penalty of capital sanctions ^{[ 5 ]} .

The fate of the Judenrats was inevitably fatal. The Germans created Judenrats to help them exterminate the Jews only. When Judenrät opposed this German program it was exterminated (as in the LVOV ghetto between the 5th and the January 7, 1943 ). Forced to apply Nazi directives They have been accused of collaboration. The presidents of these advice should decide if they accepted or refused to obey Nazi orders. In the ghetto of Warsaw the president of Judenrät, Adam Czerniakow, committed suicide the July 22, 1942 In order not to have to participate in the organization of Jewish roundups when the wave of deportations began to the Nazi extermination camps ^{[ 9 ]} .

At the beginning the Judenrats hoped to save time and accomplished everything that the Germans asked for: collect money, give furs and valuables, send people to compulsory work. But regardless of the conduct of the Judenrat, the goal of the Germans was still the extermination of the Jews. Many Judenrates advisers failed to believe that there was a “complete resolution of the Jewish question” in the minds of the Germans, dedicating the Jews to total extermination. This is why, even after the achievement of several “actions” (it is by this euphemism that the Nazis designated the organization of mass massacres), many members of the Judenrats tried to explain these actions by the wishes of the Germans to get rid of prisoners unable to work to reduce expenses relating to the maintenance of the ghetto. It is in any case like this that reasoned the leaders of most ghettos, for example Barach in the ghetto of Białystok, people at the Ghetto of Vilnius, Cherniakov in the ghetto of Warsaw, Hermon Lieberman in the Hlybokaïe ghetto. They did not manage to believe that the Nazis wanted to arrive at the physical elimination of all the Jews of the Ghettos ^{[ 5 ]} .

In obvious cases of non-acceptance of German requirements, it was the death guaranteed for members of Judenrat. This is why the maximum that the advisers of it could do was to carry out the orders of the Germans as badly as possible, trying to delay or soften the anti-Jewish actions of power. But part of the members of the Judenrats imagined, on the contrary, that if the orders of the Germans were carried out without conditions, it would be possible to obtain indulgence. Judenrats often tried to demonstrate the financial interest of the work of prisoners for the Reich war economy (it was the policy of “working by work”) and therefore the interest of leaving as much as possible Jewish Jews . It was a widespread illusion: “we will survive, if we are necessary”, “work to stay alive”. It is for this purpose that the Judenrates worked with all their strength to provide the Germans with the products they needed. For example, Baratch in the Bialystok ghetto, organized a factory that worked for the German army and even organized an exhibition to show what the use for ghettos was working for Germany. But, in the end did not help any ghetto and the Jews of Bialystok were killed, perhaps a little later, but exactly as in the other ghettos ^{[ 2 ] , [ 5 ]} .

Under the conditions of desolation that existed in ghettos, some ghettos refused to deliver the Jews, others, in order to save the community sacrificed themselves to take part in the choice of prisoners who would be part of the next killing. The chief of the Lodz ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski, managed to convince the prisoners not to oppose the sending of children in a concentration camp to, at this price, save those who remained.

By following such principles, it happened frequently and necessarily that the Judenrates are in conflict, especially with the clandestine Jews of the ghetto. Thus, in Warsaw, the Jewish Combat Organization (żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) attacked the Jewish police. In the Vilnius ghetto there were scuffles. In eastern Haute-Siesia, the president of Judenrat, Moshe Mérine, declared war on the clandestine Jews of the ghetto. Similar situations occurred in the Krakow ghetto and more in other ghettos.

Warsaw Judenrat building after the ghetto uprising (19, rue Samemegof).

Most of the Judenrates representatives did not accept the idea of ​​escape, flight into the woods, collaboration with armed supporters. However, a significant number of members of the Judenrates and leaders of the ghettos took an active part in the organization of the armed fight against the Nazis and actively supported links with the Jewish resistance movements during the Shoah – for example in the Minsk ghetto and in that of Lakhva.

Some Judenrates immediately participated in the activities of clandestine organizations; Others participated with them to a certain extent. But always, they tried at the same time to save the Jews from the ghetto, and, of course, to save themselves and to fight against the Germans. The chiefs of the ghetto behaved in a very different way: Chaim Rumkowski in the łódź ghetto was fighting against clandestine organizations, G. Landaou in the ghetto of Chișinău did not help them but did not put obstacles to them, In Šiauliai in Lithuania and Lutsk in Ukraine, the representatives of Judenrat tried themselves to arm the prisoners and start the insurrection ^{[ 5 ]} .

In the ghetto of Białystok, the representative of Judenrat Barache began with the opponents, testifying by all means his support and his collaboration to Mordechaj Tenenbaum, the organizer and the head of the Jewish resistance, and transmitted through him ‘Silver and gold so that the illegal Warsaw can buy weapons. Barache only ceased to help the opponents that February 1942 , when the Germans murdered more than 10,000 Jews from the Białystok ghetto and decided to act with the greatest caution to save those who survived ^{[ 5 ]} .

You should also know that the members of the organizations of clandestine opponents were trying to break into the Judenrats because it gave them more possibilities to act against the occupants ^{[ 5 ]} .

According to the opinion of many witnesses, representing the direction of the Judenrats, as obediently leading the Jews as well as “sheep at the slaughterhouse”, is not an image in accordance with reality. Almost 30% of the leaders of Judenrats in the ghettos opposed the Germans by all possible means. Which was much more than, for example, the percentage of opponents and heads of the occupied regions ^{[ 5 ]} .

Data on the fate of members of the Judenräte of Poland [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

American investigator Iashiel Trunk gathered the following data on the fate of 720 members of Judenräte in Poland ^{[ ten ]} :

At the time of the occupation by the Nazis, most of the Judenrates members were killed by the Germans. However after the release of the occupied territories, the Soviet forces dealt with many survivors like accomplices of the fascists and exerted a repression against them, most often by shooting them ^{[ first ]} .

Following the USSR development of a new propaganda trend in the years 1970-1980, journalists no longer remembered Holocaust when it was a question of condemning the Judenrates of collaboration with the Nazis. Soviet press organs did not think of the absurdity of their condemnation of the Jews as “accomplices of the fascists”, without regard to the fact that the goal of the Nazis was the extermination of the Jews ^{[ 8 ]} .

In the USSR, the accounts on the “collaboration of the Judenrats with the fascists” became part of the repertoire of anti -Zionist propaganda, while these stories had nothing to do with Israel or with Zionism. To this end the journalists chose photos where the members of the Judenrats wore the star of David on their clothes to bring, in their minds, the proof that they act as Zionists ^{[ 8 ]} .

From the moment of their creation, the activities of the Judenrates made contradictions appear. Some of the people considered the members of the Judenrats as collaborators of the Nazis, seeking only accommodation, and wishing to survive at all costs. Others thought that the work of Judenrat made it possible to help, even if somewhat, resistance and to save Jews. Most prisoners tried by all means to harm the Judenrat and to hinder his action, some by escaping from orders and compulsory work, others by refusing to collaborate with the members of the Judenrats. In several ghettos, there were strikes and demonstrations against the Judenrats. However, faced with the categorical accusations of the Judenrates of voluntary complicity with the Germans, it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that the Judenrats were forced to direct the ghetto community in absolutely new conditions and unknown until then ^{[ first ] , [ 5 ]} .

Obviously, at the constitution of the Judenrats, he was still among the prisoners, people who tried at all costs to obtain better living conditions and to avoid death to the detriment of other prisoners. They collaborated with the Nazis for any Judenrates activities. Some helped the organization of mass massacres, supported the activity of the Jewish police in the ghetto, with bribes they extended their lives on the account of that of others. In most cases, the Judenrates respected the orders of the German forces and made the decision to sacrifice members of the community in the interest of others, following the expression “cut an arm to save the whole body”. They forced prisoners to the heaviest works, brought together the “contributions” for the Nazis, and could not always help the hungry and the patients. Among them, there were masters and thieves, insensitive people. But, despite everything, the majority of Ghetto prisoners received help from the Judenrat and were grateful to him ^{[ first ] , [ 2 ] , [ 5 ]} .

It should particularly be noted that the idea of ​​the Judenrates of “work to stay alive” was unconditionally supported by the majority of the inhabitants of the ghetto. Even the fighter supporters of the ghetto, continuously in conflict with the Judenrat, presented no objection to the existence of these, and, in the vast majority of situations, did not openly express their opposition because they understood perfectly The need for Judenrat’s work and all the difficulties of their incessant attempts to save the ghetto ^{[ 5 ]} .

Bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

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