Jewish Ghetto Police

The Second World War - Organisations

The Jewish Order Service (German: Jüdische Ghetto-Polizei or Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst), also called the Jewish Police by Jews, was an auxiliary police unit organized in Nazi ghettos by a local Jewish council (Judenrat).

Members of the Jewish police usually did not wear official uniforms, often with only an identification armband, cap, and badge. They were not allowed to carry firearms - they were equipped with truncheons. In ghettos, where the Judenrat opposed German orders (e.g. in Łuck), the Jewish police were often used to control or replace the council. One of the largest jewish police units was located in the Warsaw ghetto, where it numbered approximately 2,500 people. The Lodz ghetto numbered about 1,200 people, and the Lviv ghetto - 500.

Jewish Ghetto Police of the Warsaw Ghetto

Anatol Chari, a policeman in the Lodz ghetto, described in his memoirs his work securing food depots and controlling employees bakeries, as well as patrols whose aim is to confiscate food from the inhabitants of the ghetto. He recalls the involvement of Jewish policemen in extorting food rations and forcing women to provide sexual services in exchange for bread. The Polish-Jewish historian and archivist of the Warsaw ghetto Emanuel Ringelblum described the cruelty of the Jewish police in the ghetto as "many times greater than the cruelty of the Germans, Ukrainians and Latvians".

The officers were mostly young volunteers who kept order in the ghetto, although they also took part in patrols led by German soldiers and guarded the gates to Jewish quarters. The participation of officers in pacification of districts, round-ups, and assistance in organizing the transport of people to death camps was perceived particularly negatively among the inhabitants of the ghettos.

There was also a Special Unit of the ghetto police (Sondererabteilung), with its headquarters at 96 Łagiewnicka Street, which assisted the Germans in plundering Jewish property.

Most of the Jewish policemen came from scum environment. They lived well. They had good food and the best apartments. Their attitude towards the poor workers was terrible. If a worker said a word they didn't like, he would disappear immediately, and no one knew where he had gone. There were also secret agents among the workers who reported everything to the police.
—Mendel Tron

The Jewish police in the ghetto ultimately shared the same fate with all their fellow ghetto inmates. During the liquidation of the ghettos (1942-1943) they were killed on the spot or sent to extermination camps.

Large group portrait of members of the Lodz ghetto Jewish police. Among those pictured, in the fourth row from the bottom, are Julek Grosbart (second from the left), Zygmunt Reingold, the commander of the police department (fourth from the left) and Leon Rozenblat, the head of the ghetto police (seventh from the left). Abram Josef (Alfred) Chimowicz is standing in the first row of standing policeman, on the very far right. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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