Judenrat

The Judenrat (German: "Jewish Council") was an administrative body established by Nazi Germany during World War II to control Jewish communities throughout occupied Europe, mainly in the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to establish a Judenrat in every community in the occupied territories.

The Judenrat was a form of intermediary used by the Nazi administration to control larger Jewish communities and organize deportations to extermination camps.

In a few exceptional cases, e.g. in the ghetto in Minsk or in Lachwa, the Judenrats collaborated with the resistance movement. In most cases, the Judenrats worked closely with the Germans.

[Baruch Milch] wrote:

The Judenrat became a tool in the hands of the Gestapo(german: Geheime Staatspolizei) The Secret State Police established in the Third Reich, which ruthlessly fought against all forms of resistance in the occupied territories. Identified with the most terrible German crimes against Poles, and after 1942 also against Jews. Disbanded with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Recognized as a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. for the extermination of Jews... I do not know a single case when the Judenrat would help a Jew disinterestedly (...) Judenrat started the robbery clocked in politics, to fill up its own pockets, bribe officials and Gestapo with that money, but only to secure the fate of your own and your immediate family

It should be taken into account that this is a single report from a specific place and time. The behavior of the Judenrat members was not uniform.

Emanuel Ringelblum, the founder of the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, did not spare criticism for the Warsaw Judenrat in his notes:

The whole activity of the community is one great harm done to the poor, cries out to heaven for vengeance. And if God were in the world, he would destroy this nest of evil, hypocrisy and extortion with lightning.

There is no doubt that the positive effects of the activities of the Judenrats were very meager. The tragic circumstances of life in the ghetto often led to the enforcement of unjust actions, such as despotism, total subjection to the occupant and protectionism of selected individuals at the expense of the rest of the community. Judenrats are commonly accused of being jointly responsible for organizing the deportation of thousands of their fellow Jews to concentration camps. Many researchers argue that without the Judenrat deportations would have been logistically impossible. It was for this reason that the members of the communes quickly became very critical and even opposed their Judenrat.

One of the most vocal critics of the Judenrat institution was the German philosopher of Jewish origin, Hannah Arendt. She wrote:

For Jews, the role that the Jewish leaders played in the annihilation of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of all this grim history ... In terms of interaction, there were no differences between the highly assimilated Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe and the Jewish-speaking masses in the East.