Baruch Milch about Judenrats (Jewish Councils)

The Second World War - Testimonies

The Jewish author Baruch Milch, a holocaust survivor, wrote in a account of the fate of Jews in the eastern borderlands of the Second Polish Republic (Lviv and Tarnopol voivodeships):

In any case, the Judenrat became a tool in the hands of the Gestapo to destroy Jews, and later, as its members, they were describing themsevelves “the Gestapo on the Jewish street.” They established the Ordnungsdienst (security service) – as the executive body composed of the worst elements of the social lowlands (…).
As a matter of fact, the Judenrat began to pursue a robbery policy in order to fill its own pockets, to bribe the authorities and the Gestapo with this money, but only to secure the fate of its own and immediate family. There are no known cases where the Judenrat selflessly helped any Jew (…). To do their evil deeds, such as collecting huge taxes and imposed contributions, capturing Jews for labor camps and raids on Jewish houses, the Judenrats used their Ordnungsdienst, which they gave a percentage of the booty, and they, in number often-fifteen attacked people, beating them cruelly, destroying and robbing whatever they could, and with terrible ruthlessness.
(…) The Judenrat arranged for these murderers [Germans] to deliver the requested three hundred people within three hours. The Jews themselves had to capture and hand over their brothers and sisters into the hands of the executioners who stood on the square of the farm, next to our apartment, and they welcomed them with clubs or haystacks, and then deported to Bełżec for slaughter (…) Judenrat and Ordnungsdienst, with the help of the Ukrainian police and a few Germans, who were even paid to work quickly, were chasing people along the streets like mad dogs or madmen, and sweat poured from them in streams (…). It was a terrible view of a Jew leading a Jew to his death (…)

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