Hannah Arendt about the collaboration of Jews with Nazi Germany

The Second World War - Testimonies

Hannah Arendt, the most famous Jewish thinker of the 20th century, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, strongly condemned the collaboration of Jews with Germans. She wrote there, inter alia:

The role that the Jewish leaders played in the annihilation of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of this grim history. It was known before, but all the sublime and wicked details about it were first brought to light by [Raul Hilberg], whose book The Destruction of the European Jews I mentioned earlier. In terms of cooperation, there were no differences between the highly assimilated Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe and the Jewish-speaking masses in the East.

In both Amsterdam, Warsaw, Berlin, as well as Budapest, it was possible to be sure that Jewish officials would draw up name lists together with information on property, guarantee that the deportees would receive money to cover the costs of their deportation and extermination, they would update the register of empty apartments , they will provide their own police with assistance in catching and loading Jews onto trains, and finally - in a last gesture of good will - they will hand over the untouched assets of the Jewish community for final confiscation.

They distributed yellow stars, and sometimes - for example in Warsaw - "the sale of wristbands turned into a normal business: apart from the usual linen ones, you could buy fancy washable plastic wristbands." On the basis of the manifestos inspired, but not dictated by the Nazis, announced by these officers, we can see - still today - how they were delighted of the newly acquired power: ”The Central Jewish Council was granted the exclusive right to dispose of all Jewish spiritual and material goods - as well as all Jewish labor” – we read in the first announcement of the Budapest council. We know how Jewish officials felt when they turned into a murder weapon - they felt like captains "whose ships were in danger of sinking, yet thry managed to reach port safely, having thrown away much of their precious cargo", or as saviors who "at the cost of a hundred victims saved a thousand people, for the cost of a thousand - ten thousand."

The truth was even gloomier. For example, Dr. Kastner, operating in Hungary, saved exactly 1,684 people at the cost of around 476,000 victims. Nobody bothered to take the oath of secrecy from the Jewish officials. They voluntarily became "bearers of secrets", either to ensure peace and prevent panic - as was the case with Dr. Kastner - or for "humanitarian" reasons - for example, "living in anticipation of death by gassing would be even more difficult” - this was the case of Dr. Leo Baeck, the former Chief Rabbi of Berlin, who was considered to be a “Jewish Fuhrer” by both Jews and non-Jews.

Podczas procesu Eichmanna jeden z zeznających świadków wskazał na skutki podobnego „humanitaryzmu”: ludzie dobrowolnie zgłaszali się na deportację z Terezina do Oświęcimia, a tych, którzy usiłowali powiedzieć im prawdę, nazywali „obłąkanymi”. Doskonale pamiętamy twarze żydowskich przywódców z czasów hitlerowskich, poczynając od Chaima Rumkowskiego, prezesa Rady Żydowskiej w Łodzi, zwanego Chaimem I, który wprowadził do obiegu banknoty noszące jego podpis oraz znaczki pocztowe ze swoją podobizną i kazał się wozić zdezelowaną karetą, poprzez Leo Baecka, człowieka wykształconego, dobrze ułożonego, który sądził, że policjanci żydowscy będą „łagodniejsi i bardziej przydatni” i „uczynią męki znośniejszymi” (gdy w istocie byli oni, rzecz jasna, brutalniejsi i trudniej przekupni, bo mieli o wiele więcej do stracenia), kończąc na garstce tych, którzy popełnili samobójstwo, jak choćby Adam Czerniaków, prezes warszawskiej Rady Żydowskiej, który nie był rabinem, tylko niewierzącym, mówiącym po polsku żydowskim inżynierem, a mimo to nie zapomniał – jak widać – rabinackiej maksymy: During Eichmann's trial, one of the testifying witnesses pointed to the effects of a similar "humanitarianism": people volunteered to be deported from Terezin to Auschwitz, and called those who tried to tell them the truth "insane." We perfectly remember the faces of Jewish leaders from the Nazi era, starting with Chaim Rumkowski, president of the Jewish Council in Łódź, known as Chaim I, who put banknotes bearing his signature into circulation and postage stamps with his likeness, and had him driven in a dilapidated carriage, through Leo Baeck, an educated, well-mannered man who thought that the Jewish policemen would be "gentler and more useful" and "make torment more tolerable "(when in fact they were, of course, more brutal and more difficult to bribe, because they had much more to lose), ending with a handful of those who committed suicide, such as Adam Czerniaków, president of the Warsaw of the Jewish Council, who was not a rabbi, but an unbeliever, a Polish-speaking Jewish engineer, and yet he did not forget - as you can see - the rabbinical maxim:

„Let them kill you, but don't go beyond the boundaries”.

The submission of the Judenrat to the Nazis meant an extreme shame of the Jewish elite in the countries occupied by the Third Reich. Arend wrote:

However, while members of the Quisling-type governments usually came from opposition parties, the members of the Jewish councils were generally respected local Jewish leaders, whom the Nazis gave enormous power until they were also deported.

She also wrote:

Collaborators among Poles recruited from the margin of society, scum, while among Jews, Jewish elites collaborated.

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