Chosen for Destruction: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor by Glass Morris & Happer Carolyn

Author:Glass, Morris & Happer, Carolyn [Glass, Morris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Media Consultants Inc
Published: 2013-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Included in the ghetto administration were the Jewish police whose main job was to keep order within the ghetto. Part of keeping order was to send people to the notorious ghetto prison, a prison from which few people returned. The Jewish police also presided at hangings for crimes committed in the ghetto. In addition, they helped to corral those selected for deportation and to load them onto the death trains. They did much of the Nazis’ dirty work.

Although the responsibility of the Jewish police for keeping order and administering justice within the ghetto was not to be envied, it was their role in the roundups, selections, and deportations that made them so despised. During the Gehsperre, I had mostly positive impressions about their actions. It seemed to me that by trying to restrain people, especially the mothers and fathers, they probably lessened the violence and deaths during those terrible days. Nevertheless, by controlling the people and by shepherding the victims to the railroad station, the Jewish police made it possible for the SS to complete their work with a minimum of manpower. Nothing better illustrates how the Jewish police helped the Germans than the final liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, when only a few Germans were involved in the deportation of some seventy thousand Jews. The story of the Jewish police is indeed a dark and questionable one.

The first hanging that I witnessed involved a number of people who were accused of sabotage in a leather factory. In order to teach us that the punishment for sabotage would be severe, after work we were all forced to march to the gallows to witness the executions. To emphasize the seriousness of the crime, Biebow, Rumkowski, and many other high-ranking officials were present. The executions were carried out by the Jewish police. I was quite far away from the gallows; nevertheless, I could hear the condemned weeping and praying. It was the first time that I had witnessed a hanging—one minute a person is alive and standing, and then he is hanging there lifeless. It was one of those moments I will never forget. After the war, there were stories about sabotage in ghetto factories. Maybe it happened; if so, I never saw or heard about it.

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