The War Against the Jews: 1933–1945 by Lucy S. Dawidowicz

Author:Lucy S. Dawidowicz
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: kindle123, ebook, book
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2010-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

11

The Official Community:

From Kehilla to Judenrat

Upon entering the towns and cities of Poland in 1939 and of Russian-held territory in 1941, the German invaders ordered Jewish communal leaders to establish Jewish councils, Judenräte, in accordance with Heydrich’s instructions of September 21, 1939.1 Everywhere these Judenräte were formed out of the remnants of the prewar kehillot, the legally incorporated religious communities. These, like all political and communal structures, had been disrupted and shattered by the invasion, the bombardments and shellings, the mass flights and evacuations, and above all, by German terror. Only fragments remained of the institutions that had once regulated the country’s political and social life.

In Warsaw, where the population held out longest against the Germans, a Jewish citizens’ committee to replace the defunct kehilla was formed on September 11 to obtain help for the Jews from the makeshift municipality. The five-man committee, composed of Zionists and heads of the merchants’ and artisans’ associations, was legitimated by the city’s president who, on September 23, appointed as the committee’s head Adam Czerniaków, a former vice-chairman of the prewar government-appointed kehilla.2 (In December 1936 the Polish government dissolved the democratically elected Warsaw kehilla for acting “beyond its competence”—that is, for opposing the government’s anti-Jewish policies—and appointed a commissioner and an advisory council, which all parties except the Aguda boycotted. Only a few of the originally elected councilmen continued to serve.)

When the Russians occupied eastern Poland and the Baltic countries, they arrested and subsequently murdered many Jewish communal leaders whom they regarded as anti-Soviet. When those territories were incorporated into the USSR, the Jewish community as a corporate entity ceased to exist. Jewish political parties went underground, while Jewish service organizations—schools, hospitals, orphanages, libraries—were taken over and operated by the government.

The Judenräte emerged from the diminished and deficient pool of men who had once led and administered the now lapsed communal institutions. Frank’s decree of November 28, 1939, ordering the establishment of Judenräte, provided that communities with up to 10,000 inhabitants were to have a 12-member council, larger communities a 24-member council. In practice, however, the SS validated councils of varying size. To run the thousand or so Judenräte formed in the Generalgouvernement and the Eastern occupied territories, no fewer than 10,000 men, and probably many more, had to be coopted. Most had served in prewar times as board or staff members of local kehillot, social-welfare agencies, professional associations, schools, cultural and religious organizations. The majority had been active in the various Jewish parties, some having been elected to kehillot or city councils on their party lists.

Many men active in communal service had reached their positions through the conventional avenues of access in the traditional community: family prestige, wealth, Jewish learning, and dedication to the community through financial generosity and good works. In addition, during the interwar period, new channels for communal activity had opened up by way of the political parties and professionalization of the social services. As a group, these communal activists were overwhelmingly middle class and professional, but included a growing segment of working-class people whom the political parties had elevated.

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