Jewish security service

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As Jewish Ghetto Police , colloquially called Jewish police , were police units designated after the German occupation of Poland and throughout Eastern Europe in the erected there ghettos on the instructions of the German occupiers of the Jewish councils were formed. A Jewish security service was also used in some concentration camps .

Jewish policeman in the Litzmannstadt ghetto, 1940

Shortly after the Jewish councils were set up in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, they received instructions for the establishment of these units. Usually this went hand in hand with the ghettoization of the Jewish population. The Jewish councils themselves, although formed on the orders of the Germans, often had the character of a voluntary association. In contrast, the Jewish Police was created exclusively on the instructions of the Germans. There was no comparable model for this in everyday life in the Jewish communities.

Jewish policeman in the Litzmannstadt ghetto , 1941

Composition and organization

The occupiers issued guidelines for recruitment: the candidates had to be healthy, have had a previous military education and have had higher education. An evaluated random sample shows that only ten percent of the selected and deployed police men had cultivated closer ties to a religious community in their previous lives. Those who worked in the police force were able to move relatively freely, thus had more opportunities to trade food, and were spared from exhausting forced labor.

Formally, the “Jewish Ordinance Service” was subordinate to the Jewish Councils, but from the beginning they had concerns about the appearance of the security service in public. They feared that the occupiers had direct control over the security service and used it as a stooge for their own interests, which was intended and occurred.

Police duties

The work of the Jewish Police can be divided into three categories:

  1. The implementation of demands made by the German occupiers on the Jewish councils.
  2. Execution of orders from the Jewish councils that could not be traced back to orders from the Germans.
  3. Duties to meet the needs of the Jewish population.

The first two categories included the collection of fines, valuables and taxes, the collection of the required quotas for forced labor , the escorting of the forced laborers to their workplaces, the guarding of the walls and gates of the ghetto and the preparation and implementation of the deportations to the forced labor and extermination camps .

The exclusion of Jews from public institutions and the isolation in the ghettos created serious problems. In the early stages of its existence, the Jewish Police were involved in the distribution of aid to those in need. She helped contain epidemics and settle disputes, always in coordination with the demands of the Germans.

Conflicts

The deportations to extermination camps also affected friends, acquaintances and family members of the ghetto police officers who were deployed. Some left the police force demonstratively and were themselves deported to extermination camps. Others diligently carried out the orders of the Germans to the end.

The underground resistance movement was mostly hostile to the Jewish authorities. In the Warsaw Ghetto , the Jewish Police Commissioner Josef Szeryński (1893–1943) was seriously injured by underground fighters at the end of August 1942, and his successor, Jacob Lejkin, was killed in October.

Organization of the police

In the Warsaw ghetto , the Jewish security service numbered 2,500 people, in the Litzmannstadt ghetto 1,200 people, and in the Lemberg ghetto 500 people. In large ghettos the commanders were officers ; there were sub-divisions and district guards ; Such a structure was unnecessary in small ghettos.

Like all Jews, the police had to wear the mandatory Star of David. As police officers, they were recognizable by their peaked cap and an armband. The security service was equipped with rubber truncheons.

After the end of the war

Jewish police officers were often accused of wrongdoing by survivors after the war. In Israel, several police officers were charged under the Law to Punish Nazis and Nazi Aides . Most were acquitted because the courts considered the extraordinary circumstances.

Representation in films

The importance of the Jewish security service is thematized in films such as The Pianist and Ghetto .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst" In: Y. Gutmann et al .: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , Volume II, p. 700.
  2. ^ Bernard Mark: "The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto", Dietz-Verlag, (East) Berlin, 1957, p. 105.
  3. ^ Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews , Quadrangle Books, Chicago 1961, p. 310
  4. ↑ Andrea Löw: Jews in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. Bochum 2005 ISBN 3-8353-0050-4 , p. 107 = on the Internet
  5. ↑ "Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst" In: Y. Gutmann et al .: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Volume II, p. 702.

Web links

Commons : Jewish ghetto police  - collection of images, videos and audio files