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The Jewish Police



It may be hard to imagine that there were Jewish Police during the Shoah, after all it was often the German and Polish Police who victimized the Jews. Early in the Reich, there were Jewish policemen just as in any police force. As the Reich grew stronger, and as the Civil Rights Restrictions of 1933-35 were enacted, most Jews were forbidden to hold all public offices. One exclusion was the ghettos. While the Ghettos such as Warsaw, Lodz, and Krakow were guarded by the Nazis, they often had their own police forces comprised of Jewish officers for 'peace-keeping'. Called the "Order Police" or Ordnungsdienst This did not guarantee perfect treatment of the people under their care however, but one has to remember that the populations in the ghettos were starving, mostly poor, faced with disease and often brimming over: Warsaw ghetto at one time may have had over 500,000 in the space fit for a tenth of that. The Jewish police there faced the same problems other officers would face in the same circumstances.

There were other 'classes' of Jewish Police. The most prominent were

  • Jewish Police in regular Civil Service in Germany before the War

  • Jewish Police in territories which were not fully occupied

  • Jewish Police in the Ghettos

  • Jewish "Police" or Kapos within the camps, chosen to keep order among their own and

  • Sonderkommandos, or persons chosen for special though often gruesome duties, often overlapping with Kapos, and usually killed after their term of 'special service'.

    • The Formation of the Jewish Police

    There is a common misperception that Jewish Police in the Ghetto were established by the Jews, but the establishment of a Jewish Police presence in the Ghettos, usually came about by on order from the Judenrat, or Jewishcouncil which was usually from a sereptitious mandate from Nazi officials, giving the appearance of Jewish acquiescence. Several of the Jewish police forces, including Warsaw, were set up just prior to the closing of ghetto borders to travel, so that the forces were already to take their positions by November 15, 1940. Lvov 's police force was established by a letter from the SS in November of 1941, Lodz by the German Police President in February of 1940 and the Wartheland, Krakow and Czestochowa by the local Burgemeister. The formation of Jewish Police forces, or 'order police' was in part to lessen resistance to order in the ghetto on the part of the Jewish internees and in part to free Polish or other local police forces for the German war effort or other civil duties. 1

    The Duties of the Local Order Police

    The Jewish Police of the Shoah ghettos were a unique group because while they were assigned the duty of keeping the law in the ghettoes , they also had the distinction of being prisoners themselves, although with slightly more freedom than other ghetto tenants. Some had been former police officers and soldiers, others athletes, and their position was like the kapos, a somewhat compromised position, policing and bearing force over their own and yet being Jewish at the same time: individual officers were both a blessing and a curse. A few gave way to the same brutality as the Nazis, becoming susceptible to an emotional-cognitive phenomena known as 'identification with the aggressor'. [see Blind Obedience-The Zimbardo Studies] Good or bad, though, their duties in all the ghettos were clearly outlined, and included:

    Duties of Jewish Police Officers

  • Securing and maintenance of Streets, Backyards, and areas near the borders
  • Crime
  • Order in the Judenrat officiated buildings
  • Watch over Labor, and administering justice to labor fraud and crime
  • The prevention of unlawful congregation
  • Guarding the Judenrat Members and offices/commissions
  • Guarding walls and fences
  • the Punishment of Civil Offenses
  • Regulation of traffic
  • Curfew regulation: 8pm in most ghettoes, with allowable exceptions to 12pm
  • Regulation of travel outside the walls, including business transactions on the Aryan side
  • Guarding food distribution
  • Collection of certain taxes and fees, such as labor fines and fees.
  • Special Concerns [see below]1,2,3

    • Special duties

    Organizational Rules for the Warsaw Ghetto

    The word 'special' in WWII Europe did not carry the ameliorative tone it usually does: the Nazis used the word special- special forces, special treatment, or special concern to refer often to brutal and murderous actions against the Jews and other devalued persons. In the Ghetto, Jewish police often were charged with the assignment of 'special concerns' which referred to carrying out orders which the Nazis were enforcing against the Jews. This could include the confiscation and registration of Jewish property, which the Nazis forced the Judenrats to administrate, or the wearing of armbands and yellow stars to 'mark' human prey. It was the 'special' duties of Jewish police which caused most of the strife between the Jewish police and the community and the great moral dilemma which was almost unresovable. For example, if the Police or Judenrat refused to obey an action against their fellow Jews, the result could be shootings, or even the razing and destruction of the ghetto and synagogues; if they obeyed they furthered the Nazis' objectives, so in any event, assessing moral culpability for Jews in 'appointed' roles is a difficulty one at best and unwise in general.

    OUTSIDE LINKS

    REFERENCES
  • 1Trunk,Isaiah and Robinson,Jacob . Judenrat the Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (Hardcover - 1972);MacMillan (1972)
    © 2001 Elizabeth K. Best, PhD; Shoah Education Project Web-All Rights Reserved
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