After the war was finished, the problem of the Judenräte was ignored and the members of the Judenrat were stigmatized as collaborators and were claimed to be guilty of having supported the National Socialists. ¹ In the following decades, the view on the Judenräte has been changed as more sources were used to reconstruct the work of the Judenrat. ² In lot of European countries which were occupied by Germany during World War II, “Courts of Honor” were installed to put the members of the Judenrat on trial. The punishments of the these members were mostly exclusion from the Jewish community or the prohibition to hold any position in the community. Only half of the trials ended with the verdict of guilty because in a lot of cases it was not possible to find any proof for the member’s guilt. 3

In Israel the problem of the Judenräte activated a political dispute between the Revesionistic-nationalistic opposition and the Zionistic leadership. The opposition claimed that the Zionistic leaders sold the Jewish interests to the National Socialists. The political dispute was so strong that one of the Zionistic leaders, Rudolf Reszö Kasztner, was shot on the street by a right-wing. Kastzner was put on trail at this time because he tried to redeem Hungarian Jews from Concentration Camps during World War II. 4

The role of the Judenräte initiated a lot of controversial discussions. Although in some countries “Courts of Honor” were established and Israel tried to find out by official trials what role the members of the Judenräte played, it is not certain at all what motivated the Judenräte to support the National Socialists. This paper will shed light on,

¹ Rabinovici discusses the problem of ignoring the role of the Judenräte. He argues that especially the German historiography does not investigate this problemat. Rabinovici, Doron, Instanzen der Ohnmacht: Wien 1938-1945: der Weg zum Judenrat, Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2000, p. 412.

² Fuks, Marian, Das Problem der Judenräte und Adam Czerniakows Wirken, in Judaica 39 (4), 1983, p.

242.

³ Wrobel, Piotr, The Judenräte Controversy: Some Polish Aspects, in The Polish Review 42 (2), 1997, p

227-230. Rabinovici, Instanzen, p. 412.

⁴ Rabinovici, Instanzen, p. 412-413.

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what reasons the members of the Judenräte might have had to become the National Socialist’s abettor.

In the Holocaust historiography the problem of the Judenräte is underrepresented. Only one monograph deals exclusively with the Judenräte. The literature this paper is based on Trunk’s major book about the Judenrat and the Diary of Adam Czerniakow, the chairman of the Judenrat in Warsaw.

The first point which has to be investigated is the establishment of the Judenräte. Adolf Eichmann first established the system of the Judenräte in Vienna in 1938. The Judenräte were used by the National Socialists to control, deport, and exterminate the European Jews.

In the following years the system of the Judenräte was established in the newly occupied countries in Eastern Europe. The decree establishing the Judenräte from November 28, 1939 says, that in “each municipality a body representing the Jews will be formed.” ⁵ In the decree the size of a Judenrat is also mentioned, which should have, dependent of the communities’ size, between 12 and 24 members. Quite important in this decree are the 4 ^th and the 5 ^th paragraphs. The 4 ^th paragraph allows the local senior district officer to “decide whether the Judenrat roster reported to him should be approved. He may direct changes in the roster.” ⁶ Furthermore, the 5 ^th paragraph describes the role which the Judenrat has to play. “The Judenrat is obliged to accept the orders of German agencies, through its chairman or his deputy.” 7 This decree shows how little influence the Judenrat had in the decision making process. They had no influence and were used by the National Socialists as a tool to drive their plans forward.

⁵ Dawidowicz, Lucy, S., A Holocaust Reader, Library of Jewish Studies, Berhman House, West Orange

1976, A Holocaust Reader, p. 66.

⁶ Ibid. p. 67.

⁷ Ibid. p. 67.

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Furthermore, the decree by Rudolf Heydrich makes clear that the Judenräte were directly responsible for executing the orders given by the new authorities. In the mind of the German authorities was that the members of the Judenräte were known as honest members of the Jewish community. The Judenrat should receive as much trust as possible from the community. This would make it much easier for the National Socialists to control the whole situation in the Ghetto. ⁸ Therefore, it is only logical that the principle of the Judenräte was based on the Jewish institution Kehilla. The Kehilla was a Jewish institution which was responsible for the cultural life in the Jewish community. The local authorities gave the Judenräte the task of organizing social life in the Ghettos. That means they were responsible for the medical aid, food supply, the whole administrative system, the education and the police. The example of the Warsaw Ghetto shows that over 6000 Jews were employed by the Judenrat in the Ghetto. ⁹ It is quite hard to figure out why the members of the Judenräte participated in them because they had to support their anti-Semitic oppressors. Most of the chairmen of the Judenräte were, as in Warsaw, appointed by the National Socialists. In Czernikow´s diary it is written that he was told to select 24 people from his community for the council. To inform him to pick these 24 people and found the Judenrat, the local authority ordered him to the headquarters of the Security Police (SIPO) and Security Service (SD). ¹⁰ In his case, he had no other choice than to follow the orders. Obviously

⁸ It was also required that the members of the Judenräte have some skill in the German language. This might be one reason why most of the members of the Judenräte were academics, Rabbis or engineers. Ludewig-Kedmi, Revital, Opfer und Taeter zugleich? Moraldilemmata juedischer Funktionshaeftlinge in der Shoa, Psychosozial Verlag, Giessen 2001, p. 17.

⁹ Lewin, Abraham, A Cup of Tears, A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford 1989, p. 16.

¹⁰ Czerniakow, Adam, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czernikow, Prelude to Doom, Hilberg, Raul, Staron, Stanislaw, Kerumisz, Josef, ed., Elephant Paperbooks, Chicago 1999, p. 78. That the Judenräte were controlled by the Nazi-authorities becomes more oblivious by looking at other cases. In Prag and Vienna the Judenrat and the Gestapa were in the same buildung. Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution, The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939-1945, Perpetua Books, New York 1961, p. 23.

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he had recognized quite early that he was in a situation that gave him little opportunity. In his diary he juxtaposes his situation with Don Quixote’s fight against the windmills. ¹¹ He possessed the knowledge that the National Socialists killed a lot of Jews at a relatively early point. ¹² But his diary also shows that he was not in the position to react in any other kind than to follow orders. When he received the message from Lieutenant-Colonel Daume that the Jewish community had to pay 100.000 Reichsmark or 100 Jews would be shot, he had to collect the money in his community. ¹³ Czerniakow did not believe that he was able to resist the rules made by the National Socialists. The example of the Judenrat in Budapest shows that the Judenräte believed for very long that nothing would happen to them and their communities. Hungary was occupied on March 19 1944. Although they knew what had happened in Poland, they believed they would be safe in Hungary because the Jews in Hungary had been linked with the Christians in Hungary for over thousand years. ¹⁴ The chairman of the Budapest Judenrat, Samuel Stern, explained the situation of the Judenrat as “a prisoner at the mercy of his jailer is not in the position to the cell into which he is thrown.” ¹⁵ This short quotation makes it clear that he was aware of being only a tool in the hands of the authorities. But he mentioned also that “it would have been cowardly, unmanly and unjustifiable selfish sight on my part to let down my brethren in the faith during the very instant they were in dire need of being led, when man having both experience and connections and ready to make scarifies might prove useful to a certain context.” 16 He

¹¹ In the intervals I read Don Quixote. Oh, what good you could have done in our time, knight errant! Czerniakow, Diary, p. 90.

¹² Ibid. p. 111.

¹³ Ibid. p 111.

¹⁴ Braham, Randolph, The Role of the Jewish Council in Hungary, A Tantative Assessment, in Yad Vashem Studies of the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, 1974, Nr. 10.p. 77.

¹⁵ Quoted in Ibid. p. 75.

¹⁶ Quoted in Ibid. p. 75.

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