JUDENRAT a Decisive If Not Crucial Help to Germans In Holocaust Zuckerman

A Surplus of Memory, by Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman. 1993

Eyewitness Author Refutes the Notion That Jewish-Nazi Collaboration Had an Insignificant Outcome on the German-made Holocaust. The Polish Blue Police and the Jewish Ghetto Police: No Double Standard on German-Serving Poles and German-Serving Jews! 

This work presents a wealth of information. Owing to the fact that the conduct of the Polish Blue Police (POLICJA GRANATOWA) has been presented, in a rather lurid manner, by the likes of Jan T. Gross and Jan Grabowski, Yitzhak Zuckerman’s eyewitness testimony serves as an eye-opening corrective.

The following [except the titles in CAPS] are direct quotes:

COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS: LIKE POLES LIKE JEWS

It’s a miserable thing that, sometimes even now, I include the Judenrat and the Jewish police with the enemies of the Jews. The Poles also had a “Judenrat,” as it were, and a Polish police, the “blue police,” [POLICJA GRANATOWA] who served the Germans. And they did their job when they had to. They came to guard the gates of the ghetto and carried out assignments against the Poles as well. The Germans thought that they should exploit the organized Polish force against the Poles, and they did. If they needed a mayor of a city or village, these collaborated with them. But the Germans didn’t take the Polish people to Treblinka; so the Polish police didn’t have to do that job. But they did do the job when it concerned Jews. They lent a hand; they cooperated with the Ukrainians, the Latvians, and the Germans. And so did the Jewish police. [p. 168]

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION DID NOT ARISE FROM THE DESPARATION OF JEWS FACING ANNIHILATION: IT LONG PRECEDED THE START OF THE HOLOCAUST!

We must remember that, until the Great AKTSIA (starting July 22, 1942), the Jewish police did not take an active part in leading people to death. But they did snatch people for work, they did take bribes, and they did wicked things even before the AKTSIA. [p. 208].

NO “CHOICELESS CHOICES”: JEWISH GHETTO POLICE DID NOT HAVE TO OBEY OR DIE

But the Jews, the Jewish police, did the despicable work of the Germans. Some people try to defend them, others accuse them…And there’s a supposedly “legal” argument that anyone who didn’t follow orders was threatened with death. But what danger faced the police force? At most, what happened to all the Jews. [p. 192]

JEWISH COLLABORATORS—NOT POLISH COLLABORATORS—DECISIVELY MADE THE GERMAN-MADE SHOAH A SUCCESS

When there were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Warsaw, the Germans couldn’t have taken the transports to Treblinka without the help of the Jews themselves. It was the Jewish policemen who caught and took out the masses of Jews. [p. 208]

Our blame is that we could have delayed the sentence, we could have made it hard for the Germans, we could have forced them to bring 10,000 Germans to do the work done by 2,000 to 3,000 Jewish police. [p. 209]

—-End of direct quotations—-

ANALYSIS

Although this has commonly been done in Holocaust materials, as part of the standard mystification of the Holocaust, there is no valid double standard when evaluating the conduct of Poles and the conduct of Jews under the Nazis. One either condemns both, or exonerates both. Of course, Holocaust materials will continue to fault the Poles and give the Jews a pass.

One can also see that the specific actions of both the Jewish and Polish police owed less to the proclivities of the people involved, and more to the choices of the Nazi German authorities.

It is incorrect to suppose that Jewish collaboration with the Nazis was merely the desperation of Jewish individuals trying to save their lives. Instead, such collaboration went on since the beginning—long before the Nazis had started to kill Jews on a sustained, large-scale basis, and at a time when the Holocaust itself was not even imaged, least of all by the Jews.