During the Holocaust, many ghettos had Judenräte (Jewish councils) put in place as form of governing a ghetto. Each different Judenrat would guide a community under the influence, while also trying to improve the conditions inside the Ghetto. Ever since the end of the Holocaust and World War II, many have wondered what was the best approach a Judenrat took in order to survive and prosper as much as possible under Nazi control. The leaders of different Judenräte justified their strategies by believing that their methods of appeasement to the Nazis would help Jews survive, whether that being a Ghetto being a strong work force or a group of begrudging Jews helping the Nazis slowly, but the inherent nature of the Judenrat made it so they could …show more content…
not succeed. Some Ghetto leaders believed that their strategy of doing whatever would help the Nazis was the best way to help their community survive while living under Nazi oppression.
The main Judenrat leader pointed to as an example of this mindset is the former leader of the Lodz Ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski. Rumkowski believed that in order to keep the Lodz Jewish community alive, he must fulfill all the demands the Nazis give him as quickly as possible. However, this mindset proved to be very ineffective very quickly. One of the first tasks Rumkowski was given was to create the Lodz Judenrat (Jewish council), which would govern over the Ghetto. However, all of the members of his original council except for himself and two lucky others. Eventually they obtained more members and formed an actual council but the damage had already been done. Rumkowski made Lodz a very useful tool to the German war effort, producing materials for Nazis to use at an incredible rate. Rumkowski had been known to be somewhat of a strange man, but one particular trait which stood out was his eccentricity. Saul Friedländer noted this stating, “most contemporaries agree about Rumkowski’s ambition, his despotic behavior toward his fellow Jews, and his weird megalomania.” From this viewpoint, it may seem as if this response was completely wrong and unwarranted, but in actuality it …show more content…
worked for quite some time. Rumkowski was able to create nurseries, canteens, and social services for the Ghetto. He also attempted to bargain with German Nazis to allow them to work more productively, which he believed would help their case to remain alive. Some may claim that making Jews work more effectively would overall hurt the situation of all Jews, but at this point Rumkowski appeared to be looking out for his town, and in order to remain alive many unskilled Jews needed to work in factories. Nonetheless, issues such as starvation, exhaustion, and disease still plagued the Ghetto. As such, many people believed that no matter how long he was able to sustain his factories and majority of the people, Rumkowski was prolonging the inevitable for no reason. Richard J. Evans is able to sum up Rumkowski’s story in an excellent way, “making himself indispensable to the Germans as long as the Ghetto lasted, he attracted widespread criticism, even hatred, from the Jewish community; yet on the other hand, he could with some plausibility present himself as essential to its survival.” In contrast, other Judenrat leaders believed that they needed to resist their Nazi rulers as much as possible, while trying to keep their community by remaining reasonable.
The primary example in this case is the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto, Adam Czerniaków. He is famously known for keeping a diary while he was the leader of the Ghetto, up until he committed suicide in 1942. Czerniaków’s approach to dealing with Nazi oppression is very different from the approach of Rumkowski or similar Judenrat leaders. Czerniaków tried to argue with Nazi leaders, fighting as much as he thought or knew he could without dying. He is famously known to have written on his suicide note, “They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own hands. There is nothing for me to do but die.” Unlike Rumkowski, Czerniaków openly acknowledged the terrible condition of the Ghetto, but all seemed helpless to him. Czerniaków had the appearance of an ordinary man, but at the same time he remained committed to his cause and brave. To compare them even more, When Czerniaków met Rumkowski, he nicknamed him “Chaim the Terrible,” as he was vehemently opposed to Rumkowski’s entire ideals. Czerniaków never wanted to appease the Nazis, but his top priority was to keep his people alive. In addition, Czerniaków had to maintain the largest Jewish Ghetto ever, with their being a population of around 445,000 people inside of the Ghetto the first few months of 1941. Adam was constantly under immense
pressure, and as such no matter if he made a decision that would hurt them later, with one example being when he evacuated Jews from villages, he was doing it for a noble cause. While it seems that different Judenräte responded differently to their situations, it is tough to say how much worse one leader is to another because of how little control Jews were actually given from Judenräte. We are able to notice that no matter if a leader acted like Rumkowski or Czerniaków, they would eventually die. Rumkowski was sent to gas chambers in 1944 with many other Jewish leaders from Lodz, while Czerniaków killed himself from the guilt of helping the murder of the Jewish people. However, Czerniaków’s guilt was not truly warranted. Nazis believed that the purpose of a Judenrat was to enforce orders and manage the community, which meant organizing Jews to be ready for deportation. Judenräte leaders had very little control over what truly happened. The Jewish people were so weak, that if a leader of the Judenrat did not comply, they would be killed. A perfect example is the leader of Lvov, Dr. Joseph Parnas. Dr. Parnas was shot because he did not want to send Jews away to death camps, and he paid for it with his life. This is confirmation that a Judenrat’s control was rather superficial, as the Jews of Lvov were still sent to camps and murdered. The system set in place was contrived, and not a real form of government which Jews had before the Holocaust in Europe.
The term ghetto, originally derived from Venetian dialect in Italy during the sixteenth century, has multiple variations of meaning. The primary perception of the word is “synonymous with segregation” (Bassi). The first defining moment of the ghetto as a Jewish neighborhood was in sixteenth century Italy; however, the term directly correlates with the beginning of the horror that the Jewish population faced during Adolph Hitler’s reign. “No ancient ghetto knew the terror and suffering of the ghettos under Hitler” (Weisel, After the Darkness 20). Under Hitler’s terror, there were multiple ghettos throughout several cities in numerous countries ranging in size and population. Ghettos also differed in purpose; some were temporary housing until deportation to the final solution while others formed for forced labor. Although life in the ghetto was far better than a concentration camp, it shared the commonality of torment, fear, and death.
Elie Wiesel lost his childhood when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Soon his village was transformed into one of hundreds of other ghettos. These worked as temporary prisons before the Jews were moved to their final destination; the death camps. The most well known
Prisoners in concentration camps committed small acts of rebellion against the Holocaust that outlived the guards and the Nazis. Even though their acts could not save their lives, they sparked questions that the survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, could recall years after the Holocaust ended.
" The businessman, Oskar Schindler, demonstrated a powerful example of a man who was moved emotionally to step in and take action to save the lives of the Jewish people. His bravery still commands great respect today. His role shows the great significance of speaking up against injustice and choosing not to be silent.
The Sighet Jews appointed a Jewish Council (known as the Judenrat) as well as “a Jewish police force, a welfare agency, a labor committee [and] a health agency” to govern the ghettos and manage issues within the ghetto (Wiesel 12). The Judenrat and the Jewish Police Force were integral to the management of each ghetto. Soon after Germany’s annexation of Poland, chief of the Gestapo Reinhard Heydrich ordered the establishment of a Jewish governing council in almost every ghetto. Generally comprised of twenty-four prominent Rabbis and authority figures in the Jewish community of each town, the Judenrat managed and instituted new legislation introduced by the Germans. The Judenrat also managed the needs of the Jewish community and ultimately were tasked with carrying out the liquidation of the ghettos (Berenbaum). As in Night, Judenrat members’ lives were threatened to ensure they obeyed orders and did not revolt. Aside from the Judenrat, many other ghettos also had welfare organizations. In the Warsaw ghetto, the Judenrat supported an orphanage system and a financial aid society among other welfare organizations (“Warsaw”). Similarly, the Lublin Judenrat administered the local Jewish hospital, orphanage and home for the elderly (“Lublin”). The Sighet ghettos mirrored other ghettos during the
At the start of Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror, no one would have been able to foresee what eventually led to the genocide of approximately six million Jews. However, steps can be traced to see how the Holocaust occurred. One of those steps would be the implementation of the ghetto system in Poland. This system allowed for Jews to be placed in overcrowded areas while Nazi officials figured out what to do with them permanently. The ghettos started out as a temporary solution that eventually became a dehumanizing method that allowed mass relocation into overcrowded areas where starvation and privation thrived. Also, Nazi officials allowed for corrupt Jewish governments that created an atmosphere of mistrust within its walls. Together, this allowed
Jews: The Undermined Soldiers. 1.1 million Jewish children were killed by Nazis. ”Haaretz”. In the late 1930s, the Holocaust had just begun to form. The Holocaust was the genocide of the Jewish community, all provoked by one person.
During the Holocaust, around six million Jews were murdered due to Hitler’s plan to rid Germany of “heterogeneous people” in Germany, as stated in the novel, Life and Death in the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche. Shortly following a period of suffering, Hitler began leading Germany in 1930 to start the period of his rule, the Third Reich. Over time, his power and support from the country increased until he had full control over his people. Starting from saying “Heil Hitler!” the people of the German empire were cleverly forced into following Hitler through terror and threat. He had a group of leaders, the SS, who were Nazis that willingly took any task given, including the mass murder of millions of Jews due to his belief that they were enemies to Germany. German citizens were talked into participating or believing in the most extreme of things, like violent pogroms, deportations, attacks, and executions. Through the novel’s perspicacity of the Third Reich, readers can see how Hitler’s reign was a controversial time period summed up by courage, extremity, and most important of all, loyalty.
The Nazis were killing thousands of Jews on a daily basis and for many of the Jewish people death seemed inevitable, but for some of the Jewish population they were not going to go down without a fight as Jewish resistance began to occur. However, the Jewish resistance came in many different forms such as staying alive, clean and observing Jewish religious traditions under the absolute horrendous conditions imposed by the Nazis were just some examples of resistance used by the Jews. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many of the Jews who did succeed in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local resident and partisan groups who often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bia...
According to an ends-based rationality, the Holocaust was an extremely irrational event that is connected to the unrealistic goal of exterminating all Jews. Conversely, Weber’s means-based rationality suggests that the Holocaust was rational because the Nazis ran their camps optimally. This particular concept is extremely problematic in that it justifies the mass genocide on the basis of the camp’s functionality in economic terms. Although very different, the two types of rationality explain how organizations such as the Nazi Party and the bureaucracy can create lasting
...eir own humanity and become killers. This is why the United States and other world powers should create organizations like the United Nations to prevent the conditions that breed desperation, by providing, in order to prevent another such holocaust from occuring ever again. Works Cited: David Adler: We Remember the Holocaust, 1989 Henry Holt & Company, Inc. 115 W 18th St. New York, NY 10011 ~ Ole Kreiberg: Jewish Eyewitnesses, 3/11/1996 The Nizkor Project. Online. Internet. Available: http://www.nizkor.org/ ftp.cgi/people/r/reitlinger.gerald/ 3/12/1996 ~ McFee, Gordon Are the Jews Central to the Holocaust?, 2000 Online. Internet. Available: http://www.holocaust-history.org/jews-central/ 9/9/2000 ~ Abraham Resnick: The Holocaust, 1991 Lucent Books, Inc. P.O. Box 2890111 San Diego, CA 92198-9011 ~ Elie Wiesel: Night, 1960 Bantam Books 1540 Broadway New York, NY 10036
The holocaust was a catastrophic event that killed millions of innocent people and showed the world how inhuman mankind can be. This dark period in world history demonstrated unmatched violence and cruelty towards the Jewish race that led toward genocide. Genocide did not begin with the Holocaust; nor was it a spontaneous event. Many warning signs within world events helped provide Germany and Adolf Hitler the foundation to carry out increasing levels of human depravity (Mission Statement). These warning signs during the Holocaust include; Anti-Semitism, Hitler Youth, Racial profiling, the Ghettos, Lodz, Crystal Night, Pogroms, and Deportation. However, their exposure comes too late for the world to help prevent the horrors of the Holocaust. For example, Anti-Semitism was never put into reality until the holocaust overcame the attitudes of its’ German Citizens. It also provided the driving force behind the education of the Hitler youth. Hitler’s persuasive characteristics consumed the people into believing all of his beliefs. This is how racial profiling came about; Hitler made it so that the Germans had the mindset that Jews were horrible, filthy, people that did not deserve to live like the Germans or have the same luxuries. As a result, they moved all the Jews into one secluded area away from the German citizens; an area called the Ghettos. One of these Ghettos was the town of Lodz, who kept meticulous historical records of everything that went on in the city. However, it was not a safe for Jews; never feeling at ease not knowing the uncertainties or dangers lying ahead. For instance, in Crystal Night, they did not know that it would be the last night for some of them to be with their families. In general, Jews were just living...
And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history -- I must say it -- his image in Jewish history is flawed.” President Roosevelt ended up hurting his image and his reputation to all Jews that witnessed the holocaust and to some who weren't even born in that time. This shows that being indifferent can hurt the person doing it even if it is just their image or mentally.
When the infamous Hitler began his reign in Germany in 1933, 530,000 Jews were settled in his land. In a matter of years the amount of Jews greatly decreased. After World War II, only 15,000 Jews remained. This small population of Jews was a result of inhumane killings and also the fleeing of Jews to surrounding nations for refuge. After the war, emaciated concentration camp inmates and slave laborers turned up in their previous homes.1 Those who had survived had escaped death from epidemics, starvation, sadistic camp guards, and mass murder plants. Others withstood racial persecution while hiding underground or living illegally under assumed identities and were now free to come forth. Among all the survivors, most wished not to return to Germany because the memories were too strong. Also, some become loyal to the new country they had entered. Others feared the Nazis would rise again to power, or that they would not be treated as an equal in their own land. There were a few, though, who felt a duty to return to their home land, Germany, to find closure and to face the reality of the recent years. 2 They felt they could not run anymore. Those survivors wanted to rejoin their national community, and show others who had persecuted them that they could succeed.
... thinking of morale or others. Thinking first of their wants, most commonly their drug addictions. And eventually this behavior led to the destruction of each other, and themselves.