by The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 1-3 (Third Edition) Yale University Press (2003) (pdf)
Dokumenty i maieriaty, vol. 3, pp. 253, 255-57. Diplom Kaufmann was the title of a
graduate from a school of business administration.
flow of goods to and from the ghetto. By May 1,1941, a Kommissar for
the Jewish district was appointed by Gouverneur Fischer. The office
was occupied by a young attorney, Heinz Auerswald, who had previously served as a section chief in the Interior Division for Population and
Welfare.
Adam
Czerniakbw
was
almost
twice
his
age.
The
Transferstelle was placed under an experienced banker (formerly employed by the Landerbank, Vienna), Max Bischof, who held the position under
a
contract.1“
The
Auerswald-Bischof
administration
is
depicted in Table 6-13.
Ghettoization generated a far-reaching metamorphosis in the Jewish councils. In their original form, the Judenrate had been fashioned into a link between German agencies and the Jewish population, and
their early activities were concentrated on labor recruitment and welfare. In the ghetto each chairman of a Judenrat became, de facto, a mayor (Czemiakdw received the title as well), and each council had to
perform the functions of a city administration. The incipient Jewish
bureaucracy, heretofore consisting of small staffs engaged in registration or finance, was now being expanded and diversified to address 144.
Text of contract, effective March 15, 1941, Yad Vashem microfilm JM 1112.
229
POLAND
Central Bureau (Zentrale)
Central Negotiations Office (Zentral-Verhandlungsstellel
Correspondence Division (Präsidialabteilung)
Personnel Bureau
Main Treasury and Bookkeeping
Information Office
Cemetery Division
Rabbinical Office
Bureau of the Eldest of the Jews for the Children’s Colony
Registration and Records
Registration Office
Records Office
Statistical Division
Police Headquarters (Ordnungsdienst Kommando)
Law Division
4 Precincts
2 Reserves (Mobile)
Auxiliary Police ( Hilfsordnungsdienst or “Hido”)
Sanitation Control
Price Enforcement
Special Commando (Sonderkommando)
Fire-fighting Division
Main Post Office and Post Office Branch
Control Commission for German and Polish Property in the Ghetto
Housing Division
Finance Division
Rent Office
Tax Office
Executor’s Office (Vollstreckungsstelle)
Bank (Main Building and Branch)
Purchasing Office for Valuables and Clothes
Economy Division
Real Estate Administration
Janitor Division
Chimney Sweeps
Technical Renovation
Garbage and Sewage Disposal (Müll- und Fäkalienabfuhr)
Warehouses
Sales Office for Household Items
Agricultural Division (Main Office and Branch)
School Division
Central Bureau for Labor
4 Tailors’ Divisions
231
CONCENTRATION
2 Carpenters' Divisions
1 Shoemakers' Division
1 Textile Workers’ Division
Public Works Division
Works Assignment Office
Construction Office
Supply Division
Receiving Station
Central Bureau
Auditing Office
Main Depot
Vegetable Depot
Coal Depot
Dairy Depot
Meat Depot
Meat Cold Storage Depot
Cigarette and Tobacco Depot
Community Bakery
36 Food Distribution Points
17 Stores for Sale of Milk, Butter, and Foods Purchasable upon
Doctor’s Prescription
14 Butcher Shops
Welfare Division
Relief Division (Money and Products)
Nursery
2 Orphanages
Home for the Aged
Invalids' Home
Collecting Point for Homeless People
Public Kitchens
Children’s Colony
Children's Sanatorium
Health Division
Central Bureau
4 Hosptials
4 Dispensaries
Dental Clinic
Centra] Drug Store and 6 Branch Drug Stores
2 Ambulance Units
Laboratory
Laboratory for Bacteriological Examination
Disinfection Division
The Jewish machinery in L6d2 reflected in its very organization the
peculiar double role of the ghetto in the destruction process. The sur232
POLAND
vival function of the ghetto is illustrated primarily by the three divisions on the bottom of the list: health, welfare, and supply. The destructive function is recognized most clearly in the Central Bureau,
the Registration and Records Office, and, above all, in the police. It is
characteristic that the office that was most openly destructive in its
function, the police, followed the German model even in its organization. A close look at the structure of the ghetto police reveals that it was divided into a kind of Order Police (complete with precincts, reserves, auxilaries, and sanitation control) and a kind of Security Police: a price-control force that had criminal functions, and a Sonderkommando that had Gestapo functions. In one respect the L6d2 ghetto
machine was even more advanced than its Nazi prototype: the Judenrat had no separate justice department; the only legal office in the ghetto was incorporated into its police.
The Warsaw council was organized in a more complex manner.
Council deliberations mattered in the Warsaw ghetto, and the regular
agendas of council meetings were prepared by commissions, initially
composed of council members but eventually including experts who
wanted to exercise influence.14* The administrative departments, whose
heads were not necessarily council members, included Order Service,
Hospitals,
Health,
Housing,
Labor,
Economy,
Law,
Finance,
Social
Welfare, Cemeteries, Appeals,
Education, Real Property, Vital Statistics,
Audit,
Contributions,
Postal
Service,
and
even
Archives.
Four
important
divisions
were
actually
transformed
into
independent
bodies.
The
Provisioning
Division,
which
dispensed
food
and
coal,
became the Provisioning Authority, the Production Division was incorporated as the Jüdische Produktion GmbH, the Trade Division was reorganized
as
a
sales
firm
for
deliveries
outside
the
ghetto
(Lieferungsgesellschaft),
and
the
Bank
Division
was
&nbs
p; renamed
the
Genossenschaftsbank für den jüdischen Wohnbezirk.
Police was a special problem. The Order Service of the Warsaw
ghetto was the largest Jewish police force in occupied Poland. (At its
peak it numbered about two thousand.) Czerniakdw, insisting on professionalism especially in this component of the ghetto administration, appointed to some of the top positions people with police experience.
Such
individuals,
especially the
chief,
former
Lieutenant Colonel of
Polish Police Szeryiiski, were converts to Christianity. Given the special role of these people in the operation of the ghetto, CzemiakOw did 148
148.
The following commisions existed at the end of December 1940: Hospitals.
Health, Labor, Social Welfare. Personnel. Audit, Finance, Economy, Grievance. In addition, the important Commission on Trade and Industry concerned itself with policy for allocating raw materials and distributing food in the ghetto. See weekly reports by
CzemiakOw for December 13-19 and December 20-26, 1940. Yad Vashem microfilm JM
1113.
233
CONCENTRATION
not hear the end of discontent and protest about their employment. '**
Complicating Czemiaköw’s life was the existence of another Jewish
police, similar to the one in the L6d2 Ghetto, which was suspected by
the Jewish inhabitants of serving under German Security Police auspices. Its official name was “The Control Office for Combatting the Black
Market
and
Profiteering
in
the
Jewish
District”
( Über-
wachungsstelle
zur
Bekämpfung
des
Schleichhandels
und
der
Preiswucherei im jüdischen Wohnbezirk), but the popular designation, based
on the address of its headquarters on 13 Leszno Street, was “The
Thirteen.” In addition to “The Thirteen," which had about five hundred
men, there was a smaller but equally suspect "Ambulance Service.” In
August
1941,
Czemiaköw
succeeded,
with
the
help
of
Kommissar
Auerswald, to dissolve the troublesome Control Office, which had interfered with the principle of undivided jurisdiction in the offices of Czemiaköw and Auerswald alike.1“ In this respect, at least, the struggle of a ghetto leader and that of his German supervisor could be waged on a parallel plane.
GHETTO MAINTENANCE
The ghetto was a captive city-state in which territorial confinement was
combined
with
absolute
subjugation
to
German
authority.
With
the
creation of the ghettos, the Jewish community of Poland was no longer
an integrated whole. Each ghetto was on its own, thrown into sudden
isolation, with a multiplicity of internal problems and a reliance on the
outside world for basic sustenance.
Fundamental to the very idea of the ghetto was the sheer segregation
of
its
residents.
Personal
contacts
across
the
boundary
were
sharply curtailed or severed altogether, leaving in the main only mechanical
channels
of
communication:
some
telephone
lines,
banking
connections, and post offices for the dispatch and receipt of letters and
parcels.
Physically
the
ghetto
inhabitant
was
henceforth
incarcerated.
Even in a large ghetto he stood never more than a few minutes’ walk
from a wall or fence. He still had to wear the star, and at night, during
curfew hours, he was forced to remain in his apartment house.
Having brought the ghetto into existence, the Germans took im- 149 150
149. See Czemiakbw's entry of July 27, 1941, in Hilberg, Staron, and Kermisz,
eds.. Warsaw Diary, pp. 262-63.
150. Order by Auerswald disbanding Control Office, August 4, 1941, and protocol
on its dissolution, August 5, 1941, signed by Gancwajch, Stemfeld, and Lewin (Control
Office). Zabludowski and Glilcksberg (Jewish Council), and Szeryiiski (Order Service),
ibid., pp. 264-67.
234
POLAND
mediate advantage of its machinery and institutions to rid themselves
of an administrative burden (Entlastung) that had tied up personnel and
that could now be transferred (abgewälzt) to the Jewish community.151 152 153 154
They could not, however, evade the question of how the ghetto was
going to be maintained, how people bereft of enterprises and jobs that
had sustained them in the past were going to fend for themselves behind walls in the future.
When Gauleiter Greiser of the Wartheland visited Frank in July
1940, he asserted that his recent establishment of the L6di ghetto was
solely a provisional measure. (Die Aktion sei an sich abgeschlossen,
habe aber lediglich provisorischen Charakter.) He could not even conceive of retaining the Jews he had stuffed into the ghetto beyond the winter (diese im Ghetto zusammengepferchten Juden noch über den
Winter hinaus zu behalten.)'” It is this experience in Lädt that Generalgouvernement specialists were studying for months (monatelang), before they went ahead with their own ghettoization in the city of Warsaw.155 156 Yet, having established the ghetto in November 1940, they
debated in two meetings during April 1941 how it was going to be able
to pay for food, coal, water, electricity, gas, rent, removals of human
waste, and taxes, and how it was going to discharge debts owed to
public agencies or Polish creditors.
Gouverneur Fischer of the Warsaw district felt that, whereas in
L6d2 a mistake had been made when machines and raw materials had
been removed from the ghetto site, developments in Warsaw were
better than expected (über Erwartung gut gestaltet). The Jews in the
ghetto had supplies, they were working for Polish firms, they were
paying their rent, and they had enough food.155 Bankdirigent Paersch
disagreed. The L6di ghetto, he said, was requiring a subsidy of a
million reichsmark a month, and the Warsaw ghetto would have to be
supported as well.155 For Finanzpräsident Spindler an annual outlay of
70 or 100 million zloty for the Warsaw ghetto was simply “unbearable”
(untragbar).'*
The
Generalgouvemement's
economic
chief,
Dr.
Emmerich, saw the basic issue in the ghetto’s balance of payments. The
problem would not be solved, he said, by pointing to current stocks of
ghetto supplies, because the ghetto had not been created for just one
151. Leist in Generalgouvernement conference of April 3, 1941, in Prag and Jacob-
meyer, Diensttagebuch, p. 346.
152. Generalgouvernement conference of July 31,1940, ibid., p. 261.
153. Generalgouvernement conference of April 19, 1941, ibid., p. 360.
/> 154. Fischer's remarks in Generalgouvernement conferences of April 3 and April
19, 1941, ibid., pp. 343, 360.
155. Conference of April 19, 1941, ibid., pp. 360-61.
156. Ibid., p. 361.
235
CONCENTRATION
year. One would have to think about a larger time frame and about the
relationship over that period between the ghetto and the Polish economy with regard to such questions as payments by Jews of debts to Poles and competition between the ghetto and Polish enterprises for
raw materials.
Ministerialdirigent
Walter
Emmerich
then
introduced
an
economist,
Dr.
Gate
(Reichskuratorium
für
Wirtschaftlichkeit,
Dienststelle
Generalgouvernement), who had studied the Warsaw ghetto as a specialist
in the rationalization and planning of production. Dr. Gate offered
the following scenario: If 60,000 or 65,000 Jews could be employed in the
ghetto under the assumption that daily productivity would be averaging
5 zloty per worker (in terms of an implied formula whereby “productivity" + raw materials + other costs + profits = value of finished product at controlled prices) and if the present contingents of Jews
laboring in projects outside the ghetto for seven or eight months a year
would continue to work in this manner for prevailing wages, enough
money could be earned for about a half-million-zloty-worth of supplies
per day, or 93 groszy per person. This figure, he emphasized, was not
an
estimate
of
minimum
need
for
survival
(Existenzminimumberechnung) but an amount based on the projected balance of payments.
Moreover, the achievement of even this goal would require an investment by major German firms, and they in turn would need credits in the amount of 30 to 40 million zloty annually. For Reichsamtsleiter Schön
these ideas were “too theoretical,”1” and when later that month Bischof
was being recruited by Fischer for the position of director of the
Transferstelle, the question raised by Bischof was whether the aspired
economic independence of the Jewish quarter, now that it was closed,
could be attained at all.'“
The pessimists had ample grounds for their doubts. The ghetto
population was out of work. The creation of the ghettos was the last
and insurmountable act of economic dismemberment that befell a community already weakened in the 1930s by depression and in 1939 by war. Jewish enterprises still functioning after 1939 had rapidly been
liquidated. Markets of the remaining factories and artisan shops in the
ghetto were severed by the wall. Middlemen, such as the ragpickers in