Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

119 there were between 410,000 and 590,000 people living in a little more than 4 square kilometres), by disastrously bad hygiene, wholly inadequate supplies

of foodstuffs, by disease, and therefore by a high death rate. 120 For these reasons approximately a quarter of the populations of the two largest Polish ghettos,

Warsaw and Lodz, died of ‘natural’ causes. 121 Raul Hilberg estimates that the total of Polish Jews killed prior to and during the period of ghettoization before

the violent ghetto clearances began was approximately 500,000. 122

The Jewish minority of Poland that was penned into the ghettos in this manner

was neither an amorphous mass nor a homogeneous community. The great social

differences that existed in the pre-war period, the diverse political trends and the

differences in attitudes to religion amongst Jews were maintained under ghetto

conditions and even intensified. However, a sociology of ghetto society highlights

new phenomena, including the rise of a social class of newly rich and privileged

people, the rapid degradation of the intelligentsia, the reduction of the Jewish

middle class to an army of slave workers and the tense relationship between the

original inhabitants of the ghettos and the newcomers forced to enter them. 123

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The Persecution of the Jews, 1939–1941

The lives of those locked in the ghettos was completely dominated by the daily

struggle for survival, which was above all the problem of somehow finding

something to eat. Hunger was the leitmotif of ghetto life. Hunger changed both

individual and collective behaviour and forced people to cross the boundaries of

dignity and to transgress moral norms.

There were various attempts made by the inhabitants of the ghettos to resist the

rapid erosion of the standards of civilization. Jewish social self-help organizations

were active across a broad range of areas, 124 and religious, educational, and cultural activities offered the possibility of retaining a vestige of human dignity

and self-respect. There is evidence of activities such as these, to various degrees, in

a series of ghettos; they were partly organized officially by Jewish councils and

tolerated by the Germans, but to a large extent they took place ‘underground’

despite being forbidden by the authorities. 125

Whatever efforts the Jewish councils and individual inhabitants of the ghettos

made to make their lives a little more tolerable, however, they were made within

the context of a dyamic of power that consisted of near-omnipotence on the

German side and total impotence on the Jewish side. The German authorities

nonetheless succeeded to a certain extent both in concealing the reality of this

dynamic by forming the Jewish councils as organs of an (in reality non-existent)

autonomous administration and in maintaining the illusion of some room for

manoeuvre on the Jewish side.

The decisive factor in internal relationships in the ghettos was the omnipotence

of the German side, which decided on the extent to which the ghettos were

supplied with food and essentials in exchange for goods, objects of value, and

money, but which ensured that the conflicts emerging from the inadequate con-

ditions there were resolved by the inhabitants themselves. The German occupying

power usually left it to the Jewish councils to distribute the deliveries of foodstuffs,

always too small and usually of poor quality. Distribution took place in different

ways: ration cards were introduced, free market trade was permitted or meals were

served in canteens, the latter often with the support of Jewish self-help organiza-

tions. However it was organized, the result was always to privilege those groups

that the Jewish councils considered of particular importance for the continuing

survival of the ghettos. These included the members of the extensive bureaucratic

apparatus created by the Jewish councils but also, and increasingly as time went

on, the workforces involved in manufacturing the goods to be supplied to the

Germans. In most of the Polish ghettos 1941 marked the point where most of the

inhabitants had exchanged virtually all the goods and objects of value they had

brought into the ghetto for foodstuffs and other essentials and when more and

more people were attempting to survive by working in the ghetto workshops, the

so-called ‘shops’ that produced goods for the Germans. 126 The Jewish councils began to support these plans to make the ghettos ‘productive’, especially as the shift

of emphasis towards work in the ghettos seemed advantageous in comparison with

Deportations

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the appalling conditions in the forced labour camps—a contrast sharpened as

the occupying power began a new work initiative in spring 1941.127 It appears that it was not least the initiatives of the Jewish councils that attracted the attention of the Germans to the idea of making the Jews ‘productive’, in contrast to the

Nazi stereotype, according to which Jews were essentially always ‘parasitical’ and

‘unproductive’.

Additional essential supplements to the provisions within the ghettos were

obtained via smuggling and the black market, on which the last goods and chattels

of the Jews were exchanged for foodstuffs. These methods were officially pros-

ecuted by the Jewish councils, under pressure from the Germans, but in reality

were frequently ignored. Despite their merciless persecution of smugglers, the

Germans were to some extent forced to accept the existence of the phenomenon in

the interests of maintaining the ghetto economy itself. However, smuggling

and the black market both eventually contributed to an increased distortion in

the equality of distribution for essential goods within the ghettos and thus to

sharpening the tensions between ghetto inhabitants themselves. 128

The diaries and memoirs of ghetto inhabitants129 show that the decisive factors for survival—access to work, the distribution of living space and of provisions—

were part of a complex network of links, contacts, and privileges in which

corruption often played a significant role. Lack of transparency in the division

of vital resources and the fact that the procedures of the Jewish councils were often

seen as arbitrary, unjust, and self-seeking led in many instances to feelings of

mistrust, even hatred towards the councils on the part of the ghetto populations. 130

There is no doubt that the often tense relationships between councils and popu-

lation made the job of the Germans’ relatively small administrative apparatus

considerably easier.

Initially the Jewish councils attempted to encourage the Germans towards

moderation, with the help of petitions, personal meetings, and offers to negotiate—

even on occasion using gifts and bribery. 131 Given the extraordinary imbalance in the influence of the occupying power and the Jewish councils there was no alternative to

these tactics, but they were bound to remain fruitless