Publishing Department

This publication is the English version of volume 12 of the Polish edition of the Ringelblum Archive, entitled Rada Żydowska w Warszawie (1939–1943), and contains almost all the documents relating to this institution that have survived in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Judenrat, which organised the lives of almost half a million Jews, was itself an extremely vast organism. By the end of 1940, it employed some 1,600 officials, three times as many as the Jewish Community on the eve of the war. A powerful organ of the Judenrat was the Jewish Order Service, which had nearly 2,000 people in the summer of 1942.

The documents published in this volume date from the spring of 1940 to January 1943 and relate to the operations of over twenty departments of the Council. They include extensive correspondence between the Judenrat and superior German institutions, as well as internal documents, containing material from various departments, such as the daily orders of Jewish Police Commander Jozef Szerynski and reports prepared by the Statistics Department, in which dry figures show the tragedy of the starving and tormented Jewish residents of Warsaw.

REPORT

for the period 22 July – 30 September 1942

1. Resettlement

On 22 July, the following guidelines were handed over to the Jewish Council by the Plenipotentiary for resettlement issues:

The Judenrat is informed of the following:

1. All Jews living in Warsaw, regardless of age and sex, will be resettled to the East.
2. The following are excluded from the resettlement:
3. All Jews employed by the German Authorities or enterprises, who can show proof of this fact;
4. All Jews who are members or employees of the Jewish Council (on the day of the publication of this regulation);
5. All Jews who are employed by a Reich-German company and can show proof of this fact;
6. All Jews capable of work who have up to now not been brought into the labour process; they are to be strictly grouped in the Jewish District;
7. All Jews who belong to the Jewish Order Service;
8. All Jews who belong to the staff of the Jewish hospitals. This applies also to the members of the Jewish disinfection teams;
9. All Jews who are first-degree relatives of the persons listed under a) through f). Such relatives are exclusively wives and children;
10. All Jews who are hospitalised in one of the Jewish hospitals on the first day of the resettlement and are not fit to be discharged. Fitness for discharge will be decided by a doctor appointed by the Jewish Council.
11. Every resettled Jew may take 15 kg of his property as baggage. Luggage weighing more than 15 kg will be confiscated. All valuables such as gold, jewellery, money, etc., may be taken. Food is to be taken for three days.
12. The resettlement will begin at 11:00 o’clock on 22 July 1942.

– excerpt from the report of the Judenrat in Warsaw

Publication co-financed by the Claims Conference and Taube Philanthropies.