"Report on the Activities of the Order Service Department of the Board of Representatives of the Jewish Population in Bendsburg"

Będzin was a town in a part of Poland annexed to Nazi Germany after the 1939 invasion of Poland. German authorities created a ghetto there in the summer of 1940, but there was no physical barrier separating it from the rest of the town. The Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Będzin ("Bendsburg" in German) was part of a network of Jewish Councils in East Upper Silesia, with a central office in Sosnowiec.¹ In October 1940, this Central Office was led by Moshe Merin, the head of the Sosnowiec Judenrat. At the time, it oversaw 34 Jewish communities in East Upper Silesia with a total population of about 100,000 Jews. Over the next three years, the numbers dropped through murder and deportations. But as late as 1943, more than 30,000 Jews still lived in the region's ghettos.²

The Jewish ghetto police force was one of the most controversial parts of ghetto life. Its members received more food and were exempt from forced labor. In addition, German authorities ordered the Jewish Councils and Jewish ghetto police to assist in deportations.³ Events progressed differently at different locations, but generally mass deportations began in spring 1942 and lasted for roughly one year. During this period, Jewish police units in ghettos played a prominent role in rounding up Jews and supporting the German forces and their collaborators in deporting them to their deaths. Passionate debates surrounding the choices and actions of Jewish ghetto police continued into the postwar years as people pursued justice for their persecution.⁴

In the early summer of 1941, the "Order Service Department"—the official name of the Będzin ghetto police—submitted this brief report to the Jewish Council about its activities from May 21 through June 30. The report was issued shortly before a mass wave of deportations. Because it is written in Polish, it seems that it was intended specifically for the Polish-speaking Jews in the ghetto rather than for German authorities. It was the first report that the ghetto police issued under the leadership of Roman Goldminc, who tried to run the institution in a much more strict way. Besides reorganizing policemen's routines, the new police leadership pledged to "maintain a journal of reports, a cashier's book, a registration book of staff, an inventory book, employment letters and an archive"—an illustration of the bureaucratic approach taken by many Jewish ghetto institutions.

The Jewish Council there was known as the Ältestenrat, or "Council of Elders," though it functioned the same as other Judenräte ("Jewish councils").

To learn more about this region during the Holocaust, see Aleksandra Namysło and Martin Dean, "Eastern Upper Silesia Region (Ost-Oberschlesien)," in Martin Dean, ed., The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2: 132-37. For information on the controversial role of Moshe Merin, see Philip Friedman, "The Messianic Complex of a Nazi Collaborator in a Ghetto: Moses Merin of Sosnowiec," in Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada Friedman (New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies and the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), 353-64.

For an interesting contemporary account of the Jewish ghetto police in Kovno written by anonymous members of that police force to argue that Jewish policemen were not criminals, see Samuel Schalkowsky, ed. and trans., The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). For the overview of the timeline of the German genocidal turn, see Christopher Browning and Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). See also the related document written by a Jewish policeman, Memoir of Calel Perechodnik.

For postwar trials in Jewish "honor courts," see Laura Jockusch and Gabriel Finder, eds., Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015). See also the Experiencing History collection, Postwar Justice.

Bendsburg is the German name for Będzin.

A Report on the Activities of the Order Service Department of the Board of Representatives of the Jewish Population in Bendsburg¹

From May 21 to June 30, 1941

In connection with the new leadership in the Order Service of Mr. Roman Goldminc, a reorganization has taken place, which has implemented the following first:

a) the creation of an office, which in turn maintains a journal of reports, a cashier’s book, a registration book of staff, an inventory book, employment letters and an archive,

b) the establishment of a rational division of labor.

In the course of establishing the division of labor, a decades-old system with two-hour shifts was used, so that each policeman is stationed at a different post every 10 days. This system will enable a comprehensive training of the policemen and, at the same time, will allow for a cursory survey of the city by the policemen returning from their two-hour shifts. A policeman returning from his post submits a report of his two-hour shift, then takes a one-hour rest, with the remaining hour spent making himself available in the guardhouse for ongoing actions, thus supplementing a frequent shortage of people resulting from an excess of incoming assignments during the day.

A permanent night post was established at the guardhouse, where two policemen are always at the ready to intervene in emergency cases, such as medical help, establishing contact with the authorities, sending an alert, etc. In the case of an alert, all policemen are mobilized and practice has shown that the alerted policemen are at the guardhouse within 30 minutes.

The nightly roll call that has been put in place is aimed at [generating] a discussion of matters related to responsibilities, reading out of staff [scheduled] for the following day and giving potential praise or punishment, depending on the regulations.

During the span of the report, the following worked from June 1-12 of this year:

41 policemen, total workdays: 492
From June 13-30 of this year, 50 " " " 900
Total: 1,392

These consist of the following:

1. Streetcar posts - workdays - 467
2. Judenbann [?] " - " 288
3. Guardhouse " - " - 156
4. Disinfection " - " - 19
5. Main Office " - " - 53
6. Social Welfare " - " - 24
7. Clinic " - " - 32
8. Collection Office " - " - 12
9. Housing Department " - " - 63
10. Issuing blocks of bread " - " - 2
11. City Health Center " - " - 5
12. Daily Labor Task " - " - 18
13. German police " - " - 2
14. Potato rations " - " - 29
15. Economic Department " - " - 3
16. 5 District Police " - " - 19
17. Distribution of summons " - " - [torn page]
18. Registration of Sara/Izrael " - " - [torn page]
19. Post Office " - " - [torn page]
20. Digging of ditches " - " - [torn page]
21. I.K.A. [?] " - " - [torn page]
to be relocated [torn page]

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