The third part is devoted to articles and polemics, in many cases strongly critical of ŻSS and its activists. Interestingly, the main point of disagreement and therefore subject of the critique, was the way social care institutions were being financed. In the Warsaw ghetto, many taxes were taken directly from the price of a given item, including essentials such as medicines and bread. Critics proposed to tax richest inhabitants of the ghetto instead. A second important issue was bureaucratization of social care that resulted in separation of activists and employees from their clients.
Originals of all the documents in this volume are preserved in the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (in ARG and separate AJDC and ŻSS collections). Most of the documents are published here for the first time. They have been transcribed from Polish and translated from original Yiddish, Polish, German and Hebrew. Scanned copies of all original documents published here can be found on the CD attached to this volume.
Maria Ferenc Piotrowska
