benefited from the propaganda capital built on that business, ostentatiously declaring how much material its associated organisations collected each month. Such statements, recurring in reports of the Department of Industry and Trade, provided to some extent a justification of the status quo planned for the Jewish economy by the official policy of the Abteilung Wirtschaft495 at the office of the head of the Warsaw district.
This was the case of the rag trade, which (as noted above) was symbolic of a larger problem. Although it was the principal and relatively oldest (during the war) field of Jewish activity in Warsaw, it was the least active branch of the Altstoffe496 collection, in which Jews were not allowed to reveal—except for certain internal combinations—any elements of fighting for economic survival.
The rag trade, however, is the first in a whole series of waste-collection operations, which were either officially centralised, or which the Jewish manufacturer temporarily adapted. Let us try to list articles that Jews collected in Warsaw for production purposes, and we will have the picture of the specific role that the Jew played in the resource economy of Hitler’s war against the Jews.
The list is as follows:
a) rags official collection
b) metal scraps official collection
c) broken glass official collection
d) waste-paper private collection
e) bones private collection
f) feathers and down official collection
g) mattresses, bristle private collection
h) carpet beaters, baskets, wicker sticks private collection
i) old watches private collection
[5] This chapter is titled “What was meant for the Jews.” As the above table indicates, out of 9 articles, the Nazis intended only 4 groups for the Jewish economy. However, the economic forces inherent among Warsaw’s Jewry had to burst this narrow frame. As it turned out, the Jew must not only represent the Rohstoffwirtschaft but also the Produktionswirtschaft,497 and
