100 zlotys, or more, on dinner, and they shamelessly refuse a beggar’s imploring request for 5 groszes.
Judenrat clerks publicly favour the “better” stratum, i.e., their friends, the bourgeois, and the well-connected. Such people do not have to wait. Nobody cares that the poor, the starving proletariat, the exhausted old men, and the sickly women wait for hours in lines, barely able to stand. Judenrat clerks not only cynically favour these “better” clients, but they also shamelessly and ignobly express their contempt for the lower classes.
Obviously, the higher, more subtle feelings have to vanish in the course of the difficult and frantic struggle for survival. But the loss of any sense of shame or trace of remorse for an ugly or ignoble act proves not only a decline of moral standards, but also a significant lowering of public morals. And this is even more dangerous.
[15]52 [16]
“Put everything at stake,” “go for broke,” “he who does not risk, does not profit,” “it’s either make or break,” “damn the torpedoes,” “no matter what, no matter how”—these are the mottos of the distorted economic life of the increasingly demoralized society of the Warsaw ghetto. Shoddiness, sloppiness, trickery, and falsification—these are the new widespread features of trade. Moreover, the cult of incompetence, lack of professionalism, lack of professional training, along with disregard for qualifications and experience, are also a nuisance in economic and cultural life. I am talking about those who did not sink in this swamp, who did not lose, who do anything to stay afloat, who often fish in turbid water, who have not given up, who keep up their pre-war standard of living. More cunning and enterprising, they obtained monopolies on food delivery from the Germans or licenses on the production of bread, honey, marmalade, etc. from the Judenrat. Or they work in the Supply Section,53 earning
