was no work as such in Rutki, the Jews were made to clean the streets and the market, weed the market square and the streets, and so on. During and after work, they were often beaten with sticks. The work itself was simply a meansto humiliate the Jewish population. Only Jews who worked were allowed to get bread from the town bakery. In addition to the house searches, the gendarmes searched shops, [3] looking for hidden stocks from Polish times. A great many items, taken both from homes and shops, were sent in trucks by the Germans to their families in Germany; a lot was given away to the Polish population or a few specific Poles who assisted the Germans as members of the Hilfspolizei,317 as it was called. The Hilfspolizei, which consisted of young local Poles, were very antisemitic and mainly intent on getting hold of Jewish property. It was at their initiative and with their active participation that most of the searches of inspections and robberies took place.
The first ordinances concerning Jews were issued two to three weeks after the German occupation of Rutki. The first consisted of several clauses in a general ordinance of the military authorities applying to the whole population of the occupied territories. It stipulated that all Jews over 10 years of agehad to wear either round yellow patches 10 cm in diameter or a 10 cm-wide white armband with a yellow Star of David and that Jews were forbidden to greet Germans (although people, not only Jews, would be badly beaten for failure to greet a German). It also contained the standard German definition of the term Jew. Finally, the general paragraph on combating venereal disease stipulated the death penalty for Jews infecting German soldiers withvenereal diseases. A few days later, the first ordinance specific to Jews, concerning the establishment of the Judenrat, was issued in Łomża.318 It stipu-lated that in places with fewer than 5,000 Jews, the Jewish population was to elect a Judenrat of 12 members, and in places with a larger Jewish population, 24 members. This ordinance was posted in German and Polish. At the same
