Adam Czerniakow did not shift the Jews from a state of anxiety, busily trying
to ensure their own survival. He committed that act in a state of a mental
breakdown after he had received instructions from the Plenipotentiary
for Resettlement Affairs to deliver more quotas of the “resettled” to total
7,000 on Friday 24 July and 10,000 on Saturday 25 July. The few who carefully
followed the course of the events condemned that act as unworthy of
a leader, at least the official one, of the Jewish district. Having comprehended
the inevitable course of these tragic events, it was his duty to call society to
active and passive resistance against the occupier. Such a bold and courageous
appeal might have woken the Jewish masses from lethargy. Unfortunately,
even that ultimate sacrifice of Chairman Czerniaków, the sacrifice of his own
life, proved pointless and disappeared in the whirlwind of swiftly succeeding
events. The fact of the chairman’s death accelerated the process of taking
over the initiative by the Jewish Order Service. The Judenrat has become
a useless shell without executive power, lacking the opportunity to influence
the issue of ordinances. The ghetto police assumed the actual power. Marek
Lichtenbaum – a wretched creature, troublemaker, and boor, who has not
matured in his role, particularly at such a dramatic moment for the Jews of
Warsaw – has become the chairman of the Judenrat.
The Judenrat, or the already omnipotent ghetto police, that is, the Jewish
Order Service, forces the Council clerks to work on the resettlement campaign,
that is, to capture victims or be delivered to the Umschlagplatz in case
of reluctance to do so. The newly appointed servicemen received special numbered
white armbands saying Judenrat in Warschau Umsiedlungsaktion.⁹¹⁶ The
social institutions boycotted the order of the Judenrat, inducing the clerks to
refrain from carrying out that immoral work. The employees of the Judenrat
who had been taken on by the agency of the Gestapo or the SS and those who
lost ideological orientation throughout the occupation years were the only
ones to participate in that murderous activity.
[11] After the non-stop massacres conducted after the Germans’ assumption
of power in Warsaw the survivors of various social groups began to hold
meetings in order to oppose the resettlement, but their voices calling for passive
resistance disappeared in the chaos and very rapidly worsening lack of
916 (Ger.) Judenrat in Warsaw, Resettlement Campaign.
