to study the causes of the fall of Nazism, economists and statisticians will deal
with the budgets of the Jewish kehillah authorities, a system of self-government
within the boundaries of Jewish quarters enclosed by walls or barbed
wire, i.e. territorial self-government in practice.
It is common knowledge that the expenses of the Jewish communities are
huge and that, owing to the general impoverishment of the Jewish population,
their income is constantly decreasing. Raising money is the most difficult
area of work of the kehillah authorities. So it is no wonder that the search for
new sources of income has been paramount and has led the kehillahs to make
money out of every Jewish misfortune, out of every persecution or prohibition.
There is beyond doubt a great deal of truth in the widespread accusations
directed against the Jewish ‘rulers.’ Certain actions by the kehillahs are simply
too outrageous. Everyone is well acquainted with a number of such scandalous
cases from personal experience. And no one is unaware of the greatest
current scandal, that of the labour camps in Warsaw (April 1941). To prove
my point, I shall attach two cases, taken from different locations and times.
I. Łódź, January and February 1940.
Among the large number of orders received from the various authorities
almost [2] every day by the Eldest of the Łódź Jews, there was a demand from
the Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP³⁴⁸ to deliver daily, until the order was
revoked, a certain number of clean and deloused Jews for the purposes of racial
research.³⁴⁹ Because the order (like all others, in fact) was effective immediately,
20 men who reported to the Judeneinsatz³⁵⁰ for forced labour were delivered
the following day. In the Office for Racial Policy, ‘doctors’ in white smocks
— under which, as in Kawecki’s telling paintings,³⁵¹ the sturdy brown trou-
348 (German) NSDAP Office for Racial Policy.
349 The entry “Institut fuer Rassenforschung” [Institute for Racial Research] does appear in the Encyclopaedia written in the ghetto, which confirms Kapczan’s testimony. The skull and physical examinations were conducted at the turn of 1939 and 1940 by students of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. Cf. Encyclopaedia of the Łódź Ghetto, p. 97.
350 (German) Jewish labour office.
351 In the original: Pawecki. Probably Roman Kawecki (1868–1938), painter, especially known for portraits of eighteen Polish Army generals (1923–1925).
