of the Department of Statistics (Document 115), with the attached weekly reports of
the chairman of the Jewish Council, Adam Czerniaków (they were written in German for the Germans and then translated back into Polish for the Council officials). Czerniaków’s weekly reports provide an especially detailed and dramatic description of the institution’s struggle against constant problems: permanent lack of funds and Czerniaków’s relentless efforts to obtain additional financing, the continued escalation of the German demands, and new challenges, such as budgeting for hospitals. An important part of the collection is the materials of the Jewish Population Registration Department (Documents 89–92, including lists of people arrested in connection with the Kott case).
Other departments and agencies of the Council, included such as: the Economic
Council, Department of Cemeteries, Department of Control, Department of
Housing, Department of Payments to Hospitals, Department of Subscriptions and
Donations, Department of Religious Affairs, Department of Registration of Births,
Marriages, and Deaths, Department of Hospitals, Department Health, and others.
The research material formed within the Jewish Council is particularly noteworthy,
namely ‘The Survey on Consumption’ (Document 148), carried out by the
Statistical Subsection of the Supply Section, and the reports of the Chemical and
Bacteriological Institute of the Department of Health of the Jewish Council (Document 129). Especially the discussion of ‘The Survey’ paints a grim picture of the isolated community slowly dying of starvation.
The documents presented here also illustrate less known but important issues,
such as the collection of taxes carried out by the Council at the behest of the Germans (Documents 105–107), or employment insurance for the Jews (correspondence with the Social Insurance, Documents 58 and 73; the reader shall also find here a financial statement of amounts transferred by the ghetto residents to the Social Insurance). There is an extensive selection of important documents concerning dramatic events in the life of the community of Warsaw Jews – constantly changing boundaries of the Warsaw Ghetto and the resulting necessity for the residents to move (numerous notices and other types of documents), or the ‘fur operation’, when in the last days of 1941, the Germans requisitioned Jewish fur and fur items for the Wehrmacht (Documents 8–9).
Documents 62 and 63 record the contacts of the Jewish Council with the Warsaw
Municipal Board, and especially the moment when the City Cleaning Department
withheld the services of rubbish collection and street cleaning and when the
Jewish Council took over these tasks.
Especially interesting is the part that shows the inner life of such a large institution
as the Jewish Council – emancipatory aspirations of the Supply Section and
confl icts between its employees and other officials of the Council (Documents 149–151), as well as daily clerical work (e.g. Document 130 ‘Weekly Bulletin. For All Officers and Employees of the Department of Health’).
