638 Summary
The second part starts with materials on economic life of the Warsaw ghetto. Firstly, the reader will find the statistics. The most valuable is Doc. No. 34/1, an extensive study of various domains of life of the Jewish population, much beyond the economic issues. A separate group of documents concerns particular sectors of the ghetto economy and phenomena like forced labour, new professions, smuggling and (work)shops.
A collection of documents, relatively small in numbers but fairly voluminous, concerns the house committees. They were already spontaneously organized during the siege of the city in September 1939, and later played a very important role as units of ghetto self-government. Preserved protocols of the two committees present us with the methods of work of these civic institutions and reflect the towering problems dealt with by the Jewish population.
Documents included in this volume allow us to for learn about the ghetto political life to only a rather limited extent. Materials on the subject can be found in many files of the Archive. They have been and will be edited in volumes concerning the underground press, the Oneg Shabbat team work, diaries from the ghetto, and others. In this volume, several kinds of records are included, starting with those of a general and programmatic character. Many of them could not be fully identified. We neither know when and why there were written nor where they were to be published, although perhaps in the underground press. Perhaps they were talks prepared for some party meetings. There are also minutes of such meetings, and of gatherings of civic organisations where decisions were taken, e.g. to make those who were relatively wealthier to support the poor (Doc. No.
34/79). Another group of documents concern the armed resistance movement at the turn of 1942/1943, including preparations for the uprising.
In the Archive, many important documents focusing on the Order Police are preserved. Many of them have already been published.1In this volume the remaining five are included. The most valuable of them is a monograph by Witelson, a policeman and at the same time Oneg Shabbat collaborator (Doc. No. 34/102). This paper includes extensive and detailed information on the organisation of the Order Police, its staff, methods of work, etc. The overall picture, however, is not objective. The author does not deny his negative attitude to his superiors. He clearly divides the police into two groups; the leaders close to Commander Szeryński, and the rest. Another paper about the Order Police written by an unknown author (Doc. No. 34/101) is more balanced. The volume ends with three testimonies concerning the activities of the so-called “the Thirteen”; a German secret service unit in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Translated by Eleonora Bergman
