The Historiography of the Holocaust

Jewish Leadership in Extremis 329
and other representatives of the Reich as well as local forces on the ground.
There was a considerable gap in the effectiveness of functioning (in the eyes of
the Nazis) between the two models, the Judenrat being more ‘useful’ because it
was more dependent. Headships were usually used for the purpose of carrying
out the Final Solution, yet they were never a pre-planned part of it, and in
many cases, especially in the Soviet Union where the first stages of the Final
Solution developed, the murder and deportation campaign was carried out
before the establishment of and without the need for Councils. 23
Research about the functioning of the headships
A remarkable fact in the historiography on the headship (or Judenrat) phenomenon
is that no comprehensive study has been carried out. The most ‘comprehensive’
one, quoted by every researcher, is Trunk’s Judenrat, which deals only
with the eastern European ghettos (with an emphasis on Poland). Indeed, all
research efforts have been invested in studying headships in their local context.
Although there is no comprehensive study, the literature is enormous, filling
many bookshelves; it would be impossible to discuss it all. Some general observations,
however, can be made.
First, for a number of reasons, research on headships throughout Europe and
North Africa did not proceed at the same pace. Regarding Poland and Lithuania,
research and writing on the major ghettos started at a very early stage, during
the second half of the 1940s, and was carried out by historians mostly of
Polish-Jewish origin. Because of the great emphasis that has been given to the
fate of Polish Jewry (most Jewish Holocaust historians of the first generation
were survivors who had some background of the Jewish historical tradition
that had developed in Poland in the interwar period), we have a reasonable
knowledge of the functioning of Jewish Councils in the major ghettos, usually
interwoven into the general picture of ghetto life. 24 Archival material of some
of the Jewish Councils survived and was found, and enabled the publication of
protocols and other important material. Thus Yad Vashem published the
protocols of the Lublin and Bialystok Councils, 25 as well as the full Chronicle of
the Lódz Ghetto translated into Hebrew (Lucian Dobroszycki edited a selection of
this Chronicle in English), 26 and Dina Porat and Martin Gilbert published Avraham
Tory’s diary from Kovno. 27 Of major importance is, of course, the diary of Adam
Czerniakow, chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat. 28 Other sources shed light on
the attitudes of ghetto inhabitants to the Councils. However, with regard to the
vast number of Councils in villages, townships and so on, research has been
lagging behind, and is in many cases negligible. Only scattered information
can be found about them in Yizkor Bicher (memorial books to Jewish communities
that perished), in the extensive series Pinkas Hakehillot, published by Yad
Vashem, 29 and in personal memoirs. However, information in these publications