The Historiography of the Holocaust

Jewish Leadership in Extremis 331
German authorities – the ‘headship’ tasks – the Councils and Unions always
initiated additional activities and carried out tasks for the benefit of the Jewish
population: social and medical care, education, religious services, literary activities,
and so on; by doing so they took on themselves some leadership functions.
The many tasks and functions of the Councils, balancing between carrying out
German orders, meeting Jewish needs and having to function in many cases as
municipalities (keeping order, caring for sanitation, and so on), are reflected in
their organizational structure. 39 Consequently, these bodies were almost never
‘ideal-type’ headships (but nor were they full-fledged leaderships). In line with
the dominance of men in leading social positions, which was still the rule in
European societies at the time, no female Jews are found in the first line of headship
functionaries, and only a very limited number in second-line positions, such
as administrative heads of departments (for example, Gertrud van-Tijn-Cohn,
head of the emigration Department in the Amsterdam Jewish Council).
A special chapter related to the Jewish Councils is the Jewish Police, sometimes
called the ‘Order Service’ (Ordnungsdienst). Trunk dedicated one chapter to this
phenomenon in his book, 40 but the most comprehensive study remains
Aharon Weiss’s PhD thesis. 41 Since then, little mention has been made of the
Jewish police forces in the studies on Councils or in general. 42 Recently, excerpts
from a most interesting document, a history of the Kovno Ghetto Jewish police
written during the Holocaust by its own people, has been published, which
sheds light on the self-perception of Jewish policemen. 43 Once again, the complex
nature of this phenomenon resurfaces. Not every Jewish Council had a Jewish
police force. Not all Jewish police forces functioned under the auspices of the
Jewish Council; sometimes they were independent and directly subject to
the German or Polish authorities. Even when officially subordinated to the
Jewish Council, the police force acted independently and even competed with
the authority of the chairman of the council; in Vilna, Jacob Gens, commander
of the police, eventually became the head (or ‘representative’) of the ghetto. 44
Third, in spite of the fact that all studies show the complexity of the phenomenon,
final verdicts tend to focus on the functioning of the headships from the
point of view and, in their last stage, in the extremis of the Final Solution. The
polemics always deal with the responses and decisions of the chairmen: did
they know (and what did they know) about the wholesale murder? Did they
disseminate the knowledge? How did they stand vis-à-vis the German authorities?
Did they take personal advantage – saving themselves or their families and
entourage? Did they have moral considerations and feel remorse? Did they
consider resistance and what was their relationship with resistance groups? In this
respect, historians have found and published several penetrating and heartbreaking
original documents of the years 1941–43 presenting the dilemmas,
open and hidden controversies of the time, and harsh decisions. 45 Chairmen
and members of headships who survived the Holocaust have also published