Resistance (10 page)

Most of these restrictions were intended to humiliate, separate, and denigrate the Jews. Initially, they had a dramatic effect. A young man wrote of feeling that his arms were encompassed by a tight ring when he first had to wear the badge of disgrace, the Star of David. But in time, perhaps because they followed one another so quickly, the restrictions and decrees were taken as a matter of course. The Jewish response was muted, resigned.

 

The public marking of Jews made life more difficult and prevented Jews from moving about freely outside the crowded Jewish quarter. Everywhere they went, they were identified and stigmatized as Jews. One man commented in his diary on the humiliation and the taunting of Jews, "Should one be offended? The oppressor is non-human after all!"

Some Nazi orders attacked the essence of the ability of Jews to survive. Jews were dismissed from jobs and offices without compensation. Others were deprived of their pensions and rights. Jews were excluded from the system of social welfare. Jews who had worked in industry, workshops, the free professions, teaching—that is, all who had received a monthly wage—were left without a livelihood, without any legal means of support. Refugees who were stuck in Warsaw or had been driven into Warsaw en masse at the beginning of 1940 found themselves in even more desperate circumstances. Unable to work, they could not return home.

Wealthy Jews, merchants, and factory owners were in a comparatively better position. They closed their businesses but moved the goods and materials in their warehouses to hidden places and cellars. Aided by Polish and Jewish informers, however, the Germans conducted searches and confiscated many of those goods. Germans appeared in uniform or in civilian clothes. Some carried papers that seemingly gave them the right to take what they found. Others bore no papers and were all the more dangerous and brutal. They confiscated furniture, pianos, medical books, clothing, and children's toys. Truck after truck loaded with goods taken from Jewish households could be seen leaving the Jewish quarter.

The attack on personal property was followed by the confiscation of savings and cash. Jews were forbidden to possess more money than was needed for daily expenses. If money was not handed over, Jews could no longer continue to operate their businesses. All money kept in bank accounts or owed to Jews by non-Jews was forfeited to the Nazis. The more affluent, some 5—10 percent of the Jews, could survive on their reserves or by disposing of their valuables. Temporary workers and the very poor were forced to live from day to day, selling whatever they had in exchange for basic necessities. Inadequate in the best of times, their resources soon were completely depleted.

Two general decrees issued during the first two months of the occupation shaped the entire course of the ghetto's existence: the appointment of a
Judenrat,
or Jewish council of elders, as a ruling body within the Jewish community, and the imposition of forced labor on the Jews.

On September 21, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the security police and second to Himmler in the SS hierarchy, ordered the establishment of a Judenrat, a body composed of "reasonable personalities and rabbis" from among local Jews. The Judenrat was to "bear the full responsibility for executing exactly and according to a time schedule, every order given at present or in the future." While appearing to be an institution of Jewish self-government concerned with protecting Jewish interests and looking after communal needs, in actuality the Judenrat was intended as an instrument of German control. Obedience and subservience were demanded; the duty of carrying out German orders was the main task.

The twenty-four leaders of the Warsaw Judenrat could not have been aware of what would be demanded of them. Jews who accepted these roles, or were forced to do so, could not fully understand the Nazi regime's intentions. They assumed that they would serve as representatives of the community under a hostile regime. It was not a pleasant task, but certainly a necessary one. Centuries of experience had taught them that even if the Jewish representatives could not influence hostile rulers, they nonetheless could intercede and request mercy in high places. They had learned that it was ultimately possible for Jewish representatives to alleviate the plight of Jews and offer solace if not protection in times of distress. And this was certainly not the first time in the history of Jews in the Diaspora when Jewish leaders would be forced to serve their community on behalf of a hated and oppressive ruler. One can assume that some Judenrat members undertook these positions reluctantly, while others were motivated by ambition.

Adam Czerniakow was the leader of the Judenrat in Warsaw from its founding until his suicide in July 1942. Throughout his tenure, he scrupulously maintained a diary, writing daily entries detailing his efforts and the conditions he faced. On October 4, 1939, he described his appointment as head of the Judenrat: "I was taken to Szuch Boulevard and there I was informed that I have to assemble 24 people to form a community council and act as their head." The offices of the German authorities in Warsaw were situated on Boulevard Szuch, considered by the people the Gestapo's fortress.

Czerniakow was born in 1880, the son of an assimilated Jewish family in Warsaw. After finishing his studies in chemistry at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he went on to study industrial engineering in Dresden, Germany. Returning to Warsaw, he married and started a family, but did not work at his profession. Instead, he became a teacher at the technical high school, headed the organization of Jewish artisans, and held a post in a public enterprise. He was also a member of the Warsaw municipal government, was active in Jewish associations, and was a candidate for the senate and a member of the board of directors of the Warsaw Jewish Community.

A Zionist leader described him as "a gifted man, lacking any political or public ideals, but a decent man." Czerniakow was ambitious, with talents that were not revealed until he saw the right moment to assume a leadership role. He was not a member of a Jewish party, nor did he identify with any of the dominant political or socioreligious movements, although at a certain stage he sided with the minority bloc and moved nearer the non-Zionists within the Jewish Agency.

Czerniakow was a staunch Polish patriot, completely at home in Polish and European culture. He was removed and almost alien to the life, culture, and history of the Jewish people. An assimilationist, he had been publicly active in the Jewish sector, yet he remained an outsider. According to one report, "until his appointment, no one had heard of him." Even his enemies claimed that he was a decent man with good intentions and high moral standards, perhaps too decent for a time that required much more than decency and morality to lead the Jewish people.

Czerniakow was a liberal in his views and inner world, sensitive to people and life, introverted and isolated, a book lover and a secret writer of poetry, and with little understanding of the masses. As head of the Judenrat, he may have longed for the Germans he had known in Dresden—straightforward and considerate people, with a sense of law and order, who could be depended on to keep their promises.

However, the police, the Gestapo, and the Nazi officials he came across as head of the Judenrat were an entirely different breed. When he occasionally encountered a humane response, he was momentarily relieved, but on the whole he was filled with bitterness and disappointment until his sad end. Bald and stout, Czerniakow was insulted and physically assaulted. Still he insisted on maintaining a civil manner. He would not submit or humiliate himself. Some two months before his tragic death, he wrote in his diary, "Have I the strength to maintain a decent level of behavior?" His concent to keep his self-respect in dealing with the Germans, was foreign to most of the Jews around him but was characteristic of the man.

His state of mind is clearly and impressively reflected in the notation in his diary on January 26, 1940:

 

I was summoned to the police [Lieutenant Colonel Daume]. The community must pay 100,000 zlotys for having assaulted an ethnic German woman
[Volksdeutschin]
or else, 100 Jews will be shot. I appealed to the Gestapo to relieve us of this payment, and afterwards they agreed that I would not have to supply laborers for clearing the snow, so that we could save some money. Nothing came of it. We have to pay the money—tomorrow morning precisely. As this was the situation, I started to collect money from the community. Must borrow 100,000 and afterwards collect from those who owe taxes. At the same time, the police are demanding 6100 zloty for 61 Jews and Jewesses, who were caught without the Star of David band on their sleeves. In view of these experiences, I asked the SS to release me from my post as head [of the Judenrat], for in such abnormal conditions, I cannot lead the community. In reply,...they advised me not to resign.

 

Czerniakow made a great effort not to behave harshly toward the Jewish community or resort to coercive measures. In his diary, on May 17, 1941, he wrote about the visit of Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Judenrat in Lodz. Rumkowski, who considered the Lodz ghetto a personal domain under his supervision and control, had gained a reputation for aggressiveness and despotic tendencies. According to Czerniakow,

 

Rumkowski reported on his activities in Lodz. The individual does not exist for him. He has special police authority in the ghetto [
Sonderkommando
] for confiscating and so he has confiscated diamonds and furs ... this is an arrogant man, haughty and stupid. He is doing harm, because he tells the authorities that everything is in order in his sector.

 

Czerniakow's criticism and distaste are understandable. His methods were quite different from those of Rumkowski. Only under German pressure and threats would Czerniakow use coercion. But although his intentions were honorable, his methods did not suit the reality of the occupation of the ghetto and at times led to disappointing results. Czerniakow was reluctant to confiscate the property of the more affluent or to collect forcefully taxes from those who kept some of their possessions. He eventually had to impose a regressive tax on bread, which was officially distributed and rationed—throughout this period, the tax was paid equally by those who had no money at all and by those who had still enough edibles and hidden means. This type of procedure occurred with other decrees as well, indicative of a declining state of affairs in which people who were starving lived side by side with those who were overfed.

Czerniakow appealed to people's consciences, expecting them to behave with maturity and a sense of responsibility. He did not understand the difficulty of sustaining such values for desperate people involved in a struggle for existence and survival. His methods frequently harmed the weakest members of the community, as was evident when he was forced to fill a quota of Jews assigned to work camps. The well-heeled generally evaded being shipped to the camps through bribes or other forms of circumvention. So the hungry and weak were sent to the labor camps.

More accessible than the Germans, his presence more immediate, Czerniakow was a magnet for Jewish criticism. In diaries and memoirs of the Jews of Warsaw, Czerniakow was generally the object of bitter criticism. He was accused of preferring assimilationists or converts, of having an inclination for showy ceremonies and a limited understanding of the situation.

His diary included short entries noted every day in a series of small notebooks and written in a terse manner in Polish, with occasional ironic bursts of repressed anger. Following the celebration of his sixtieth birthday, he wrote, "Congratulations throughout the day. I wouldn't choose to be born again. It's too tiring." His pedantic attitude is confirmed, and he sometimes fumes against Jews in general. In 1940 he noted, "The color of the identity cards must evidently be changed every month. What would happen if these mobs were a state unto themselves." In July 1940 he wrote:

 

I sit in a stuffy room resembling a jail. The Jews are constantly grumbling. They don't want to pay for the community, but demand intervention on private affairs or catastrophes. And if the intervention does not succeed or goes on too long, there is no end to their dissatisfaction, as if the matter depended on me. And frequently these are very loud complaints.

 

A year later, however, Czerniakow wrote, "The Jewish masses are quiet and balanced in the face of the intense suffering. In general, the Jews only shout when things are going well for them."

In some areas, Czerniakow's sensitivity was marked and constant. He lost all restraint when writing of human lives and the efforts to save them. Children, their well-being, their nourishment, and their education occupied him endlessly. Czerniakow's wife, Dr. Felicia Czerniakow, a teacher and faithful partner to her husband, sharing his heavy responsibilities, similarly showed a warm regard for children.

Czerniakow suffered personal as well as public tragedy. His only son, Jan Czerniakow, aged twenty-five, left with the stream of émigrés going eastward at the beginning of the war and had reached the heart of the Soviet Union, where he died in unknown circumstances at about the same time that his father committed suicide. In his diary, Czerniakow cried, "Where is my only son Jan?"