The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police

Anonymous Members Of The Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police, Samuel Schalkowsky

Description

A secret history of Kovno Jewry under German occupation

Read an IU Press blog interview with Samuel Schalkowsky

As a force that had to serve two masters, both the Jewish population of the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania and its German occupiers, the Kovno Jewish ghetto police walked a fine line between helping Jews survive and meeting Nazi orders. In 1942 and 1943 some of its members secretly composed this history and buried it in tin boxes. The book offers a rare glimpse into the complex situation faced by the ghetto leadership and the Jewish policemen, caught between carrying out the demands of the Germans and mollifying the anger and frustration of their own people. It details the creation and organization of the ghetto, the violent German attacks on the population in the summer of 1941, the periodic selections of Jews to be deported and killed, the labor required of the surviving Jewish population, and the efforts of the police to provide a semblance of stability. The secret history tells a dramatic and complicated story, defending the actions of the police force on one page and berating its leadership on the next. A substantial introduction by distinguished historian Samuel D. Kassow places this powerful work within the context of the history of the Kovno Jewish community and its experience and fate at the hands of the Nazis.

Preface / Samuel Schalkowsky
Acknowledgments
Inside the Kovno Ghetto / Samuel D. Kassow
History of the Viliampole [Kovno] Jewish Ghetto Police
1. Introduction
2. The Prehistory of the Kovno Ghetto
3. The Gruesome Period from the Beginning of the Ghetto to the Great Action
4. Ghetto Situation After the Great Action (The survivor must live...)
5. The Elder Council, the Ghetto Institutions, the Police and the Ghetto Population: Mutual Interrelationships
6. Development of the Administrative Apparatus and of the Police after the Action
7. The Ghetto Guard and the Jewish Police
8. The Ghetto during the Time of the NSKK, Wiedmann and Hermann (Spring and Summer 1942)
9. The Police in the Spring and Summer of 1942 (the Caspi Period)
10. The Ghetto in the Times of Koeppen, Miller and the Vienna Protective Police (Schutz Polizei)
11. The Police in the Last Quarter of 1942
Appendix: Evolution of the Manuscript
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• 20th Century
• Modern
• Holocaust
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• The Holocaust
• Modern history
• General officer
• Russia
• General
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Holocauste
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 14 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253012975
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police
The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police
By anonymous members of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police

Translated and edited by Samuel Schalkowsky Introduction by Samuel D. Kassow
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D. C .
The assertions, arguments, and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors or other contributors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum .
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone]
Fax [phone]
2014 by Indiana University Press
Translation 2014 Samuel Schalkowsky
Introduction 2014 Samuel D. Kassow
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The clandestine history of the Kovno Jewish ghetto police / anonymous members of the Kovno Jewish ghetto police ; translated and edited by Samuel Schalkowsky ; Introduction by Samuel D. Kassow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01283-8 (cloth) - ISBN 978-0-253-01297-5 (ebook) 1. Jews-Persecutions-Lithuania-Kaunas. 2. Jews-Lithuania-Kaunas-History-20th century. 3. Jewish police officers-Lithuania-Kaunas-History-20th century. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Lithuania-Kaunas. 5. Kaunas (Lithuania)-Ethnic relations. 6. Lithuania-History-German occupation, 1941-1944. I. Schalkowsky, Samuel editor, translator. II. Kassow, Samuel D., author of added text.
DS 135. L 52 K 3829 2014
940.53 184793-dc23
2013042348
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
CONTENTS
Preface / Samuel Schalkowsky
Acknowledgments
Inside the Kovno Ghetto / Samuel D. Kassow
HISTORY OF THE VILIAMPOLE [KOVNO] JEWISH GHETTO POLICE
1. Introduction
2. The Prehistory of the Kovno Ghetto
The First Weeks
Transfer to the Ghetto
3. The Gruesome Period from the Beginning of the Ghetto to the Great Action
The First Days; Establishment of the Jewish Ghetto Police
The Personal Effects and Gold Actions
Development and Expansion of the Police Force
The Jordan Certificates and the Rehearsal Action
Airfield and City Work Brigades
The Actions: In the Box (September 26, 1941) and in the Small Ghetto (October 4, 1941)
The Great Action
Episode of the German Jews
4. Ghetto Situation after the Great Action (The survivor must live . . .)
After the Action: Moods and Rumors; Camp or Ghetto
Labor Quota
Material Conditions
Events in the Ghetto after the Great Action
5. The Elder Council, the Ghetto Institutions, the Police, and the Ghetto Population: Mutual Interrelationships
6. Development of the Administrative Apparatus and of the Police after the Action
7. The Ghetto Guard and the Jewish Police
The New Ghetto Guard (NSKK) Located inside the Ghetto
The Gate and the Gate Guard
The Ghetto Guard and the Police Intermediary (Relations with Germans and Lithuanians)
8. The Ghetto during the Time of the NSKK, Wiedmann, and Hermann (Spring and Summer 1942)
Jordan s Last Actions (The Riga Action and the Book Action)
Departure of Jordan and Kaminski
New Masters, New Winds (Wiedmann, Hermann-German Labor Office)
Evacuation of Brazilke
Workers for Palemon
The Labor Quota
Economic Conditions; Gardens
The Vilna Letter Episode
Ghetto Commissions
9. The Police in the Spring and Summer of 1942 (the Caspi Period)
The Appearance of Caspi
The Caspi Personality
Police Reforms and Reorganizations; New Management
Caspi s Departure
10. The Ghetto in the Times of Koeppen, Miller, and the Vienna Protective Police (Schutz Polizei)
An Economy without Money
Days of Awe, Again Palemon
Vienozinskio Area Cleared Again
Riga a Second Time
The Meck Episode
Assaults
Chanukah and the New Year-Beginning of the Ghetto Bright Period (the Time of Miller)
11. The Police in the Last Quarter of 1942
New Units (Gate and Detention-House Guards; Jail and Workshop Guards)
Expansion of the Administrative Work of the Police (Penal Department, Criminal Department, Passportization, Administrative Penalties)
The Police as a Social Organization (the Swearing-in Ceremony, Police Concerts)
Appendix: Evolution of the Manuscript
Bibliography
Index
Maps appear on pages xviii - xix
Illustrations appear on pages 152 - 157 , 246 - 252 , and 365 - 367
PREFACE
Geschichte fuhn der viliampoler yiddisher geto-politsei (History of the Viliampole 1 [Kovno] Jewish Ghetto Police, referred to hereinafter as the history ) is a 253-page document written in Yiddish by members of the Jewish police in the Kovno ghetto during 1942 and 1943. It covers events from the start of the German attack on Soviet Russia, on June 22, 1941, through most of 1942.
The history itself is a part of a large collection of documents, secretly assembled by the Jewish ghetto police, containing over 30,000 pages in over 900 files. When the liquidation of the ghetto became imminent, these documents were placed into a wooden crate covered with tin and buried.
The burial of the police documents in the Kovno ghetto, in itself, was not unique. For example, Avraham Tory, secretary of the Kovno ghetto Elder Council, maintained a detailed diary and buried it before the destruction of the ghetto. Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, who addressed halachik issues associated with ghetto life, buried a collection of his written responsa. The Kovno ghetto was totally destroyed and burned to the ground by the retreating Nazis in July 1944. In August 1944, when Kovno was liberated by the Soviet army, Tory and Rabbi Oshri, both of whom had survived in Kovno, searched and found their buried material. But the crate buried by the Jewish ghetto police remained buried for twenty years. Apparently, no one who knew of its existence and location survived to attempt to retrieve it.
The crate was accidentally found in 1964 during the bulldozing of the former ghetto area. It was turned over to the Soviet authorities, who did not allow publication of these (or any other) Jewish documents. The documents remained unavailable for an additional twenty-five years, until after Lithuania achieved its independence. 2 A microfilm copy of the entire collection was obtained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in 1998.
In 2000, having recently retired, I began working as a volunteer in the archives of the USHMM. Since I was born and raised in Kovno and was an inmate of the Kovno ghetto, I was assigned to work with the Kovno ghetto police document collection. My task was to create a finding aid for future researchers, an inventory of the files in the collection, including a brief description of their contents.
I came across the History of the Viliampole Jewish Ghetto Police and was captivated by it. It had been written-actually typewritten-in the ghetto by Jewish ghetto policemen, describing events within about a year or less of their actual occurrence, and it covered the entire time that I was there. 3 It illuminated my experiences and provided background and details of which I either had not been aware or, perhaps, had preferred to forget.
Some of the documents had a personal connection. For example, internal ghetto correspondence written by or about Michael Bramson, the initial deputy chief of the Jewish ghetto police and later chief of its criminal division, resonated with me, because Bramson had been my high school teacher during the year preceding the war. I could therefore associate a face and a voice with the words. I could wonder about how he was transformed from an individual who had been concerned only a few months earlier with the academic progress of his students into an enforcer of Nazi orders.
In February 1942, Jewish policemen had forcibly seized my mother and me on a ghetto street and brought us to the square, where many other inmates were assembled. We were told we were being transported to the Riga ghetto. But we didn t believe it, as all others included in previous selections ended up being killed at the Ninth Fort.
Bramson was in charge of the Jewish police detail guarding the assembled inmates. Didn t he remember me as one of his students? (I had had extracurricular contacts with him.) Shouldn t he therefore have helped? He didn t, and I held it against him for a long time. The history provided a different, more realistic perspective.
I have been puzzled by the fact that of all the languages that I knew before the war, only Lithuanian was-selectively and completely-wiped from my memory: after the war, I could no longer understand any written or spoken Lithuanian, and I certainly could not speak it. What was it in my wartime experience that brought this about? Ch