Jewish Collaborators in the Holocaust

Abstract

There is no issue in the history of the Jews during and after the Holocaust that has provoked stronger emotional reactions than the phenomenon of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis, which remains a controversial subject today. The phrase “Jewish collaboration” generally refers to Jewish functionaries in the ghettos and camps: the Judenräte (Jewish councils) and the Jewish police in the ghettos, and various functions exercised by Jewish prisoners in the camps, such as a head of block (Blockältester) or Kapo (originally, this term meant for head of a working group, but as time went by it became a generic term for all kind of functionaries). The various functionaries greatly influenced the lives of “ordinary” Jews because of the temporary power and the benefits accompanying the job, which often made the difference between life and death. It should be noted that both Jews and non-Jews collaborated with the Nazis. However, while Jewish councils, Jewish police in the ghettos, and the Sonderkommando in the camps were intended to Jews only, in camps both Jews and non-Jews were positioned in various roles such as Blockaelteste, Kapos, doctors, clerks. and so on. Both groups challenged familiar norms of normal life. However, only the Jewish collaborators faced the “Final Solution”—only Jewish collaborators were part of an atrocious decision: to make Jews involved in their own destruction. Collaborators who survived the war were sometimes subject to violence by other survivors if they were identified. Postwar Jewish leadership in various places sought to “translate” the bitter and harsh feelings into rational-legal categories by establishing community tribunals. The young state of Israel enacted the 1950 Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law. Despite its title, it was supposed to prosecute Jews and not Nazi criminals, since in 1950 no one imagined that a Nazi might arrive in Israel. A sense of socio-moral emergency that something must be done to rectify the harm caused by collaborators appears in many diaries, memoirs, and personal accounts of the Holocaust. As was the case in many European countries, Jews felt compelled to come to terms with collaborators, who were perceived as traitors to the Jewish people. Over the years, especially with developments in research on Jewish responses to the Holocaust and its horrors, a more complex and nuanced picture of Jewish collaboration has emerged. Micro-histories of various ghettos and camps present more diverse images, including of Jewish collaborators’ behavior. The general perception of these Jews as “traitors to the Jewish people” has become more nuanced; however, this change affects research more than public discourse. Underlying the unprecedented nature of Jewish collaboration was a systematic and organized Nazi bureaucratic apparatus whose purpose was to involve the Jews—the victims—in their own extermination. It worked through a dense network of lies and deceptions designed to disguise its actual goals. A careful reading of firsthand accounts and research literature, especially of the last three decades, shows that most Jewish collaborators were ordinary people caught up in unprecedented circumstances, seeking ways of survival. A position in the ghettos or the camps offered such a possibility. A negligible minority among them were sadists who behaved with deliberate brutality toward their Jewish brethren. It is precisely the fact that most collaborators were ordinary people that makes the discussion painful and fascinating, as it involves how a destructive reality affects people and how they struggle with their circumstances.