Police of the Jewish ghetto

The Jewish Ghetto Police (in German Jüdische Gheto- Polizei or Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst ), also known as the Service Order Jewish and Jews call the Jewish police , were units of Police organized in ghettos by local councils ( Judenrat ) Under orders of the soldiers of the Nazi Germany . The services of the so-called “Jewish Police” were also active in some Nazi concentration camps .

History

In the Warsaw Ghetto the jüdische Ordnungsdienst came to have a force of 2,500 troops in the Lodz ghetto were about 1,200 and the Ghetto Lvov a force of 500 men. ¹ In the great ghettos the commanders were officers and a more complex structure was arranged with administrative divisions and zones, but in the small ghettos this was not necessary. Emanuel Ringelblum , Polish historian of the Warsaw ghetto , described the cruelty of the ghetto police as “sometimes even more bloody than that of the Nazi army itself .”

At the end of the war, some former members of the Jewish Police were accused of collaborating in the Holocaust , and in Israel some of them were brought to trial, although eventually all were acquitted on the grounds that this had occurred in “extraordinary circumstances” . ²

Organization

The Judendienstordnung or Jewish Police (also nicknamed “ODmans”) police forces were Jewish operating within the framework of the different ghettos organized by the Germans and provided services in some camps and forced labor camps. This ghetto police was, to some degree, controlled almost autonomously by the Judenrat . The members of the “Judendienstordnung” were not allowed to carry arms, and their main task was to ensure the deportation of the Jews from the ghettos controlled to the concentration camps .

Its members were mainly Jews who had not had a moderating activity with the community they were now watching (especially when vigilances increased and deportations began), and by those who were considered docile in receiving and obeying the orders of The German soldiers who controlled them. In the ghettos where the Judenrat refused to accept such orders, the “Jewish Police” was employed to control the order and even supplant the functions of the councils or Judenrat. Like all the Jews in German territory, the regular policemen also had to have sewn the star of David , whereas for identification like police officers they had cap and bracelet. In turn, the security staff was equipped with rubber batons. ³

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