Kapo

This blog is not meant to pass judgment, I am not in a position to do so, simply because I was never put in that situation. All I know is I would do anything for survival, and especially for the survival of my family. I leave the judgment to those who survived the Holocaust, it is their prerogative.

This article is meant to explain the roles of the Kapos in the concentration camps and the ghettos.

The term “Kapo” refers to a prisoner within Nazi concentration camps who were assigned by the SS (Schutzstaffel) to oversee forced labor, maintain order, and enforce discipline among fellow inmates. The Kapos wielded significant power over other prisoners, and their roles were complex and morally fraught.

Initially, Kapos were often chosen from among the prisoner population based on perceived leadership qualities, physical strength, or skills useful to the SS. They were tasked with managing work details, distributing food, and maintaining order within the brutal and dehumanizing environment of the camps.

For some prisoners, becoming a Kapo offered a means of survival—in situations of extreme adversity. By cooperating with the SS, they could secure slightly better living conditions, extra rations, or protection from harsh punishments. However, this collaboration came at a heavy cost, as Kapos were often viewed with suspicion and contempt by their fellow inmates, who saw them as traitors collaborating with their oppressors.

The position of Kapo was rife with ethical dilemmas. Some Kapos exploited their power ruthlessly, engaging in acts of violence and cruelty against their fellow prisoners to curry favor with the SS or to assert their dominance. Others, however, tried to mitigate the suffering of their fellow inmates to the extent possible within the confines of the camp’s brutal regime. It is essential to recognize that while some Kapos abused their authority, others found themselves caught in an impossible situation, forced to make unthinkable choices in order to survive.

After World War II, many Kapos faced repercussions for their actions during the Holocaust. Some were prosecuted for collaboration or war crimes, while others faced ostracism and condemnation from their communities. The legacy of the Kapos remains a complex and controversial aspect of the history of the Holocaust, embodying the moral compromises and extreme conditions faced by those who endured one of the darkest chapters of human history.

Eliezer Gruenbaum, the communist son of Yitzhak Gruenbaum, who was a prominent leader of Polish Jewry between the two world wars and Israel’s first interior minister, was a kapo in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eliezer survived only to die fighting in the war for Israeli independence. His story is captivating not only for its biographical appeal but also for the unique “statement of defense” memoir he has left behind.

In 1942 he was arrested for being a communist and not as a Jew and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. In Auschwitz, he became a Kapo. He survived the camp, and after the war, he was accused of collaboration with Nazi Germany, and of “mercilessly beating inmates”. He was also accused of murdering “tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners”. He defended himself claiming that he only accepted the position at the request of other Jews, who wanted one of their own in the position, which was otherwise often filled by anti-Semitic non-Jewish people, including German criminals.[6] Research-based on analysis of his memoirs, however, concluded that he became a kapo due to “intervention by communists”. At the end of 1943, Gruenbaum was moved from the concentration camps to work in coal mines in Jawiszowice and finally ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After the war, in 1945, he was tried by a communist tribunal on charges of participating in violent beatings but was shortly acquitted. He resumed his political activities, advocating for the communist takeover of Poland, but he was soon arrested again, in France, accused by fellow Jews of having been the “head of the Birkenau death camp.” In a trial that lasted eight months, he was acquitted again, because the French court concluded that “neither the accused nor the victims were French”.

Sources

Goss, Jennifer L. “Role of Kapos in Nazi Concentration Camps.” ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/kapos-prisoner-supervisors-1779685.

Kapos: collaborators, perpetrators or victims?

https://www.infocenters.co.il/gfh/notebook_ext.asp?book=113240&lang=eng

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/J/bo43632429.htm

https://www.thoughtco.com/kapos-prisoner-supervisors-1779685

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A TRAGIC LOVE STORY

++++courtesy of HSA-Holocaust Social Archive++++++++++++++++

She was the troubled daughter of the rabbi of Warsaw’s great synagogue; he was the son of a Polish Jewish leader. As neighbors they used to play together as children, but when they grew up, each went on their separate way. The leader’s son became a communist who fought in the Brigade in Spain, and did not immigrate to Israel with the rest of his family. The daughter of the rabbi married a successful lawyer and they were among the aristocratic Bohemia of Warsaw and were the parents of a single child, born after 11 years of marriage.
After the Nazi occupation, the spoiled boy arrived in the Warsaw ghetto, learned how to walk through cracks in the wall and bring food from the garbage cans. His mother called her former nanny who took him to her village, where she introduced the blue-eyed and blond-haired boy as her nephew, but warned him not to expose his body in front of other children.
The leader’s son was captured in France and sent to Auschwitz, where his friends asked him to represent them because he was a jurist and proficient in languages. In fact, he became a Kapo, and to this day, there are differences of opinion about the degree of cruelty he discovered in this position and the part he took in the resistance and camp’s underground.
The Rabbi’s daughter’s husband perished in the camp, and after the liberation she arrived in Jerusalem weighing 35 Kg. With the help of her family, she found her son in a village in Poland. She brought him to Israel but was unable to raise him and he was sent to ‘Kibbutz Ramat David’.
The leader’s son was arrested and tried in Paris as a collaborator with the Nazis, and some claim that the fact he opposed Stalin played a part against him. His father left all his pursuits and fought for his credit. After the trial ended and he was found ‘not guilty’, he came to Israel and lived in his parents’ house in Jerusalem, where he met again with the daughter of the rabbi and they fell in love. She started gaining weight and the two talked about getting married and the boy’s return from the kibbutz.
The leader’s son wanted to join the IDF but was refused because of his past, and was recruited only after the war of independence started. In a battle in Ramat-Rachel, an order of withdrawal was issued but the leader’s son stormed at the enemy in what appeared as a suicidal action, and was killed.
When the rabbi’s daughter heard of his death, she declined his parents’ offer to mourn with them, went to her home and took her own life.
Away from besieged Jerusalem, the child who knew in his life, wealth, hunger in the ghetto, life in a Polish village and a kibbutz was left orphaned and alone.

From the fascinating book “Kapo in Auschwitz” by Professor Tuvia Friling.

Link to the book’s preview:
https://www.academia.edu/26350561/A_Jewish_Kapo_in_Auschwitz_History_Memory_and_the_Politics_of_Survival
Link to the book’s reviews:
https://www.academia.edu/36873051/A_Jewish_Kapo_in_Auschwitz_-_Book_Reviews
Link to purchase the book:

 

Source

https://www.facebook.com/groups/HSA.Archive

 

The Jewish ghetto Police

Officially called the Jewish Organization for the Maintenance of Public Order (Ger., Jüdischer Ordungsdienst; Pol., Żydowska Służba Porządkowa), Jewish police units were established under Nazi occupation in most East European ghettos. The establishment of a police force usually was connected with the creation of the ghettos, which excluded the Jewish population from general police jurisdiction and thus created a need for an alternative system of ensuring that the Jewish population complied with German occupiers’ orders. The absence of a general German order regarding the establishment of the Jewish police indicates that in all probability, it was the various local occupying forces—and not the Central Reich Government—that took the initiative to set up this force. Indeed, the composition of the Jewish police in different ghettos, their jurisdictional powers, and their status within the Jewish community varied from ghetto to ghetto, according to local conditions. A small ghetto could muster only a handful of individuals to join its police force, whereas the Warsaw ghetto

Ghetto police forces were officially branches of Judenräte (sg., Judenrat) but were also commanded directly by local non-Jewish police authorities and the SS. Therefore, police units in some ghettos became independent of the Judenräte. However, in other places the Judenrat and the ghetto police were indistinguishable. Initially, the primary task of the Jewish police was to maintain public order and to enforce German orders transmitted by the Judenräte to the Jewish population. Municipal authorities retained jurisdiction over criminal matters and disputes between Jews and non-Jews. At this phase, there were Jews who viewed the establishment of the Jewish police positively; some intellectual circles even openly supported it. Jews joined it for social motives and out of a desire to help maintain order in the ghettos and assist Jewish autonomy.

 

German authorities insisted that Jewish police officers be young, fit, and army-trained, with at least a high school diploma—but those principles were not always followed. Many police were refugees from other Jewish communities and few had been involved in organized Jewish affairs before the war.

Gradually the Germans expanded the workload of the Jewish police, calling upon them to fight epidemics, quell demonstrations, and fight fires. Other times the police were charged with overseeing distribution of foodstuffs and controlling prices as well as collecting taxes. They were part of the battle against those who disobeyed German orders, although the scope of their jurisdiction varied from place to place. Prisons were erected in the larger ghettos and detention rooms in the smaller ones; rarely were inmates transferred to the Germans. In most cases, ghetto police themselves carried out the punishment that ghetto courts imposed on the accused. Sometimes they even assisted in executing German-ordered death sentences.

 

Police were supposed to be paid by the Judenräte, but often their salary was insufficient and irregular. Thus they were open to bribes, a situation that adversely affected moral standards. Understanding that the Jewish police served to enforce German policy, many left it; their places were taken mainly by people with no obligation to the Jewish population and by other doubtful elements. As standards declined, so did the relationship between the police and the Jewish public, especially after Jewish police began taking part in sending Jews to

. Ghetto police personnel were generally exempt from labor service and were even empowered to release others from their labor obligations (in exchange for bribes). Guarding the ghetto walls also corrupted the police and placed them in confrontations with the public. Often Jewish policemen worked with local police and even with German soldiers to control smuggling. Their close ties with the German and local authorities and the opportunity for kickbacks led many Jewish communities to identify them with the occupying forces. Over time, corruption became part of the Jewish police identity, and many of them lived lives of luxury amid the remainder of the poor Jewish population. Thus, the original esteem in which the Jewish police were held was replaced with hatred and contempt.

 

Nonetheless, some police officers tried to improve the lot of the Jewish community, despite harsh German supervision. Several tried to fight corruption and were active in bolstering public supervision over the police force. Other officers intervened with German authorities on behalf of Jews, at times paying with their lives.

The onset of deportations to killing centers in 1942 led to a new phase in the history of the Jewish police. The Germans generally ordered ghetto police forces to assist in deporting Jews and sometimes even on selection. In return, the Nazis assured them that they and their families would not be deported. Police officers who refused to obey the orders joined the deportees or were killed on the spot. In most instances, the police complied with German demands.

 

During this period, the status of the ghetto police hit an all-time low in Jewish eyes. Even then, however, there were instances when police gave advance warning of expulsions and cautioned Jews to hide. In some ghettos, police actively opposed deportation orders and even made up the core of the armed resistance movement. Most of these ghettos were in the Soviet Union or in the eastern part of Poland occupied by the Soviets from 1939 to 1941. In the Generalgouvernement, by contrast, relations between Jewish police and underground organizations were more often hostile. In both regions, however, there was considerable variation.

The number of police units was greatly reduced in the wake of deportations, and families of former police officers, who until then had been safeguarded, were usually murdered. At the same time, some Jewish underground organizations tried to take revenge on the Jewish police.

At the end of the war, the role of Jewish police and their actions became a highly controversial issue among Holocaust survivors. Dozens of police officers were tried in Jewish honor courts for improper conduct. Some were expelled from the Jewish community while others were merely barred from holding public office. The names of other former officers were cleared. It took years for the courts to decide not to put Jewish police on formal trial.

Some researchers have claimed that in small communities, relations between the Jewish police and the Jewish public were better than those in larger ones. Others have argued that corruption was more widespread in the General government ghettos, whereas police in areas under Soviet control until 1941 generally played a more positive role in ghetto life. The latest studies have shown conclusively, however, that there is no consistent correlation between either the size of the Jewish community or the location of the ghetto and police behavior. A proper evaluation of the Jewish police must be based on the study of each individual ghetto.