Judenrat

The first councils were set up in occupied Poland on Reinhard Heydrich's instructions of 21 September 1939; in the General Government Hans Frank's ordinance of November 1939 provided for 12 members in communities of up to 10,000 people and 24 in larger ones. The Judenräte kept population registers, supplied forced labourers, collected levies and ran the ghettos' administration, often with the help of a Jewish police force, while also running soup kitchens, hospitals, orphanages and schools.

During the deportations the Germans demanded lists and daily numbers of people from them, which faced council members with impossible dilemmas. Responses varied: Adam Czerniaków, chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat, took his own life the day after the Great Action began in July 1942, while Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski in Łódź pursued 'rescue through labour'. Historians still disagree over how the councils should be judged.