Jacob Gens (1 April 1903 – 14 September 1943) was the head of the Judenrat and Jewish Ghetto Police of the Vilna Ghetto. Originally from a merchant family, he joined the Lithuanian Army shortly after the independence of Lithuania, rising to the rank of captain while also securing a college degree in law and economics. He married a non-Jew and worked several jobs as a teacher, accountant, and administrator.
When Germany invaded Lithuania, Gens headed the Jewish hospital in Vilnius before the formation of the ghetto in September 1941. He was appointed chief of the ghetto police force, and in July 1942, the Germans appointed him head of the ghetto Jewish government. He attempted to secure better conditions in the ghetto and believed that it was possible to save some Jews by working for the Germans. Gens and his policemen helped Germans in rounding up the Jews for deportation and execution in the Ponary massacre in October–December 1941 and in liquidating several smaller ghettos from late 1942 to early 1943. His policies, including the attempt to save some Jews by surrendering others for deportation or execution, continue to be a subject of debate and controversy.
Gens was shot by the Gestapo on 14 September 1943 shortly before the ghetto was liquidated and most of the residents were sent either to labor camps or to execution at an extermination camp. His Lithuanian wife and daughter escaped the Gestapo and survived the war.
Early life
Gens was born on 1 April 1903 in near Šiauliai in what was then the Russian Empire and is now Lithuania. His father was a merchant and Gens was the oldest of four sons. Gens attended a Russian-language primary school and then a secondary school in Šiauliai. He was fluent in Lithuanian, Russian, German, and Yiddish, and knew some Hebrew, Polish, and English. In November 1920, he volunteered for the Lithuanian Army and was sent to study at the War School of Kaunas.Gudienė and Žalienė Lietuvos kariuomenės karininkai p. 169 N. Karni, who was a cadet with Gens, said that he "had great personal charm. I do not remember him ever being in a bad mood." Karni also felt Gens had "leadership qualities, he had personality, he was a man of principles".Quoted in Arad Ghetto in Flames pp. 125–126 footnote 10 Upon graduation in December 1921, he was promoted to lieutenant and assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment. In January 1925, he was promoted to senior lieutenant, and in March 1925, he requested to be transferred into the army reserves.
Gens then moved to Jurbarkas to teach physical education and the Lithuanian language at a Jewish school. In 1924,Tushnet Pavement of Hell p. 186 Gens married Elvyra Budreikaitė, a non-Jewish Lithuanian. He appears to have wanted to transfer from the infantry into the Lithuanian Air Force, but at the time it was accepting only unmarried men.Hilberg Perpetrators Victims Bystanders pp. 110–111 The couple had a daughter, Ada, in 1926, and moved to Kaunas the following year. There Gens worked as an accountant at the Ministry of Justice from 1927 to 1935. He studied at Kaunas University and graduated in 1935 with a degree in law and economics.Schneidman Three Tragic Heroes p. 106 He worked for the Shell Oil Corporation for two years from 1935, then took a job with , a Lithuanian co-operative.Tushnet Pavement of Hell p. 187 In October 1938, he joined the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union and a month later was promoted to reserve captain.
Gens was a Zionist, and was a follower of the Revisionist Zionism school,Tushnet Pavement of Hell p. 188 which called for most European Jews to immediately emigrate to create the State of Israel in what were then the League of Nations mandates of Palestine and Trans-Jordan.Snyder Black Earth p. 63 He belonged to Brith ha-Hayal, a Jewish organization for military reservists.Friedman "Two Saviors" Commentary p. 484
Administrator of Jewish hospital After the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union and the formation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in July 1940,Stearns and Langer Encyclopedia of World History p. 715 Gens was fired from his job. He was unable to secure a work permit, nor was he allowed to continue to live in Kaunas. He went to live with his brother, Solomon, in Vilnius, and although Gens was on a list to be sent to Soviet labor camps, he managed to secure an unregistered job at the Vilnius health department through an old military colleague, Colonel Juozas Ūsas. Gens was not on the official payroll, which meant that the political officer attached to the hospital did not need to be informed of his employment.Tushnet Pavement of Hell pp. 189–190 During June 1941, when thousands of the Lithuanians were exiled to Siberia, Gens remained in hiding and was not deported.Shneidman Three Tragic Heroes p. 107
The German Army entered Vilnius on 24 June 1941,Friedman "Two Saviors" Commentary p. 483 as part of their invasion of Russia in World War II. After their arrival, Gens was put in charge of the Jewish hospital. The occupying authorities ordered the creation of the Judenrat, or Jewish Council, with community-selected members. In early September 1941, the Germans murdered most of the Judenrat, which left the Jewish community leaderless before and during the relocation of the Jews into two ghettos in Vilnius.Porat "Jewish Councils" Modern Judaism pp. 151–152 During this period, the hospital sheltered several prominent Jews from Vilnius. When the ghettos were formed, the Jewish hospital was included within the confines of the larger ghetto, an unusual arrangement for a Nazi-period ghetto. Most ghettos were organized to exclude any Jewish hospitals, forcing the inhabitants to either do without a hospital or set up a makeshift one.Beinfeld "Health Care" Holocaust and Genocide Studies p. 3
Chief of the Vilnius Ghetto police
In September 1941, Gens was named the commander of the Jewish Ghetto Police for the Vilnius Ghetto by the head of the new Judenrat, Anatol Friend. Officially, the duties of Gens and his policemen were to carry out German and Judenrat orders and provide law enforcement for the inhabitants of the ghetto. Included in their first duty, and considered by the occupiers as the single most important task, was the uncovering of any anti-German activity in the ghetto.Shneidman Three Tragic Heroes p. 114
The police force comprised around 200 men at the start,Rojowska and Dean "Wilno" Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos II and Gens appointed Salk Dessler as his deputy commandant. Other chief subordinates included Joseph Muszkat and Meir Levas. Dessler was a Revisionist Zionist, and Muszkat and Levas had been members of the Betar, the youth movement of the Revisionist Zionists.Arad Holocaust in the Soviet Union p. 48 The police force included many other former Betar members, and this may have been because Gens favored people coming from his own political leanings. This led to a conflict with the Bund, another Jewish political group. The Bund appears to have wanted the police force to be more of a militia, with Gens and his supporters wishing it to be a more conventional police force. After some initial political wrangling, Gens' faction won, but the Bundists remained strong in the Judenrat.Arad Ghetto in Flames pp. 126–127
Aktions of 1941 The smaller ghetto was liquidated in mid-October 1941, which left the larger one. From late October to December 1941, the ghetto was subject to Aktions, selections of people for deportation and execution in Ponary. Gens was afraid that the actions of the Germans would result in a widespread massacre. He persuaded the Gestapo to let the Jewish police round up the deportees.Shneidman Three Tragic Heroes pp. 112–113 Gens, backed by the Jewish police force, was responsible for deciding who was to be sent for resettlement and execution. In October, this brought him into conflict with the ghetto's rabbis, who argued Gens was acting against Jewish law. Gens disagreed and considered it to be lawful to sacrifice some people to save others.Dawidowicz War Against the Jews p. 285
During the deportations, he tried to secure more work permits from the Germans, but they refused to issue them.Gilbert Holocaust p. 216 He attempted to protect those he could. During the Aktion on 3–5 November, in which the paperwork of everyone in the ghetto was checked, holders of work passes – which allowed the holder to protect a spouse and only two children under 16 – were checked, and anyone not listed on someone's work permit was sent to Ponary. At one point, while Gens was checking permits, a family with three children went through the checkpoint, and Gens pulled aside the third child. Shortly afterwards, a family with only one child passed through the checkpoint. Gens began berating the father for losing track of his second child and pushed the third child from the first family into the second family. This incident took place under the supervision of German officials, who did not intervene.Arad Ghetto in Flames p. 154
All those removed from the ghetto were taken to Ponary, where they were killed.Gilbert Holocaust p. 228 The last deportation took place on 21 December 1941, leaving between 12,500Dawidowicz War Against the Jews pp. 288–289 and 17,200 residents in the ghetto. Of those, about 3,000 were "illegal", or residents without a work permit. At least 60,000 Jews had lived in Vilnius when the German occupation began.Porat "Jewish Councils" Modern Judaism p. 157
Gens and the Judenrat in the larger ghetto were aware of the executions in Ponary by the end of September 1941, when survivors began returning to the ghetto. The survivors, some of them wounded and all of them female, were mostly brought to Gens, and perhaps to the Judenrat, to whom they relayed their stories. Gens urged them to keep quiet, and some of the wounded were kept in the hospital to prevent them from repeating their stories.Arad Ghetto in Flames pp. 177–178 Knowledge of the massacres at Ponary became common in the ghetto by late December 1941 or early January 1942.Arad Ghetto in Flames p. 182
Relations with the Judenrat
After the Aktions in late 1941, no further large-scale deportations or other massacres took place in the Vilnius Ghetto. This period of calm lasted throughout 1942 and early 1943. During this period, Gens' department oversaw the three police precincts the ghetto had been divided into, as well as the ghetto's prison. The police force in early 1942 had about 200 policemen.Arad Ghetto in Flames pp. 273–275
During early 1942, Gens became involved in a power struggle with the head of the Judenrat, Anatol Friend. Friend had not been involved in Vilnius' Jewish organizations prior to the German invasion, and did not have much support from the ghetto's inhabitants.Arad Ghetto in Flames pp. 284–285 Gens was viewed favorably by the ghetto residents, partly because he lived in the ghetto when he could have escaped. Over time, Gens and the police force encroached on the functions of the Judenrat.Arad Ghetto in Flames pp. 286–287 The Germans backed Gens' efforts to secure more power, and implied that he was not responsible to the Judenrat, and that the Judenrat had no power over Gens or the Jewish policemen.Arad Ghetto in Flames p. 289