The Judenrat in Warsaw, also known as the Jewish Council in Warsaw (; or ) was a Judenrat established by the German occupation authorities in October 1939. It was tasked with implementing German directives affecting the Jewish population in Warsaw.
From autumn 1940, following the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Judenrat assumed responsibility for the ghetto's internal administration. The council was chaired by Adam Czerniaków until his suicide on 23 July 1942, after which Marek Lichtenbaum succeeded him.
The Judenrat operated under strict German supervision and within severe constraints. Initially subordinate to German police authorities, it later fell under civilian administration, represented among others by Heinz Auerswald, who was appointed Commissioner for the Jewish Residential District in May 1941. The council faced intense criticism from Jewish resistance movement, social self-help organizations, and much of the ghetto population. It was accused of corruption, nepotism, incompetence, favoritism toward wealthier residents, promoting assimilationist tendencies, and excessive subservience – or even collaboration – with the occupying authorities. Such criticisms, however, often did not fully account for the extreme conditions and highly limited options available to the Judenrat.
With the commencement of Grossaktion Warsaw in summer 1942, the Judenrat's role and influence diminished significantly. It ceased to function during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. None of its members survived the war.
Origins and establishment
Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland began on 1 September 1939. In the initial weeks of the occupation, as German forces advanced through Polish territory, members of the Einsatzgruppen systematically established provisional "Jewish councils" () in occupied localities. This practice was formalised on 21 September 1939 at a conference convened in Berlin under the direction of SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, attended by senior department heads of the Reich Security Main Office and commanders of Einsatzgruppen deployed in Poland. These directives outlined the establishment, composition, and functions of the Judenräte. The policy of creating Jewish administrative bodies to serve as intermediaries for implementing anti-Jewish measures had previously been applied in Austria following the Anschluss in 1938.
In Warsaw, amid widespread panic and mass evacuation, the president of the Jewish community, , fled the city. Effective authority passed to Adam Czerniaków, a member of the community's provisional board. This arrangement was soon endorsed by Polish authorities. On 20 September, Warsaw's Civil Commissioner, Stefan Starzyński, directed the Jewish community councillors to support Czerniaków as provisional chairman, with Marek Lichtenbaum as deputy. Three days later, Starzyński formally appointed Czerniaków commissary president.
German forces entered Warsaw on 1 October 1939. Accompanying the Wehrmacht units in the city were operatives of Einsatzgruppe IV (EG IV). To establish a Jewish administrative body, they immediately began identifying members of the Jewish elite. For this purpose, among other actions, members of the Zamenhof family were detained and interrogated.
On 4 October, several SS officers arrived at the Jewish community headquarters seeking its "administrator." They expelled all Jews from the building, seized the keys, and looted the treasury (approximately 90,000 PLN). Meanwhile, Czerniaków had arrived at the community headquarters to organise the funeral of Samuel Dickstein. Upon being informed of the incident, it was agreed that the community employees would disperse to their homes while Czerniaków entered the building to speak with the Germans. He was detained and taken to the headquarters of EG IV in the building at 25 Jan Szuch Avenue. There, SS-Obersturmbannführer Josef Meisinger ordered him to appoint a 24-member Council of Elders and to assume its leadership.
Czerniaków succeeded in compiling the list of 24 Judenrat members demanded by the Germans. Through his efforts, the initial composition of the Jewish Council included prominent representatives of the Warsaw Jewish community and reflected a relatively broad socio-political spectrum. The date of the official establishment of the Judenrat is given as 6 or 7 October. The official reactivation of the Jewish community and the inaugural meeting of the Judenrat took place in the presence of Germans on 15 October 1939 (according to other sources, on 10 October).
Katarzyna Person states that the decree establishing the Warsaw Judenrat was issued by Governor-General Hans Frank on 28 November 1939. This interpretation is, however, contested by Marcin Urynowicz, who points out that Frank's regulation of that date concerning the creation of Judenräte did not apply to Warsaw and Kraków.
History Tasks and subordination to German authorities For propaganda purposes, the German occupation authorities portrayed the Judenräte as organs of Jewish self-government that represented the Jewish population. In reality, they expected the councils to do nothing more than strictly enforce German orders and regulations directed against Jews. In line with the "leadership principle" () applied throughout the Third Reich, the chairman of the Jewish Council bore personal responsibility for the functioning of its administrative apparatus. German regulations held him and his deputy accountable for "receiving orders from the German authorities" and for "conscientiously carrying them out in full scope", while requiring "Jews, male and female, to obey instructions issued by the Jewish Council for the purpose of implementing German ordinances".
In the initial period of its activity, the tasks of the Warsaw Judenrat included, among others, conducting a census of the Jewish population and, subsequently, supplying Jewish forced labourers to the German authorities. Its responsibilities also encompassed welfare activities, provisioning, administrative functions, and mediation in establishing craft workshops in the area that would later become the ghetto. The Judenrat was headquartered in the main building of the Jewish Community in Warsaw at 26/28 .
During the inaugural meeting of the Warsaw Judenrat, an SS officer (most likely SS-Hauptsturmführer Bernhard Baatz) informed the councillors that they were entirely subordinate to the Sicherheitspolizei and prohibited them from contacting representatives of other occupation authorities. Until January 1940, operatives of Einsatzgruppe IV – and, after its dissolution, the office of the Commander of the Security Police and SD in the Warsaw District (, KdS) – exercised near-absolute control over the Warsaw Judenrat. Initially, the Einsatzgruppe IV officer responsible for "Jewish affairs" was Bernhard Baatz. Later, a dedicated sub-section (IV B 4) for "Jewish affairs" (the so-called Judenreferat) was established within the KdS office, headed successively by and Gerhard Mende.
At the turn of 1939 and 1940, supervision over the Warsaw Judenrat gradually shifted to the German civilian authorities, though the SS formally accepted this arrangement only in early June 1940. Until October of that year, the Judenrat was subordinate to the German municipal authorities, successively under commissary president of Warsaw, , and Stadthauptmann . At the same time, to Leist's displeasure, officials from the governor's office in the Warsaw District also claimed the right to issue orders to the Jewish Council. Relations between Leist and chairman Adam Czerniaków were generally cordial.
In October 1940, as the process of ghettoising Warsaw's Jews began, authority over the Judenrat passed to the Resettlement Department () in the office of the governor of the Warsaw District, headed by Waldemar Schön. The branch office of the Umsiedlungsamt in the Warsaw Ghetto, which maintained direct contact with the Judenrat, was the so-called Transfer Office (). This body not only issued orders to the Judenrat but also controlled all commodity traffic between the ghetto and the "Aryan side". Relations between Schön and Czerniaków were exceptionally poor; during Schön's tenure, the Judenrat chairman was beaten twice and briefly arrested.
On 15 March 1941, the Umsiedlungsamt was dissolved. Its competencies were redistributed among several departments, and Schön was transferred to head the Internal Affairs Department in the governor's office. After a two-month transitional period – during which Schön unsuccessfully attempted to have his former deputy, Otto Mohns, assume supervision over "Jewish affairs" – Governor Ludwig Fischer appointed Heinz Auerswald as Commissioner for the Jewish Residential District () on 14 May 1941. The legal basis was a regulation issued by Governor-General Hans Frank on 19 April 1941, which granted the Judenrat chairman the same rights as the mayor of the Polish district in Warsaw while subordinating him to the German commissioner. The Transferstelle then became an auxiliary organ of the commissioner's office. Czerniaków initially placed some hope in Auerswald's appointment, as the new commissioner – especially compared to Schön – was at first seen as pragmatic and relatively well-disposed toward Jews. For a time, the Judenrat chairman believed he had established a degree of personal understanding with him. Over time, however, Auerswald revealed himself as a careerist and ruthless executor of Nazi anti-Jewish policy.
Meanwhile, the SS continued to interfere in ghetto affairs. Czerniaków was required to appear weekly at the Warsaw KdS office to report to the heads of the Judenreferat, Karl Georg Brandt and Gerhard Mende, accompanied by the commander of the Jewish Ghetto Police, Józef Szeryński. He also occasionally met with other SS functionaries, including the first commanders of the SD and Sicherheitspolizei in Warsaw – Josef Meisinger and Johannes Hermann Müller – as well as the head of the Warsaw SD structures, Dr. Ernst Kah.
In the second half of 1942, with the launch of the "final solution to the Jewish question", the SS regained full authority over Jewish matters. During Grossaktion Warsaw in summer 1942, undivided power in the ghetto was exercised by two German "resettlement staffs": one from Lublin, commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann Höfle and composed of SS personnel from the Operation Reinhard staff, and the Warsaw staff, led by Brandt and Mende of the KdS "Jewish section".
After the conclusion of Grossaktion Warsaw, the Transferstelle and the office of the Commissioner for the Jewish Residential District continued to exist for some time; however, the decisive voice in all matters concerning the ghetto henceforth belonged to Brandt and other functionaries of the Warsaw KdS, who operated from the so-called Befehlstelle at 103 .
Relations with the Polish Municipal Administration The ghetto remained connected to the rest of Warsaw through a network of infrastructural, communal, and financial ties. Among other measures, the Polish Municipal Administration partially covered social welfare expenses in the ghetto using funds from the Main Welfare Council, which it administered. In return, ghetto inhabitants were required to pay property taxes, other local taxes and fees, and utility bills for gas, water, electricity, and similar services.
For these reasons, the Judenrat maintained contacts with the Polish Municipal Administration, which managed Warsaw's communal economy under German supervision. Chairman Adam Czerniaków repeatedly met with the commissary mayor Julian Kulski and his subordinates. Relations between Czerniaków and Kulski were very good. Czerniaków accepted the informal primacy of the Municipal Administration over the Judenrat – even after the Germans granted him in 1941 a position formally equivalent to Kulski's. He also sought to demonstrate loyalty to the Polish administration by informing it of his plans.