page_title: Collaboration in German-occupied Poland
section_title: Jewish collaborators
hierarchical_section_title: Collaboration in German-occupied Poland / Collaboration by ethnic minorities / Jewish collaborators
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Funkcjonariusze Urzędu do Walki z Lichwą i Spekulacją (Trzynastki) w getcie warszawskim English: Employees of the Trzynastka in the Warsaw Ghetto
context_page_description: Throughout World War II, Poland was a member of the Allied coalition that fought Nazi Germany. During the German occupation of Poland, some citizens of all its major ethnic groups collaborated with the Germans. Estimates of the number of collaborators vary. Collaboration in Poland was less institutionalized than in some other countries, and has been described as marginal. During and after the war, the Polish State and the Resistance movement punished collaborators, with thousands sentenced to death.
context_section_description: A minority of Jews chose to collaborate with the Germans. Jews helped the Germans in return for limited freedom, safety and other compensation (food, money) for the collaborators and their relatives. Some were motivated purely by self-interest, such as individual survival, revenge, or greed; others were coerced into collaborating with the Germans.
  The Judenräte (s. Judenrat, literally "Jewish council") were Jewish-run governing bodies set up by the Nazi authorities in Jewish ghettos across German-occupied Poland. The Judenräte functioned as a self-enforcing intermediary and were used by the Germans to control the Jewish population and to manage the ghetto's day-to-day administration. The Germans also required Judenräte to confiscate property, organize forced labor, collect information on the Jewish population and facilitate deportations to extermination camps.   In some cases, Judenrat members exploited their positions to engage in bribery and other abuses. In the Łódź Ghetto, the reign of Judenrat head Chaim Rumkowski was particularly inhumane, as he was known to get rid of his political opponents by submitting their names for deportation to concentration camps, hoard food rations, and sexually abuse Jewish girls. Tadeusz Piotrowski cited Jewish survivor Baruch Milch who wrote that "Judenrat became an instrument in the hand of the Gestapo for extermination of the Jews... I do not know of a single instance when the Judenrat would help some Jew in a disinterested manner." through Piotrowski cautions that "Milch's is a particular account of a particular place and time... the behavior of Junderat members was not uniform."  Political theorist Hannah Arendt stated that without the assistance of the Judenräte, the German authorities would have encountered considerable difficulties in drawing up detailed lists of the Jewish population, thus allowing for at least some Jews to avoid deportation.
  The Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) were volunteers recruited from among Jews living in the ghettos who could be relied on to follow German orders. They were issued batons, official armbands, caps, and badges, and were responsible for public order in the ghetto. Also, the policemen were used by the Germans for securing the deportation of other Jews to concentration camps. The numbers of Jewish police varied greatly depending on the location, with the Warsaw Ghetto numbering about 2,500, Łódź Ghetto 1,200 and smaller ghettos such as that at Lwów about 500. Historian and Warsaw Ghetto archivist Emanuel Ringelblum described the cruelty of the Jewish Ghetto Police as "at times greater than that of the Germans", concluding that this formation's members distinguished themselves by their shocking corruption and immorality.
  In Warsaw, the collaborationist groups Żagiew and Group 13, led by Abraham Gancwajch and colloquially known as the "Jewish Gestapo", inflicted considerable damage on both Jewish and Polish underground resistance movements. Over a thousand such Jewish Nazi collaborators, some armed with firearms, served under the German Gestapo as informers on Polish resistance efforts to hide Jews, and engaged in racketeering, blackmail, and extortion in the Warsaw Ghetto. A 70-strong group led by a Jewish collaborator called Hening was tasked with operating against the Polish resistance, and was quartered at the Gestapo's Warsaw headquarters on ulica Szucha (Szuch Street). Similar groups and individuals operated in towns and cities across German-occupied Poland — including Józef Diamand in Kraków and Szama Grajer in Lublin. It is estimated that at the end of 1941 and the start of 1942 there were some 15,000 "Jewish Gestapo" agents in the General Government.
  Jewish agent-provocateurs were used by the Germans to bait Jews hiding outside of the ghettos, turn them over to the Germans, and occasionally entrap Poles who were helping the Jews. Perhaps the largest of such actions involved agents from the Żagiew network, who falsely promised Jews hiding in Warsaw following its ghetto's liquidation and who held or were hoping to obtain 
caption: Group 13, a Jewish collaborationist organization in the Warsaw Ghetto, which reported directly to the German Gestapo, 1941
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "CanoScan LiDE 210", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ViewNX 2.1 W", "Image DateTime": "2018:02:14 00:26:38", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2282", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4878", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4599", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:02:13 17:46:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2288", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1243", "EXIF FileSource": "Reflection Print Scanner", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}