Interesting article from a 1963
issue of TIME Magazine,
of the Jewish police in the
Bedzin Ghetto, Poland
"In the four-month trial of Adolf Eichmann, one dark chapter of the Nazi holocaust was never fully brought out: the rule of Nazi-organized councils of Jewish elders in European ghettos. Backed by their own high-booted Jewish police, the councils compiled death lists of Jews and rounded up their own people for deportation to Nazi extermination camps. Refusal to help Eichmann's "transportation" experts would have meant immediate death, but always there was the agonizing moral dilemma: even under duress, was cooperation not betrayal? Last week Israeli Prosecutor David Libai gave the state's answer in the first trial of a Jewish policeman who served the Nazis. Its answer was yes.
In the dock of a tiny, drab Tel
Aviv courtroom, head buried in
his hands, sat the assistant
conductor of the Israel National
Opera. Hirsch Barenblat. 48,
former commander of the Jewish
police in Bedzin. Poland. For
two years after he managed to
get to Israel in 1958. Barenblat
attracted no particular
attention. Then, during
introductions at a concert in a
kibbutz, a member of the
audience suddenly leaped up and
shouted: "Barenblat, I remember
you! You murdered Jews!" The
concert broke up amidst angry
confusion. In 1961, after a
police investigation. Barenblat
was arrested and charged under
the Israeli law punishing Nazis
and their collaborators who were
members of "hostile
organizations"—the same law
under which Eichmann was tried
as a Gestapo member, and which
the government now wants
extended to include the Jewish
police. In Barenblat's case, the
maximum penalty would be seven
to ten years in prison on each
of twelve specific accusations
of persecution.
On the opening day of what
looked to be a drawn-out trial,
a Tel Aviv carpenter tearfully
recalled that Barenblat's Jewish
police once trooped back from a
round-up in Bedzin "loudly
singing, as if from a victorious
engagement." described how they
herded Jewish men. women and
children into trucks headed for
Auschwitz. "Even the streets
wept." the witness said.
Prosecutor Libai conceded that
Barenblat saved "maybe ten or 20
Jews.'' but added: "This court
will have to decide whether to
save his own soul he was
entitled to carry out the tasks
of the Jewish police."
Defense Attorney Arieh Rosenblum.
supporting Barenblat's plea of
innocence, said that his conduct was
justifiable, and argued that he was
acquitted of collaborationist
charges after the war,, by a "
Polish court. "The Jewish police."
Rosenblum said, "cannot be regarded
as hostile to the Jewish people.
Their intention was not hostility.
They did not seek to exterminate
Jews; they served what they deemed
the best interests of the Jewish
community under the worst possible
circumstances.""
Hirsch Barenblat
Details of Hirsch Barenblat
or his trial are few, but he
was found guilty
and sentenced to five years
imprisonment in February
1963.
Only for his conviction to
be quashed less than 3
months later
Stories from the New York
Times here
See Also:
Jews in the
Warsaw Ghetto
feared the
Jewish police
far more than
they feared the
Nazi SS
Jews founded the
Jewish ghettos
in Poland,
the Zionists
thought them
wonderful
