Jewish Police in concentration camps

[Panzermahn]

Can anyone provide any details including statistics as well as roster of command of jewish police in concentration camps?

In fact, i do need some reference sources for jewish police in concentration camps..

I find that this matter is strangely or conveniently not mentioned by many famous authors such as Hilberg, Lipstadt, Goldhagen,...and i find it more stranger that the Simon Wiesenthal centre did publicize this issue..

What usually happened to Jewish police when the camps are liberated and the war has ended?..

And yesterday, i did watch the movie Pianist again, and is it true that this Jewish police usually betray (sorry i didn't knew what word to say) other jews to save the lives of their family?

But the jewish policeman saved Spilzmann's live...

[chalutzim]

(...) And yesterday, i did watch the movie Pianist again, and is it true that this Jewish police usually betray (sorry i didn't knew what word to say) other jews to save the lives of their family?

But the jewish policeman saved Spilzmann's live...

"Betray" is the right word, panzermahn. Don't worry. They did this to save their lifes or their families'. I'm not trying to justify their behaviour in any way.

Spilzmann was spared only because his popularity.

Considering your past posts, I beg you to be more respectfull regarding this particular matter, or at least less childish. I would like to see how you would behave if caught in that nightmare.

[David Thompson]

panzermahn -- I've heard of Jewish police only in the context of the ghettos of eastern Europe. In the concentration camps, the Nazis used hardened criminals, bearing the title "kapo," to help administer the camps and control the other prisoners. I have never heard that the kapos were specifically Jewish.

At the end of the war, a number of kapos were murdered by other prisoners. Others were put on trial by the western allies for war crimes and were executed or sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment.

[Deterance]

Can anyone provide any details including statistics as well as roster of command of jewish police in concentration camps?

I saw a book titled like Am I a Murderer?, The memoirs of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman This book would be very interesting.

The collaboration of some Jews is nothing special. Every society has self centered people who will harm, steal from, or exploit their neighbors if given the oppurtunity. They are about 1-3% of the population and include career criminals. Add war time stress and the percentage increases.

I only have small pieces of general information that is not detailed and with no sources...

1. I believe that the Chief of the Jewish police in the Warsaw Ghetto was killed by Jewish reistance.

2. I read that senior Jewish police men of Krakow were lured to their death in a Gestapo ambush after being allowed to leave area. Police leader was given a revovler by the Germans (With no firing pin!!) Source said that action may have been independeant as Gestapo men wanted loot that the police were carrying.

[alsaco]

A ghetto was very different of a KZ

The germans organised ghettos claiming that they wanted the Jews to live in separate quarters, with theit own organisation.
Ghettos had a jewish administration, and a jewish police

The KZ were part of the german justice administration. People interned were supposed to be criminals, and their control was entirely in the hands of german supervision; There were some delegation of authority to kapos, medics or specialists, but nothing like a special police. Anyway the camps mixing many nationalities, a jewish, german, italian, belgian or french police in a KZ wouls be a nonsense.

[michael mills]

One origin that has been suggested for the otherwise inexplicable word "Kapo" is that it is a contraction of "Kazett-Polizei" = KZ-Polizei = Konzentrationslager-Polizei = Concentration Camp Police. (That is, the same sort of word formation as GestaPO, SiPO, OrPO, SchuPO).

That might indicate that the Kapos were regarded by the camp administration as a sort of police. Their function was to supervise camp inmates at their work details, and they had the power to punish the men under their supervision for any infraction of the rules and for shirking on the job, including the power to mete out the death penalty.

The KZ-Polizei has to be distinguished from the Jewish police forces (Ordnungs-Dienst) set up in the ghettos, and controlled by the Judenrat of each ghetto. As has been stated by other posters, members of the KZ-Polizei could be of any ethnicity, although some were certainly Jewish.

The Kapo of the punishment block at Auschwitz main camp, the so-called "Bunker Jakob", was a Jewish boxer.

[Landser]

Michal M. wrote:

<<<That might indicate that the Kapos were regarded by the camp administration as a sort of police. Their function was to supervise camp inmates at their work details, and they had the power to punish the men under their supervision for any infraction of the rules and for shirking on the job, including the power to mete out the death penalty.>>>


In addition to that I know first hand from former SS guards that
they were never deployed inside the camp.They were only with work details for outside duties.At least that was the case in Dachau.

[chalutzim]

(...) In addition to that I know first hand from former SS guards that they were never deployed inside the camp.They were only with work details for outside duties.At least that was the case in Dachau.

Virtual soldier, if you are admittedly able only to give a specific example, Dachau, why state "they were never deployed inside the camp"?

[Landser]

Sorry my virtual surfer, but that was the policy in that camp,wether you like it or not.

Capito !!!