Newburyport Public Library

The clandestine history of the Kovno Jewish ghetto police, by anonymous members of the Kovno Jewish ghetto police ; translated and edited by Samuel Schalkowsky ; Introduction by Samuel D. Kassow ; published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C>

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-377) and index

illustrationsmaps

index present

non fiction

The clandestine history of the Kovno Jewish ghetto police

bibliography

857277378

by anonymous members of the Kovno Jewish ghetto police ; translated and edited by Samuel Schalkowsky ; Introduction by Samuel D. Kassow ; published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C>

"As a force that had to serve two masters, both the Jewish population of the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania and its German occupiers, the Kovno Jewish ghetto police walked a fine line between helping Jews survive and meeting Nazi orders. In 1942 and 1943 some of its members secretly composed this history and buried it in tin boxes. The book offers a rare glimpse into the complex situation faced by the ghetto leadership and the Jewish policemen, caught between carrying out the demands of the Germans and mollifying the anger and frustration of their own people. It details the creation and organization of the ghetto, the violent German attacks on the population in the summer of 1941, the periodic selections of Jews to be deported and killed, the labor required of the surviving Jewish population, and the efforts of the police to provide a semblance of stability. The secret history tells a dramatic and complicated story, defending the actions of the police force on one page and berating its leadership on the next. A substantial introduction by distinguished historian Samuel D. Kassow places this powerful work within the context of the history of the Kovno Jewish community and its experience and fate at the hands of the Nazis"--Provided by the publisher

Introduction -- The Prehistory of the Kovno Ghetto -- The Gruesome Period from the Beginning of the Ghetto to the Great Action -- Ghetto Situation after the Great Action (The survivor must live ... ) -- The Elder Council, the Ghetto Institutions, the Police, and the Ghetto Population: Mutual Interrelationships -- Development of the Administrative Apparatus and of the Police after the Action -- The Ghetto Guard and the Jewish Police -- The Ghetto during the Time of the NSKK, Wiedmann, and Hermann (Spring and Summer 1942) -- The Police in the Spring and Summer of 1942 (the Caspi Period) -- The Ghetto in the Times of Koeppen, Miller, and the Vienna Protective Police (Schutz Polizei) -- The Police in the Last Quarter of 1942