Les dilemmes moraux de la collaboration des conseils juifs avec les autorités allemandes dans les ghettos de l’Europe occupée : La spécificité des Conseils juifs dans le cadre de la collaboration avec les Allemands durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale

Résumé 0

This article does not describe the structures and functioning of the Judenräte in occupied Europe, nor does it present the fates of the Council of Elders’ leaders ; and it does not describe the activity of the Jewish bureaucracy within a situation of organized illegality into which the Germans forced it. Instead the author is above all interested in the ethical dimension of the cooperation between the Judenräte and Nazi authorities. He traces the dynamics of this cooperation, starting with the pure administrative pragmatism of the Judenräte to their direct participation in the deportations. He points out the specific situation of the Judenräte, and how they resisted being willingly driven into collaboration. The crux of this exceptional situation lies in the inability to get out from a trap that the Jewish communities and their representatives found themselves. On the one hand, the Germans carved out a role for the Judenräte in their genocidial policies with the aim of minimalizing their own efforts (e.g. the issues of administration, supply, policing and eventually deportations laid heavily on the Jews’ shoulders). On the other hand, the more the Judenräte cooperated with the hated authorities, the more useful they became for the Jewish community (for social welfare, health service, etc.). With the beginning of the mass deportations, the Judenräte’s situation changed radically. Based on the examples of Czerniakow and Rumkowski, the author writes about the basic strategies of Jewish leaders (the strategy of limited consent or opposition, as well as the strategy of survival through work). In conclusion, he draws attention to the fact that the moral dilemmas the Judenräte faced reflects an enclosed experience, which uncovers the core of our own existence : the truth about the dark ambiguity of human existence – torn between good and evil.