ISAAC CZESLER THE JUDENRAT’S MINUTES AND ORDERS Published by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem Volume 4 of the documents of Yad Vashem, published in Jerusalem in 1962, carries the title: * 1 סת‎ Path of the Judenrat,’ which is entirely devoted to ‘‘the minutes of the meetings and announcements to the Jewish popula- tion of the Bialystok ghetto by the Judenrat.”’ The author, Nachman Blumental, asserts that there is a dearth of primary sources describing the de- struction of Eastern European Jewry during World War II. Only a few ghettos in the larger cities were able, with great ingenuity, to preserve documents. Most other communities failed to leave anything behind because the Nazis managed to destroy most of the Judenrat archives in the various ghettos. The records that were recovered either had been hidden in undetectable places so the Nazis would be unable to burn them or were retrieved in the files of German ministries after the war. The Jewish communi- ties that took great pains to safeguard these materials had a double purpose in mind: providing evidence against Nazi war criminals in future prosecutions and leaving an historical record for succeeding generations of Jews, which would remind them never to forgive or forget the most barbaric crimes ever perpetrated against an entire people by another nation. Not only did these archives contain minutes of meetings and announce- ments of the Judenrat but also diaries and letters of individuals and correspondence between the Judenrat and the Gestapo within the ghettos themselves. The archives of the Bialystok Judenrat occupy a prominent place in the Yad Vashem collection. While survivors like Chajke Grosman, Srolke Kot, Bronja Klibarski, Dr. Szymon Datner, Berel Mark, Refoel Rajzner, Dowid Klementynowski and others provided a rich bibliography about the Holocaust in Bialystok, it is still interesting to examine the minutes of the Judenrat meetings. Mordechaj Tenenbaum-Tamarof foresaw that the Bialystok ghetto would be destroyed. It was up to him, as its archivist, to ensure their retrievability after the war. He entrusted the documents to a female friend and a Jewish doctor who had reliable connections outside the ghetto. After the war, the papers were recovered by these individuals, and eventually made their way to Israel, where they were later stored by the Yad Vashem documentation center. The condition of the records was quite good. On the whole, they were written in a clear Yiddish. The information they provide, covering the period from July 8, 1941, to April 1, 1943, offers a penetrating insight into life in the ghetto — particularly Jewish The Bialystoker Memorial Book resourcefulness, endurance, ingenuity and the inde- structible will to survive and transcend adversity. It is not my intention to pass judgment on the actions of the Judenrat in the Bialystok ghetto. In hind- sight, we can always find fault with one or another deci- sion. It is clear, however, that the Judenrat often succeeded in having adverse edicts rescinded or their effects mitigated. We must be aware that life in the ghetto was characterized by increasingly harsh rules and regulations issued every day, making the existence of the masses in a tight, overcrowded, fenced-in section of Bialystok more and more hopeless and intolerable. In the minutes of Judenrat meetings, we often find that Rabbi Rozenman and Efrajim Barasz chided the population for being lax in reporting to work. At one meeting in the hall of the Linas Hatzedek, Dr. Rozen- man proclaimed in a doomsday tone, “An orgy of rebellion is rampant throughout the ghetto. The rules are disobeyed. People do not show up for work. All of this will rain destruction upon our heads.” At the same meeting, Barasz made the following statement: ‘“‘Several weeks ago, the German labor authority demanded two hundred women for work. From a pool of six thousand, it was not possible to find the necessary two hundred. Only after the police threat- ened to line up all the unemployed in one place and shoot them did the ghetto provide the two hundred women. We later discovered that people hid these women in their homes. It seems a battle 1s being waged between the Judenrat and the people...When the women were taken to work on the wagons, others ran after them shouting ‘Shma Yisroel. Let us hope that this make-believe ‘Shma Yisroel’ will not bring the day closer when we will all have to utter the true ‘Shma Yisroel!’ ....”

It is interesting to note that in all of its minutes and announcements, the Judenrat made no mention of the evacuations to Treblinka, evidently because it was afraid to reveal the truth. Moreover, Izchok Malmed’s tragedy was never acknowledged within the documents. [The details of Malmed’s heroism will be provided later on.] There are, however, brief allusions in cryptic form to some of the grisly events that took place, such as ‘the last difficult days we endured”’ and in a terse foot- note: ‘2-5-1943 until 2-12-1943, an operation in Bialy- stok...ten thousand Jews evacuated to Treblinka... nine hundred Jews shot on the spot.” In two announcements to the people, it was revealed that five Jews, accused of stealing goods from a factory, were hung. Other notices contained reports of ten Jews flogged by the Nazis for 63