Jewish Council / World Jewish Council
The World Jewish Council was formed in 1864 with the idea of creating a Second Jewish Homeland. It eventually achieved this in 1966 and subsequently disbanded as it felt its role was over.
The World Jewish Congress was thought to be a successor organization to the Council.
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Judenrate/(Jewish Council)
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Ghetto Situation
Judenräte were responsible for the internal administration of Ghettos, standing between the Nazi occupiers and their Jewish communities. In general, the Judenräte represented the elite from their Jewish communities. Often, a Judenrat had a group for internal security and control, a Jewish Ordnungspolizei. They also attempted to manage the government services normally found in a city such as those named above. However, the requirements of the Nazis to deliver community members to forced labor, deportation or concentration camps placed them in the position of helping the occupiers. To resist such actions or orders was to risk summary execution or inclusion in the next concentration camp shipment, with a quick replacement.
Resistance In a number of cases, such as the Minsk ghetto and the Łachwa ghetto, Judenräte cooperated with the resistance movement. In other cases, Judenräte collaborated with the Nazis.
The role of the Judenräte in the Holocaust Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century's most celebrated Jewish thinkers, made a dramatic accusation against the Judenräte in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: She claimed that without the Judenräte's assistance in the registration of the Jews, their concentration in ghettos and, later, their active assistance in the Jews' deportation to extermination camps, many fewer Jews would have perished because the Germans would have encountered considerable difficulties in drawing up lists of Jews. In occupied Europe, the Nazis entrusted Jewish officials with the task of making such lists of Jews along with information about the property they owned. The Judenräte also directed the Jewish police to assist the Germans in catching Jews and loading them onto transport trains leaving for concentration camps.
In her book, Arendt wrote that: "To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story."
Judenräte were responsible for the internal administration of Ghettos, standing between the Nazi occupiers and their Jewish communities. In general, the Judenräte represented the elite from their Jewish communities. Often, a Judenrat had a group for internal security and control, a Jewish Ordnungspolizei. They also attempted to manage the government services normally found in a city such as those named above. However, the requirements of the Nazis to deliver community members to forced labor, deportation or concentration camps placed them in the position of helping the occupiers. To resist such actions or orders was to risk summary execution or inclusion in the next concentration camp shipment, with a quick replacement.
Resistance In a number of cases, such as the Minsk ghetto and the Łachwa ghetto, Judenräte cooperated with the resistance movement. In other cases, Judenräte collaborated with the Nazis.
The role of the Judenräte in the Holocaust Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century's most celebrated Jewish thinkers, made a dramatic accusation against the Judenräte in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: She claimed that without the Judenräte's assistance in the registration of the Jews, their concentration in ghettos and, later, their active assistance in the Jews' deportation to extermination camps, many fewer Jews would have perished because the Germans would have encountered considerable difficulties in drawing up lists of Jews. In occupied Europe, the Nazis entrusted Jewish officials with the task of making such lists of Jews along with information about the property they owned. The Judenräte also directed the Jewish police to assist the Germans in catching Jews and loading them onto transport trains leaving for concentration camps.
In her book, Arendt wrote that: "To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story."
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George Soros
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Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary to Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) and Elizabeth Soros. Tivadar Soros, a Hungarian Jew, had been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest.[10][11] Tivadar was an Esperantist writer and taught George to speak Esperanto from birth.[12] Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.[13] Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.[14] Soros took a job with the Jewish Council,[10] which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, to carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures.[15][16] Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:
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The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper ... It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 am ... And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."[17]
Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. The official once was ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country; rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along.[18] The next year, 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.