Talk:Judenrat

Need and basis for expansion
The original article spoke only about Judenrats in Polish territory. I added USSR territory. Were they in other countries and did they differ? Mikkalai 16:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the Judenrats were much worse than this article suggests - it is quite sympathetic to them. Seen The Pianist?


 * They are really quite an important part of Holocaust history, there should be more to this article.


 * There were indeed Judenräte (Judenrats) in every country under Nazi occupation. The moral analyses of the actions of the different Judenräte are very complex and have been discussed for many years, following Raul Hilberg's seminal work "The Destruction of the European Jews;" it is way too difficult a subject to examine in this brief comment. In any case, a Hollywood film, full of historical fictions, would not be a source worth citing (I don't mean to be rude). But I do agree with the comment that there ought to be a significant article on the Judenrate, both their history and a bibliographical list on the moral questions. Unfortunately, this is an area of Holocaust history about which I do not feel qualified to write. A major work to start with is Isaiah Trunk's "Judenrat," which I believe to be the major work on this subject, as of this date.66.108.4.183 21:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth


 * Working within the Jewish History WikiProject, I noted Judenrat among the list of stub articles. After a preliminary edit (see the article's "History" page), I've marked it as "In use" while I work on an expanded version. This will be based on my translating the Hebrew Wikipedia article, which at 766 words (including the bulleted lists, not including the table) is by far the longest of the other half dozen foreign language versions. If you'd like to watch the article, you'll see when the expanded version's installed. I'll be sure to merge existing content, and shall list the newly expanded version for review by the Jewish History WikiProject team.
 * Deborahjay 10:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * NB: Reading the Hebrew article, I can see it needs some editing (as was requested on its Discussion page), which I've undertaken... so this will slow me down somewhat, but will eventually result in a better article in English. Deborahjay 12:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Chaim Kaplan
His quote, while not controversial or objectionable in the least, is still extremely biased. It condemns, without exception, every last individual involved with the Judenrate, even though it appears two sentences after a mention of council members who worked with the Resistance. Kaplan wrote that from the hell on Earth that was the Warsaw ghetto in 1941. He died in the Holocaust and was probably never aware of the Judenrat members who fought the Nazis. I think it almost goes without saying that he would have somewhat changed his tone had he known how much some of these apparent appeasers really risked. SluggoOne (talk) 02:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Edited troll statement
I removed a statement "given there were so many Jewish Rats this is a surprisingly condensed article." Adds nothing to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Phat (talk • contribs) 04:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Is Hannah Arendt UNDUE?
Ping User:K.e.coffman so they can explain this removal:. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 13:58, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The rationale for the removal was: it was "undue minority opinion not in line with the preponderance of sources". Further, Arendt's opinion is cited to her book itself, without context and given a prominent placement with its own section and a block quote. Arendt’s views on Jews in the Holocaust have indeed been discussed at length; see for example:  by Richard J. Bernstein, or  by Michael Berenbaum. They were also covered in The Eichmann Trial by Deborah Lipstadt; I’m sure there are many more evaluations. However, a nuanced discussion of Arendt’s views belongs on her page where they can be covered using secondary literature, and not in this article. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Coffman's removal - it was undue here. Arendt's views have merit in the context of her own philosophy, but she was never a Holocaust historian and most historians of the Holocaust only discuss her in relation to her coverage of the Eichmann trial, not as a serious scholar of the Holocaust. Trunk's views are much more mainstream in regards to historians views of the Judenrats. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:24, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Judenälteste
http://www.hans-dieter-arntz.de/josef_weiss_holocaust.html Unter einem „Judenältesten" oder „Jewish Elder" versteht man eine von den Nationalsozia­listen künstlich geschaffene Position, die mit Hilfe einer geduldeten „jüdischen Selbstver­waltung" - nach angeblich eigenem Ermessen - Befehle auszuführen hatte.
 * There was a Judenälteste in Theresienstadt. https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/der-letzte-judenaelteste-von-theresienstadt.691.de.html?dram:article_id=247369
 * If Judenälteste does not belong here, it should be described separately, but it existed.Xx236 (talk) 10:39, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 7 October 2021
While many Jewish participants in the Judenrat have been historically viewed as merely desperate people trying to improve the situation of many facing total genocide, some participants have been seen as traitors or collaborators of the Nazis. For example, one of the Jewish participants the Judenrat, Benjamin Murmelstein was ostracized from the Jewish community and his children were prohibited from even reciting the Kaddish at the time of his death. CessnaMan1989 (talk) 03:31, 7 October 2021 (UTC) CessnaMan1989 (talk) 03:31, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:34, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Collaboration
While I removed last para from the lead, I think it might be reasonable to have something in the lead about it and modify something in the body. One of the older wordings say "While some scholars have described the institution of the Judenrats as a collaborationist one". That might be undue in the lead, but "some scholars" include Hannah Arendt. I think her views about it need to be described on the page even if this is a minority view, rather than be completely removed as in this edit [. This is just a suggestion, and I leave it to other contributors who know better. [[User:My very best wishes|My very best wishes]] (talk) 22:45, 14 March 2023 (UTC)


 * While the amount of space given to Arendt in the previous version was excessive, it should not be removed altogether. She is a major figure, whose writings have shaped subsequent understanding. While the scholarly consensus is that she over-stated the extent to which the Judenrats in general were collaborationist, nobody has denied that there were significant examples of collaboration. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:34, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Encyclopedia Brittanica's short article on the Judenrate concludes with the following paragraph, which seems well judged to me: In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Hannah Arendt revived the controversy over the role of the Judenräte by implying that their complicity actually increased the Holocaust’s death toll. She wrote, “The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people.” Her work triggered a storm of controversy but also provoked research that yielded a more subtle understanding of the impossible task these leaders faced in confronting the Nazis’ overwhelming power and fervent, disciplined commitment to annihilate the Jewish people. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)