User:Ealdgyth/Judenrat audit

Judenrat


 * 1) "A Judenrat[a] (German: [ˈjuːdn̩ˌʁaːt], "Jewish council") was a local administrative body established in German-occupied Europe during World War II which purported to represent a Jewish community in dealings with the Nazi authorities. The Germans required Jews to form Judenräte across the occupied territories at local and sometimes national levels." is apparantly sourced to the entirety of Isaiah Trunk's Judenrat
 * 2) "The Judenräte are notorious today for their collaboration with the Nazi regime, almost always under extreme coercion." this is ... quite the POV framing here, it should be attributed and is not quite the historical consensus (there are some historians who would not consider all members of the councils as collaborators)
 * 3) "The structure and missions of the Judenräte under the Nazi regime varied widely, often depending upon whether meant for a single ghetto, a city or a whole region. Jurisdiction over a whole country, as in Nazi Germany, was maintained by Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany) established on 4 July 1939." is sourced to this original decree from 1942 concerning Vienna Jews. There are obvious issues here - the use of a primary source about Vienna from 1942 to source a general statement as well as information about Dutch Jews is pretty glaringly obviously not supported.
 * 4) "The first actual Judenräte were established in occupied Poland under Reinhard Heydrich's orders on 21 September 1939, during the German assault on Poland, and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union." is sourced to Trunk again. This appears to be based on pages 1-4. But Trunk does not connect the Judenrats of the Soviet Union to this decree, as Trunk discusses other, later, orders that set up councils in other parts of the German-occupied territories on pages 5-10, which also includes the information that no known German order details the setting up of councils in Ukraine or Reichskommissariat Ostland, so leaving aside that the 21 Sept 1939 "decree" didn't cover other areas, it appears that some areas didn't have any decree specifying the setting up of councils, according to Trunk
 * 5) "As a rule, therefore, the traditional speaker of the community was named and elected, preserving the community continuity." but ... this is misleading - most of the time, the council members were named by local German authorities, and not "elected" by the community.
 * 6) "The Nazis systematically sought to weaken the resistance potential and opportunities of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The early Judenräte were foremost to report numbers of their Jewish populations, clear residences and turn them over, present workers for forced labour, confiscate valuables, and collect tribute and turn these over. Failure to comply would incur the risk of collective punishments or other measures. Later tasks of the Judenräte included turning over community members for deportation. Ultimately, these policies and the cooperation of Jewish authorities led to massive Jewish deaths with few German casualties because of the minimal resistance. Once under Nazi control and checked for weapons, large numbers of Jews could ultimately be easily murdered or enslaved. The sadness of the catastrophically large number of deaths because of this lack of resistance led to the saying "never again"." this has a number of ... problems. first, it's sourced to "Gilbert, A History of the Holocaust, (2000)" with no page numbers at all.  "Ultimately, these policies and the cooperation of Jewish authorities led to massive Jewish deaths with few German casualties because of the minimal resistance." is a judgement and massively POV to be saying in wikivoice about the incredibly varied situations that happened in the ghettos. There is a large body of research concerning the resistance that DID take place. Nor did all the councils passively take part in the tasks that the Germans wanted done - so the "lack of resistance" isn't proven at all.
 * "Ultimately, these policies and the cooperation of Jewish authorities led to massive Jewish deaths with few German casualties because of the minimal resistance. Once under Nazi control and checked for weapons, large numbers of Jews could ultimately be easily murdered or enslaved. The sadness of the catastrophically large number of deaths because of this lack of resistance led to the saying "never again"." was added with [Special:Diff/852024870 this July 2018 edit] by The others are further back in time and more convoluted.
 * 1) "This had, however, very limited positive results. The generally difficult situations presented often led to perceived unfair actions, such as personality preferences, sycophancy, and protectionism of a few over the rest of the community. Thus, the members of the community quickly became highly critical of, or even outright opposed their Judenrat." again, this is a vast oversimplification of the situation - for every situation where the local council was corrupt, there was a corresponding one where they helped the resistance and tried to improve the inhabitants' welfare as much as possible.
 * 2) "While some scholars have described the institution of the Judenrats as a collaborationist one," is cited to two sources. One is The Holocaust and the Historians p. 135 which does not quite support this - it discusses that early works often charged the councils with collaboration but then discusses Arendt's Eichman in Jerusalem charge of collaboration and dismisses Arendt's charge. And the second is a specialized monograph on one particular council, not them as a whole.
 * This was added (with an additional source to Trunk's work on the Judenrats which did not support the information) with [Special:Diff/964872329 this June 2020] edit by


 * 1) As a whole, this article is woefully inadequate in summarizing the literature and research that has been done. The fact that it gets almost 7000 views a month shames me that I haven't dug down and fixed it.