Jewish Police (Holocaust)

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Jewish police meeting in Lintzmannstadt ghetto

Jewish Ghetto Police (German: Jüdische Ghetto-Polizei, Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst), also known as the Jewish Order Service and referred by the Jews as the Jewish Police, were the police units organized in the Jewish ghettos by the local Judenrat councils under German Nazi orders.^[1] The Jewish Order Service was also active in some of the Nazi concentration camps.

Members of the Judendienstordnung did not have official uniforms (having just an armband) and were not allowed to carry guns. They were used by the Germans primarily for securing the deportation of other Jews to the concentration camps.

The Judendienstordnung were often comprised of Jews who usually had no prior association with the community they oversaw (especially since the roundups and deportations to the extermination camps begun), and who could be relied upon to follow German orders.^[1] In ghettos where the Judenrat was resistant to German orders, the Jewish police were often used to control or replace the council.^[1]

After the WWII some of the Jewish Police members immigrated to Israel and received benefits reserved for "Nazi victims". A number were later uncovered and disclosed.

The Polish-Jewish historian and the Warsaw Ghetto archivist Emanuel Ringelblum described the cruelty of the ghetto police as "at times greater than that of the Germans, the Ukrainians and the Latvians."^[2]