On the History of the Historiography of the Jewish Councils: Past Understandings and the Need for a Fresh Approach

Upon reading the vast literature on the phenomenon of the Nazi-era Jewish Councils (Judenräte), it becomes clear that there is a discrepancy between overall entrenched conceptualizations of the topic in comprehensive presentations of the Holocaust and encyclopedic entries, as opposed to what grassroots studies on individual councils throughout Europe and North Africa reveal. Moreover, research on the Jewish Councils has not kept up with the changes in scholarly understanding of the Shoah in general. A considerable number of the first generation of (Jewish) Holocaust scholars built their generalizing conceptualizations on personal experiences and, moreover, many of them based themselves on the most well-known and well-documented places, such as the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. Beyond them, Raul Hilberg’s seminal comprehensive interpretation of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), and Hannah Arendt’s polemical remarks on the councils in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), caused a heated debate that triggered the responding study by Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat (1972); Trunk’s book has become for many scholars ‘the Bible’ of the topic, even though it dealt only with Poland (in its 1939 borders). In this article, I trace the main historiographical trajectory of research on the Jewish Councils from its early stages until recently, focusing on the leading and most influential scholars on the topic, their conceptualizations, and the contexts in which they shaped them. Afterwards, the ‘common knowledge’ picture that was shaped by these historians is summarized. Finally, I present the main findings of my own research that undermine and refute earlier assumptions and point to black holes and missing aspects in the existing literature, all of which require new research venues.