The Warsaw Ghetto — the temptation of informing

The Warsaw Ghetto was sealed on 16 November 1940. Inside, the occupier imposed a Jewish Council (Judenrat) chaired by Adam Czerniaków and a Jewish Order Service (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst), an internal police force overseen by the German authorities. Very quickly, among a starving and terrorized population, the occupier also sought informers: agents able to report hidden goods, the black market, clandestine activities, or fugitives.

The best-documented phenomenon is the "Group 13" (the Trzynastka), named for its headquarters at 13 Leszno Street. Founded in December 1940 and led by Abraham Gancwajch, this network of 300 to 400 uniformed men — nicknamed the "Jewish Gestapo" — reported directly to the Sicherheitsdienst. Under cover of an office combating profiteering, it extorted, blackmailed, and denounced. For a resident ruined by the lockdown, becoming an informer meant the promise of a little bread, a reprieve, sometimes protection for one's family — at the price of sending others to their death. To refuse was to remain exposed to the hunger and typhus that were already killing more than 5,000 people a month in the summer of 1941.

Attempting to cross to the "Aryan side" required luck, Polish contacts, and money, under the threat of the blackmailers (the szmalcownicy). The question, posed at the scale of a single anonymous individual among hundreds of thousands, sheds light on the grey areas of survival under occupation.