Warsaw Ghetto Police

Katarzyna Person's text is a multifaceted and rich explanation of the Jewish community's condemnation of the Ordnungsdienst that leaves room for the acknowledgment that ghetto policemen, like Poland's Jewish community more broadly, had few if any better options in the face of the Holocaust. Paired with a wealth of haunting photographs of the policemen at work in 1941, this short volume performs an essential service in expanding the English-language conversation on Jewish community life during the Holocaust and on the complexity of the perpetration landscape in Nazi-occupied Poland.

* H-Net *

At almost every turn in the story presented here, Person provides eyewitness accounts by Warsaw ghetto Jews. Warsaw Ghetto Police is also an emotionally and psychologically difficult book to read for anyone who is accustomed to seeing Jews exclusively as victims during the Holocaust.

* Austrian History Yearbook *

Person has written what should become the definitive study of the Jewish Order Police during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Highly recommended.

* Choice *

Person's Warsaw Ghetto Police should be a staple read for courses in Holocaust history. Not only is the work an impeccable example of historical scholarship-meticulously researched and organized-but it also precisely articulates significant historical themes surrounding the Holocaust, such as responsibility, collaboration, memory, choice, and justice.

* H- Net (H-Diplo) *

Warsaw Ghetto Police offers a fascinating in-depth study of the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Service), one of the most notorious organizations in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. [T]he book should serve as a model for historical scholarship of Jewish police activities in smaller ghettos in years to come.

* Middle Ground Journal *