The History of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Light of the Reports of Ludwig Fischer

Summary

We are indebted to the team from the Historical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Krzysztof Dunin Wgsowicz, Marek Getter, Janina Kazimierska) and the State Archives for the City of Warsaw 06zef Kazimierski, Danuta Skorwider) for publishing a vital source for research into the history of Warsaw and the Warsaw district during World War II, The Reports- of Ludwig Fischer, the Governor of the District of Warsaw 1939- 1944, (Ksiązka i Wiedza, Warsaw, 1987). The reports have been scrupulously translated into Polish by Maryla Borkowicz, Wladyslaw Czepulis and Jan Kosim.

This publication will be a basic source for research into the history of occupied Warsaw, and its political and socio-demographic conditions. It is obviously biased and partisan. As Krzysztof Dunin-W gsowicz writes in the introduction, ‘The reports give a one-sided picture, dealing with the underground life of the city and district in a marginal way. They only record, and certainly incompletely, acts of open armed resistance, and virtually ignore instances of Nazi terror. Yet, when verified and used critically, they add an unusually large amount of new information to our knowledge of the years of the occupation. In many cases they confirm the present state of research and provide an opportunity to expand our knowledge of the period.’ The importance of the source seems to me all the greater as we approach the 45th anniversary of the mass deportation of more than 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camps.

All the reports referring to the Jewish population showed an obsessive hatred of the Jews; National-Socialist racist dogma and propaganda were accepted as fact, as was the need to put the Jewish labour force at the disposal of the German militarized economy. It is also clear that Governor Fischer treated the Jews, together with the Gypsies, differently from the Polish labour force, where pragmatic considerations held sway.

The decree creating a district where Jews had to live in Warsaw was published on 2 October 1940. It was to come into effect on 1 November, although it was not really implemented until 15 November 1940. The report states: ‘The desire to separate Jews from Aryan surroundings for general political and Weltanschauung reasons was the main motive for it. There were also important health and economic reasons.'