By Moca Nimmervoll

With the 76th anniversary of the end of WWII nearing, May 8th poses as a reminder that although the Holocaust seems like something left in the past, we must continue to learn lessons from it and hear from those who survived. Dr. Lillian Boraks-Nemetz is an author, an academic, a mother, sister, daughter and a child survivor of the Holocaust. In her fiction novel, The Mouth of Truth: Buried Secrets, she tells a beautiful, yet painful story of the memories she had to revisit to unravel the truths about her life as a child survivor of the Warsaw ghetto. After living in the ghetto for 18 months from November 1940, Dr. Boraks-Nemetz got out due to the tireless efforts of her father and hid in a Polish village for the remainder of the war under a false identity (Boraks-Nemetz, Vancouver Holocaust Education Center). Throughout her life, her father was an important figure that guided her and is remembered by her as someone “who wore the hats of a poet, an artist, a lawyer and a policeman. But most of all, he was a caring father, the kindest being she had ever known, and his love for her has been the light of her existence” (Boraks-Nemetz, 70). The Mouth of Truth was published in 2018 and despite it being classified as fiction, is a true story that gives her father a voice amongst all the controversy that he had faced. To save his family, Dr. Boraks-Nemetz’s father became a Jewish policeman for the ghetto and was called a collaborator and defamed for the actions that he took as forced on him by the Nazis. After passing away in Montreal, eight former ghetto policemen were put on trial as collaborators, but her father “wasn’t there to defend himself, so his name has never been cleared, [and] that’s why [Dr. Boraks-Nemetz wrote] this book” (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Primo Levi argues that the discourse produced about the Jewish policemen of the Warsaw ghetto as collaborators are immoral because it produces a binary that categorizes people as “good” or “evil” and “shift[s] onto others – especially the victims- the burden of guilt, so that they are deprived of even the solace of innocence” (Levi, 53 as cited in Lee, 277). Similarly, Lawrence Langer coined the term “choiceless choices” to describe the “impossible [moral]  scenarios that confronted ‘privileged’ Jews” such as policemen (Brown, 80). This paper will focus on various arguments about Jewish policemen and how Dr. Lillian Boraks-Nemetz’s novel gave her father a voice to tell a story about the inner conflict that came with being a loving father and a Nazi accomplice.

Before the Ghetto: September 1939

The Warsaw ghetto was established in the fall of 1940 with a 10-foot tall wall that physically, and symbolically separated Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto from the rest of the city. Warsaw, a city in Poland, was bustling with Jewish activity during the pre-war period with the largest community of Jewish people in all of Europe (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). On September 1, 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany and Warsaw became a place of fear and death as the city came under air attacks (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Dr. Lillian Boraks-Nemetz has profound memories of this day as a child staying at her grandfather’s villa as she recalls first hearing airplanes flying over the house as she sat on the veranda eating breakfast, soon to be followed by the sound of gunfire and bombs nearby (Boraks-Nemetz, Vancouver Holocaust Education Center). At this time, her father ran towards her and picked her up to find cover in a nearby ditch that had just been dug up days prior. As a young child, this day marked her first witness to death as she recalls a woman, who rushed into the ditch after the bombardment ended, crying and saying that her baby was dead (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Not only did she experience death, but she remembers this day as the first time she understood fear (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Poland being defeated by Germany was only the beginning of a long road of being disbarred from society, and having her life taken away from her and the other 400,000 Jewish people that were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Within the next month from that early memory of being under attack, Dr. Boraks-Nemetz and her family members’ lives took a complete turn as her father, a respectable lawyer in the city, left to fight with the Polish Army and upon re-arrival to Warsaw after the Poles lost, was disbarred from his practice (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Back in the city, it was discovered that their family home was destroyed and over time, they were completely shut out of society because of their Jewish heritage. Having grown up in Warsaw, Dr. Boraks-Nemetz has distinct memories of watching the wall that would soon create two worlds being built by the hands of Jewish people who were told to “build their own prison” (Boraks-Nemetz, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre). In a world that was becoming increasingly dark, her family knew that “something horrible was happening to [them]” and her father became the only person to explain to her the changes that were occurring (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). In November of 1940, her family and all other Jewish people in the city were forced to pack their bags and walk from their homes to the other side of the wall where the ghetto stood and Dr. Boraks-Nemetz remembers feeling like “she was leaving sunlight and entering a dark place” (Boraks-Nemetz, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre).

Life Within the Ghetto

Approximately 400,000 Jewish people occupied the Warsaw ghetto within “an area of the city that was a little more than 1 square mile” (“Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”). Dr. Boraks-Nemetz remembers that “there was a degree of normalcy for a while”, but life became increasingly difficult when Jewish individuals from outside Warsaw were getting relocated into the ghetto and her building went into lockdown as typhus began to spread (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). In the ghetto apartment that she resided in, Dr. Boraks-Nemetz lived alongside 24 other residents, making it extremely overcrowded, with a bathroom that never worked and a kitchen that was designed for a single-family (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Death lurked in every corner of the Warsaw ghetto as people were dying of starvation and illness, while others lost the will to live and committed suicide (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Even with the end to the quarantine, the quarters in which one could walk around were dreary. Memories of hearing happiness and laughter on the other side of the 10-foot wall are still vivid in Dr. Boraks-Nemetz’s mind as a reminder of the juxtaposing realities that individuals lived during this time (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). In the ghetto, food was scarce as Nazis controlled rations and with every person being allotted 184 calories a day (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger), it has been calculated that “between 1940 and mid-1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation and disease” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Her father would use money and personal belongings that they owned to barter for food, but supplies for food became low and rations were imposed soon after (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). There seemed to be no morality, and no life left as  “children were on the street begging, some were sitting in the corners half dead, and adults walked by because they hardly had anything themselves” (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Dr. Boraks-Nemetz hardly remembers seeing any food because rations were so low, until one day her father brought home some bread and sugar after a shift from patrolling the ghetto as a  Jewish policeman (Boraks-Nemetz, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre).

The Ghetto Police

In her novel, The Mouth of Truth, the complex discussion about autonomy and choice is emphasized as Dr. Boraks-Nemetz shares her father’s story about being a member of the Jewish ghetto police. His voice can be heard in her novel when the main character, Batya Lichtenberg, is finally able to read her father’s testimony and she discovers that he was a “tormented man, [his] conscience a raw wound, yet [he] couldn’t stop” (Boraks-Nemetz, 137). The Jewish police force was led by Adam Czerniaków and was “defined by the Germans as part of the Selbständige Autonomie (Self-Regulating Autonomy) of the Jewish community in Warsaw” (Person, 5) and “was not, by definition, an independent organization but only an auxiliary service that performed tasks imposed on it by the German administration, the Blue Police, and the Judenrat” (Person, 7). The Jewish men that became policemen did so intentionally, but only because they made what Lawrence Langer called “choiceless choices” (Langer, 72 as cited in Brown, 80), a term that is defined as “crucial decisions [that] did not reflect options between life and death, but between one form of abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that was in no way of the victim’s own choosing” (Langer, 72 as cited in Brown, 80). Dr. Boraks-Nemetz’s father made a ‘choiceless choice’ when he became a policeman because he was faced with the moral dilemma of either saving his family or maintaining unity with his community. For the first year in the ghetto, becoming a policeman meant your family would be exempt from deportation and her father took the job for that exact reason as he was set on keeping his family alive (Person, 91). The novel brings to light the scrutiny that her father faced in his position as a law enforcer with the many characters that had opposing views about Jewish policemen. While some believed he should not be judged for the position that he accepted (Boraks-Nemetz, 86), others were less forgiving (Boraks-Nemetz, 67). The novel provides perspective on the changing views about the Jewish police through Simon Lichtenberg’s testimony:

As the situation in the ghetto worsened, the people grew to dislike the Jewish Police, who appeared to wield more power than the average person in the ghetto. They saw Jewish policemen who were neither hungry nor dressed in rags nor begging for bread, so they took out their hate and misery on us, the so-called keepers of order.

Boraks-Nemetz, 133

The mere existence of a Jewish Order Service was a result of the Nazi’s twisted efforts to create “a scheme by which they used their prey to carry out the torture of their own people” (Boraks-Nemetz, 131). Yet, to make matters worse, in 1942 Jewish policemen were forced to comply with the rounding up of Jewish individuals to be sent to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The Deportations

            In her journey to learn about her father, the most difficult truth that Dr. Boraks-Nemetz had to face was about her father assisting the Nazis in the deportation of Jewish people to the Treblinka death camp starting in 1942 (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Adam Czerniaków and the Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdische Ghetto Polizei) were once seen as protectors for their people, but the reality was that the leader “had no real power over his people’s living conditions and was completely answerable to the authority of the Nazis” (Dr. Boraks-Nemetz, 133). Out of fear, feelings of betrayal and “despite being fully aware of the reality of ghetto life, the ghetto inhabitants saw the policemen as people with agency, who chose to carry out orders against the interest of other Jews” (Person, 76). These negative sentiments towards the policemen only increased with the liquidation of the ghetto as at this time, Jewish individuals “began lumping Jews and Germans together as beasts in Warsaw only as Jews took part in the bloodiest of German crimes, the mass deportation of ghetto inhabitants to the death camp Treblinka” (Simon, 93). Dr. Boraks-Nemetz’s novel describes the feelings that she had when finding out that her father had assisted in the deportations as she questioned whether her father was guilty “of criminal acts against his own people” or “maybe he redeemed himself in some unknown way” (Boraks-Nemetz, 30). The sentiment that participation in deportations was a collaborative choice was very prevalent in the ghetto as “once ghetto inhabitants understood that certain Jewish people were willing to act as brutally and savagely as the Germans did, they began to perceive them the same way they perceived the Nazis—outside the realm of humanity” (Simon, 95). The policemen were shunned by their community and were no longer considered Jewish as “their behaviour symbolized moral decline, the dissolution of social ties, and the loss of sensitivity to the suffering of other Jews” (Person, 82). However, Dr. Boraks-Nemetz and other writers such as Primo Levi and Lawrence Langer have come to realize that these actions were not done out of choice if “it was done at the point of a gun” (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger).

Conflicting Views

            Opinions about the moral ground on which Jewish policemen acted have been contested by survivors and academics including Primo Levi, Emmanuel Ringelblum and Lawrence Langer. Dr. Boraks-Nemetz expresses the conflict of ethics through Simon Lichtenbergs’ testimony in her novel:

One morning at the Judenrat office, Czerniaków announced that SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle had commanded us to fill a huge daily quota of Jews to be taken to the Umschlagplatz. Czerniaków said that if these quotas were not filled, many more men, women and children would have to be dragged from their homes and deported to the camps. How to respond? Never had I, nor any of my colleagues, anticipated facing such an inhuman dilemma when we joined the police force.

Boraks-Nemetz, 135

Her father and the other policemen had to comply because if they did not, their family’s lives, as well as their own, would be in danger. What is one to do in a situation such as this? Emanuel Ringelblum, who was a historian and a hard critic of the Jewish ghetto police, wrote during the deportations in 1942 that the Jewish police “weren’t content simply to overcome the resistance, but with the utmost severity punished the ‘criminals’ who refused to go to their death voluntarily” (Ringelblum, 332 as cited in Simon, 94). Ringelblum, along with many others, saw the assistance in deportations as “choosing the side of collaboration, of becoming partners with the Germans rather than with the innocent ghetto inhabitants” (Simon, 94). Alternately, Primo Levi and Lawrence Langer do not believe that these actions should be condemned, instead, they should be understood as something “beyond good and evil” (Brown, 80). Levi uses the term ‘the gray zone’ to describe how Jewish participants were constrained to “a place too horrific to allow for the use of the usual ethical procedures for evaluating moral culpability” (Lee, 280). What he means by this is that these victims faced such a harsh reality that “those who have not experienced it have no right to judge” their reasoning for becoming involved (Lee, 280). Additionally, Lawrence Langer’s argument about ‘choiceless choices’ exhibits how the participation of Jewish policemen should not be a matter of “‘greater’ or ‘lesser’ evil” as “Jewish behaviour under Nazi persecution took place in an environment constructed by the perpetrators not of immorality but ‘non-morality’” (Brown, 80). Both of these writers point to the importance of focusing on the horrible role that the Nazis’ played in “forc[ing] Jews to participate in the humiliation and murder of their fellow Jews” (Lee, 280), rather than judging the actions of individuals such as Dr. Boraks-Nemetz’s father.

In her novel, Dr. Lillian Borak-Nemetz recounts her journey in finding out the painful truth about her father, but in doing so also remembers all the aspects that made him a wonderful parent. She remembers how her father never hid from her the atrocities that were happening and always made an effort to educate her, despite her young age. After being known as a respected lawyer, loving father and survivor, he should be remembered not as a collaborator, but as someone who saved her life during unimaginable circumstances. As written in her novel, “those who generalize and put all the Jewish police into one bad lot also blemish the good ones” (Boraks-Nemetz, 106). Her father not only saved his family from deportation but was also known for rescuing starving children in the ghetto and bringing them to nearby orphanages (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Furthermore, he used his position as a factory guard to warn the workers, one of which was Dr. Boraks-Nemetz’s mother, when Nazis were approaching for inspections (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). Even after the war as a changed man, he was there to take care of her and be the father that she needed (Boraks-Nemetz, interviewed by Kit Krieger). The Mouth of Truth is a heartbreaking story, but one that gives her father a voice and paints him to be a man who was honourable and kind-hearted despite the mental and physical pain that he had to endure. This topic is important to look at because there is literature that defames the actions of Jewish policemen in the Warsaw ghetto, but overall, we must remember that we can not judge the morals or actions of victims during this time as “it is problematic for anyone to evaluate the consequences, motivations and personal autonomy that were in play during the events in question” (Brown, 80) as the Holocaust was much ‘beyond good and evil’ (Langer, 72 as cited in Brown, 81).

Works Cited

Boraks-Nemetz, Lillian. Interviewed by Kit Krieger. Vancouver Holocaust Education Center, 27 Aug. 2010, https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/objects/1358. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.

Boraks-Nemetz, Lillian. The Mouth of Truth: Buried Secrets. Guernica Editions Inc, 2018.

Boraks-Nemetz, Lillian. Vancouver Holocaust Education Center, Apr. 2020, https://vhecsymposium.thinkific.com/courses/take/vhecsymposium/lessons/12574445-holocaust-survivor-testimony-lillian-Dr. Boraks-Nemetz. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.

Brown, Adam. “Confronting ‘choiceless choices’ in Holocaust video testimonies: Judgement, ‘privileged’ Jews, and the role of the interviewer.” Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 79-90.

Lee, Sander H. “Primo Levi’s Gray Zone: Implications for Post-Holocaust Ethics.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016, pp. 276-297.

Person, Katarzyna. “Establishment of the Jewish Order Service.” Warsaw Ghetto Police. Translated by Nowak-Soliński, Cornell University Press, 2021, pp. 4-32.

Person, Katarzyna. “Police in the Eyes of the Ghetto Population.” Warsaw Ghetto Police. Translated by Nowak-Soliński, Cornell University Press, 2021, pp. 76-88.

Person, Katarzyna. “Policemen’s Voices.” Warsaw Ghetto Police. Translated by Nowak-Soliński, Cornell University Press, 2021, pp. 89-101.

Simon, Amy. “Imperfect Humans and Perfect Beasts: Changing Perceptions of German and Jewish Persecutors in Holocaust Ghetto Diaries.” Journal of Jewish Identities, vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 85-106.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Warsaw.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw. Accessed 18 Apr. 2021.

“Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” History.com, 6 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/warsaw-ghetto-uprising#section_1. Accessed 18, Apr. 2021.