In the majesty of the law? Jewish residents of Warsaw in the face of German occupation ordinances and activities of Sondergericht Warschau – Part I

Abstract

The article focuses on the attitude of Warsaw’s Jewish population toward selected, most significant anti-Jewish laws passed in the General Government during World War II. Due to the breadth of the material analyzed, the text is divided into two main parts. The first part presents the Ordinance on forced labor for the Jewish people of October 26, 1939, and the Ordinance prohibiting ritual slaughter of October 26, 1939. The objective of the different ordinances was to regulate the lives of Jews under occupation. The first ordinance led to the exploitation of, and the second led to discrimination against, Jews. The authors discuss their content, reception among Jews, and the practice of application by the German Special Court in Warsaw (Sondergericht Warschau). Indeed, the German Special Court in Warsaw considered cases involving violations of individual ordinances in the Warsaw District. To prepare the text, literature on the subject, including memoirs, press articles, as well as archival sources of judicial provenance, was used. Historical and formal-dogmatic methods were used during the research. The article looks at not only the reception of the anti-Jewish laws themselves by the population they targeted. Of particular interest to the authors were not just the trials and the enforcement of the sentences imposed, but also the strategies pursued by Warsaw’s Jews to better cope with the new legislation that came into force under the German occupation. The research made it possible to show German legislative policy in the context of actions aimed at the exploitation, discrimination, stigmatization, and isolation of Jews.