4 - Optimism and Frustration

Summary

This chapter explores how the Germans judged the effectiveness of the ‘Jewish Councils’ in Western Europe throughout the course of the war. Throughout the occupation, the German (and Vichy) departments involved in Jewish affairs increasingly wanted to consolidate their control over the Jewish bodies, either to gain more power at the cost of their rival institutions or to speed up the process of anti-Jewish legislation and persecution. This is important for our understanding of the ways in which these organisations interacted with their German (or Vichy) overseers – including the SiPo-SD, the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (in France), the Military Administration (in Belgium and France) and the Civil Administration (in the Netherlands) – and sheds light on the broader dynamics of occupation in each of the three countries. The chapter demonstrates that whereas the Germans were reasonably satisfied with the organisational effectiveness of the Dutch Jewish Council, they took issue with how its Belgian and French counterparts functioned. It is argued that this difference is primarily caused by (limited) cooperation of individual leaders, the (lack of) leaders’ absolute power and the existence of powerful alternative representations in Belgium and France.