5 - Between Legality and Illegality

Summary

The last chapter deals with how the ‘Jewish Councils’ were connected to organised resistance groups and other forms of opposition. It assesses two central themes. First, it examines how the JR, the AJB, the UGIF-Nord and the UGIF-Sud were wittingly and unwittingly used by others as cloaks for clandestine activities. Overall, the very presence of these bodies in all three countries facilitated, to varying degrees, clandestine activities that would never have been possible without their existence. It is argued that the connections between official Jewish bodies and illegal subversive groups in Belgium and France were complex, manifold and fluid. Second, the chapter examines the active engagement of the organisations’ leadership and membership in these activities, and explains why the JR’s leadership’s absence of engagement in such activities is distinct from the situation in Belgium and France. The central aim is to explore the concepts of opposition and resistance in relation to the legal character of these bodies. Existing scholarship has focussed primarily on individuals who crossed the line between legality and illegality, outwardly conforming while also working outside the legal organisations. This chapter takes the analysis one step further and investigates whether and how the ‘Jewish Councils’ were used for clandestine activities in ways that extended beyond this individual level.