Paid Helpers in the Holocaust


Important differences between paid and non-paid helpers

Paid help was given reluctantly and under constant threat of denouncement
Why should I be grateful?..he loved money...he did it only for money; besides every week he kept raising the price....He used to tell me that if the war would drag on he would not keep me
(Lola Freud, from When Light Pierced the Darkness)

Quite often he would say that he did not know why he was sticking his neck out for Jews....He took us for a month but he never meant to keep us that long...he was trapped...there were times when we thought he was planning to be rid of us.  We were a burden but it was not easy to do away with 8 people.  (Roma Zelig, Ibid)

Some were honest and decent
The motive for keeping my wife and son was only money, quite a bit of money.....She treated them kindly and stuck to her initial agreement, never raising her price....All the time they were there, there was no mistreatment. (Mietek Korn, Ibid)
Paid helpers often took advantage of the Jews they were protecting and often appeared unconcerned about their safety
After their arrival, the first peasant demanded that they hand over all their jewelry and money. When he received nearly all of it ( some they had managed to hide) he proceeded to search through their belongings.  When he had convinced himself [after a few days] that he had taken all the valuables, he asked us to leave.  He insisted that it was too dangerous and that we had to go....When in desperation my mother asked him where we should go, he shrugged his shoulders and said "That is not my responsibility."  We still stayed on for a while, but when he became insistent and began to threaten us, we had to leave.  We were afraid that he might kill us.  One night we simply slipped out of the barn (Ida Brot, Ibid)
With economic improvement, incentive for help disappeared
Disengagement also involved risk:  Some reacted by asking the Jews to leave, some denounced, some murdered, and some mistreated their wards (Nechama Tec, Ibid)

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