Publishing Department

A welfare organisation operating in Warsaw from September 1939, over time expanded into an enormous structural association. Its aim was to organise the Warsaw ghetto society and was mobilised to bring aid to the neediest. In the field of social welfare, ŻSS also held patronage over educational, cultural and scholarly activities, organised employment, mediated contacts with people’s relatives abroad, supported underground political activities and had its own administration through a system of district and house committees. In contrast to other localities, ŻSS in Warsaw and its agencies were never fully subordinated to the Judenrat, while remaining strongly opposed to its policies.

This volume contains official documentation of various departments and agencies of the KK and ŻSS in Warsaw from the time of its establishment in September 1939 until the winter of 1942/43, when attempts were made to rebuild self-help cells after the so-called Grossaktion. This collection consists mainly of extensive reports, plans, official notes, correspondence, minutes of meetings, financial settlements, leaflets and appeals. The materials provide a full overview of the activities of the ŻSS.

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Whether or not one likes it: the Jewish population is one big family, which is experiencing the same constraints, the same sufferings, and which now has one main task: to survive together! We are facing tough exams. We are learning the art of combining the efforts of tens of thousands with a common goal in mind. Right now, the main goal is: to stay afloat on life’s surface. Hopefully, better times will come when we will be able to use this experience to join efforts towards great constructive deeds for the benefit of the beleaguered Jewish people. 

The Jewish Social Welfare Association (abbreviated to ŻTOS, formerly ŻSS, and formerly still: the Coordinating Commission) is at this time the only legal organisation of the Jewish masses to provide care for the poor. Misery holds tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of our brothers in its clutches. Like a raging flame, it is engulfing ever wider circles and layers of our society. It must be extinguished! We have to put it out as much as we can. Everyone must lend a hand to the work of rescue!

• excerpt from a propaganda paper by the Jewish Jewish Social Welfare Society from late 1940.

Publication co-financed by the Claims Conference and Taube Philanthropies.