Kapo

Wir gewesen dort, wie der Shop dort und dort.

Man hat vorgelegt sein a Kapo.

Weißt, was ist ein Kapo?

Arbeiter.

Genau hat gesagt, das haben der Zeit die Juden sind geblieben.

Ze hebben niet gaan alleen.

Ze gingen met een kapo.

Kapo.

You're listening to the Everything Jewish 10 Minutes at a Time podcast, where you'll learn about every Jewish topic imaginable in about 10 minutes.

Today's topic is Judenratz and Kapos.

First, my apologies for the German, Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew pronunciation.

The facts are real, but the voice is artificial intelligence, so I approach every consonant cluster like a nervous bar mitzvah guest carrying soup across a crowded ballroom.

Council members administered a captive civilian community under Nazi command.

A kapo was a concentration camp prisoner assigned to supervise others, especially on forced labor details.

Kapos were one category within a hierarchy of prisoner functionaries, including camp elders, block elders, clerks, doctors, and nurses.

Judenrat members were Jewish by definition.

And right before, so right before he gets booted out of the work camp, um, most mornings he gets woken up, 'cause he, he's in a tent and not a barracks most of the time.

And most mornings he gets woken up by, the Kapo will kick him in the ass and say, "Off," meaning get up.

And one morning he gets woken up by, like, this just unbearable stench.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so he's like, "Why does this smell so bad?" And he sits up and there's, like, a guy with what looks like a flamethrower pumping pesticides into his tent.

And like, all the inmates run out and they're like, you know, like, "What, what the hell is this?" And the, the guard who's, 'cause it's a, it's SS member and not a, um, and not a Kapo who's doing it, and the guard explains to him, he says, "This is for delousing.

We're, we're, we've heard the inmates are complaining of lice, and this will help get rid of the lice." And he's like, "We've had carpets of lice all over us for months, and one round of pesticide in the tent doesn't even put a dent in the amount of lice that are over all of us all the time.

Yeah.

Modern-day Kapos.

Yeah.

Well, I think that, that's a good place for us to move away from the UK, but we're gonna stay international because, Richard, the Supreme Court is starting its newest session, uh, and you're gonna take us through what we should be watching, uh, looking out for in the coming months as the Supreme Court deliberates on some very important cases.

Herbertshausen was a shooting range located two kilometers north of Dachau, where between 1941 and 1942, more than 4,000 Soviet prisoners were murdered.

When one of the Kapos there asked Egon Zill where to store the ashes, Zill told him, "Just dump the dirt of these Bolshevik swines." Witnesses also testified that Zill personally tortured Soviet prisoners who were made to parade naked in front of him.

He mercilessly tortured them with a whip, and then selected victims from among them who he then personally shot.

He was also seen tying the prisoners to trees and then setting a dog on their genitals.