Józef Szeryński

Who was Józef Szeryński?

Józef Andrzej Szeryński was a Polish-Jewish police-colonel inspector for the Lublin district and later - during the Second World War - a commander of the Jewish Ghetto Police.

Born Józef Szenkman to a Jewish family, he changed his name and developed an anti-Semitic attitude. Following the invasion of Poland he was arrested but soon released. He traveled to Warsaw with his family and settled in the Warsaw Ghetto. On 9 November 1940, Szeryński was entrusted by Adam Czerniaków with organizing the Jewish Ghetto Police - a quasi-police force collaborating with the Germans. The Jewish Police under Szeryński's command was responsible for beatings and persecution of ghetto inhabitants, participated in searches and arrests and gathering of deportees in the Umschlagplatz before they were sent to extermination camps. Under Szeryński's orders the Jewish Police made sure that children and the sick were first to be deported as they were the weakest.

As the Jewish Police commander, Szeryński was a privileged inhabitant of the Ghetto and was even exempt from the requirement of wearing an armband with the Star of David. He was widely regarded as corrupt and engaging in black market. On 1 May 1942 the Germans arrested Szeryński accusing him of theft of fur coats confiscated from the ghetto population. His deputy Jakub Lejkin temporarily took his place as the Jewish Police commander. However, Szeryński was released on 26 July 1942 as the Germans realized that they needed his services to organize the massive deportations of ghetto Jews to Treblinka extermination camp which were carried out between 23 July and 21 September 1942.