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Judenrat (Jewish Council)
Administrative councils imposed by German authorities on Jewish communities in occupied Poland and Eastern Europe. Composed of Jewish community leaders, they were required to compile deportation lists, distribute food, manage internal ghetto order, and organise forced labour. Judenrate faced impossible choices between compliance (which facilitated deportations) and refusal (which generally resulted in more violent SS operations). The Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat chairman Adam Czerniakow poisoned himself in 1942 rather than submit deportation lists.