The question of the collaboration of Jews with the Nazi regimeduring the persecution and extermination of European Jewry is oneof the most difficult and sensitive issues surrounding theHolocaust. How could people be forced to cooperate in their owndestruction? Why would they help the Nazi authorities round uptheir own people for deportation, manage the 'collection points'and supervise the people being deported until the last moment?This book is a major new study of the role of the Jews, and morespecifically the 'Judenrat' or Jewish Council, in Holocaust Vienna.It was in Vienna that Eichmann developed and tested his model for aNazi Jewish policy from 1938 onwards, and the leaders of theViennese Jewish community were the prototypes for all subsequentJewish councils. By studying the situation in Vienna, it ispossible to gain a unique insight into the way that the Nazi regimeincorporated the Jewish community into its machinery ofdestruction.Drawing on recently discovered archives and extensiveinterviews, Doron Rabinovici explores in detail the actions ofindividual Jews and Jewish organizations and shows how all of theirstrategies to protect themselves and others were ultimately doomedto failure. His rich and insightful account enables us tounderstand in a new way the terrible reality of the victims'plight: faced with the stark choice of death or cooperation, manychose to cooperate with the authorities in the hope that theiractions might turn out to be the lesser evil.

Preface.1 Prologue.Survivor guilt.Breaching taboos.No mass murder without victims.2 The Vienna Kultusgemeinde before 1938.Securing evidence - at the scene of the crime.Jewish strategies to counter anti-Semitism.The corporate state - in the shadow of the Third Reich.3 Persecution.The German invasion and the Austrian response.Expropriation through the deprivation of rights.The hunt for booty.4 Struggle for survival and escape.The decapitation of the Jewish Community.The attempt to escape or 'Get rid of the Yids and keep theirmoney here.'5 The Vienna Jewish community under Nazi control.The reorganization of the Kultusgemeinde.Jewish self-help and welfare.'Emigration' - mass expulsion.Illegal escape.6 November pogrom - overture to murder.7 The Jewish community after the pogrom.Escape as a last resort.Functionaries: victims and messengers of terror.Administration during the terror.Benjamin Murmelstein.The employees in the system.Lateral entrants.8 Beginning of the end.Nisko or the dress rehearsal for deportation.Segregation, concentration and theft.9 Deportation and extermination.10 The administration of extermination.Segregation and identification or a Jewish star for 10pfennigs.Liquidation - expropriation to the last.Designation and handing over of victims.Welfare and burial service - administration in the shadow ofdestruction.11 Die Kultusgemeinde - authorities without power.Individual stories.The victims' perspective.The administration and its employees.The conditioning of leading functionaries.Questions of character - individual Jewish functionaries beforeand after 1945.12 Discussion of the Jewish councils and the situation inVienna.List of abbreviations.Notes.Index of persons.