Moshe Yaffe: The Jewish Police Chief of Minsk Who Defied the Nazis

One of the painful and complex issues of the Holocaust is the role of Jewish police forces in the ghettos and camps. These policemen were often forced to cooperate, at least partially, with the Nazi murderers. Many of them remain controversial figures: were they trying to save lives and buy time, or were they only protecting themselves? Only a few dared to actively resist the Nazis and sabotage their plans.

This is the story of one of those rare few: Moshe Yaffe, the head of the Jewish police (Judenrat police) in the city of Minsk, Lithuania.

Supporting the Resistance

In the forests of Lithuania, partisans — among them Jews, carried out attacks against the Germans. Inside the ghettos, underground resistance groups cooperated with the partisans. Normally, these fighters lived in fear of the Jewish police, who often betrayed them to the Germans, arguing that they endangered the entire ghetto population.

Moshe Yaffe acted differently. As head of the Jewish police, he supported the underground. He collected taxes and goods from the community, and regularly diverted part of them to the resistance. Coats from the ghetto were passed on to partisans in the forests so they could keep warm. Money and food also found their way from the ghetto to the fighters.

Outwitting the Nazis

The Germans soon suspected him of collaboration. One morning they stormed into his office and threatened him: unless he handed over resistance fighter Hirsch Smolar, he would be hanged by nightfall. This was no idle threat — the previous Jewish police chief, Elia Mishkin, had in fact been hanged for much less.

When the Nazis returned that evening, they found Yaffe disheveled and bloodstained, with Smolar’s identity card — smeared with blood, on his desk. He claimed he had chased the partisan, fatally wounded him, but that the resistance had stolen the body and buried it. He had kept the ID card as proof. The Nazis accepted the story, at least for the time being.

In reality, it was all a ruse. Smolar was safely smuggled out of the ghetto, went on to fight the Germans, survived the war, and later lived to old age at Kibbutz Shefayim in Israel.

A Final Act of Defiance

On July 2, 1942, the Nazis gathered all the Jews of Minsk to be murdered in gas trucks. They ordered Yaffe to address the Jews, microphone in hand, with loudspeakers set up in the city square. He was given a script to read, telling the people they were being “resettled in the East” and that cooperation would bring kind treatment.

Instead, Yaffe seized the moment and cried out to his people:
“The gas trucks are already here! The cursed murderers want to kill you! Run for your lives!”

Furious, the Germans opened fire with machine guns, killing him and anyone else they saw. Before his death, Yaffe pushed his son Zelig to escape. Zelig managed to flee and survived the war.

Moshe Yaffe, together with many Jews of Minsk, was killed in that final massacre and buried in a mass grave.

May his memory be blessed.