The Joodsche Rad, or Jewish Council
The German occupation authorities in Holland decreed the formation of a Jewish Council, or Joodsche Rad, composed of former Jewish community leaders, to govern the Jewish population of the Amsterdam ghetto. Following the model used in other occupied countries, the Dutch Jewish Council was charged with maintaining order in their demoralized, disease-ridden, and economically desperate comunity. Most importantly for the Germans, the Council acted as their intermediary to carry out their increasingly oppressive dictates, such as providing forced labor battalions for German war factories, and eventually even delivering Jews directly to the trains bound for the death camps.