Zydowska Samopomoc Spoleczna (ZSS-Jewish Self Aid) activities in the Generalgouvernement, 1939-1943

Zydowska Samopomoc Spoleczna (ZSS-Jewish Self Aid) activities in the Generalgouvernement, 1939-1943 

The Jewish Self Aid organization (in Polish: Zydowska Samopomoc Spoleczna [ZSS]; in German: Juedische Soziale Selbshilfe) was set up in Krakow in 1940; it went by this name until July 1942. After that date, the organization's welfare activities were cut back by order of the German authorities, and they mainly consisted of the transferring of medicines to Jews in labor camps until this activity, too, was discontinued in mid-1944. ZSS documentation includes correspondence between the administration of the organization in Krakow and the branches throughout the Generalgouvernement, and correspondence with the German goernmental authorities, the Judenrats, and various Jewish relief organizations, such as Centrala Opieki nad Sierotami (CENTOS -Federation of Associations for the Care of Orphans), Obchestvo Remeslenogo Truda (ORT- Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades-World Union for the Vocational Training of Jews), Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej (TOZ-Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population) and welfare organizations outside of Poland, mainly the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). Background: The principle and immediate problem was the need to give aid to the multitude of Jewish refugees who had been deported from their places of residence and for the most part were left without anything and without a roof over their heads, and gradually, the need to help local Jews who were disinherited from their property and remained without sources of income. Along with the ghettoization process, a need arose to provide an answer to the harsh living conditions, the lack of sanitary conditions and the outbreak of diseases, including a typhus epidemic at a time when there was a shortage of equipment and medicine in the Jewish medical institutions. In the beginning, the"Assistance Committee" worked in the relief and welfare areas within the framework of the Judenrat or alongside them, and as time went by, they became the local representatives of the ZSS.  

Zydowska Samopomoc Spoleczna (ZSS-Jewish Self Aid) activities in the Generalgouvernement, 1939-1943