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On January
26, 1940, Adam Czerniakow, head of the Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat, was
summoned to the police station and told that unless the community
remitted 100,000 zlotys by the next day because of the beating of a Volksdeutsche
(ethnic German), 100 Jews would be shot to death.
Czerniakow described the event in his diary: “I appealed to the
Gestapo for an annulment of the fine, then, for permission to pay
for it in installments, and finally for the release of the Community
from the obligation of clearing the snow, which would let us save
some money. Nothing came out of it. We must pay up and tomorrow
morning at that. Under these circumstances I began a money
collection in the Community. We must borrow 100,000 zloty and then
get it back from the taxpayers” (Diary, p. 50).
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