The leaders of the Jewish police in the Kovno ghetto, a controversial public institution, initiated a project of writing the history of the Jewish police. Their purpose was to leave testimonies and records of the police in the ghetto, and to convey their perspective on the events. The writers were aware of their limitations – their subjectivity and closeness to the events. However, they had an urge to present a narrative describing their organization -- not as memoirs or diaries of individual policemen but as a Geschichte of their unit for future generations. This paper offers an analysis of one episode in this “History” – viz. of the text and the contexts of the unusual swearing-in ceremony that was held at a relative late point in the history of the ghetto police and that in the “History” is not presented in the chronologically appropriate place – commenting both on the possible meaning of the event and on the manner of its representation.

June 2009: Dalia Ofer, Professor Emerita of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Max and Rita Haber Professor of Holocaust and East European studies, Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry), is the author and editor of several books, including the Jewish Book Award-winning Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) and Women in the Holocaust (co-edited with Lenore J. Weitzman, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), as well as of numerous articles in Holocaust studies.