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).
