Hannah Arendt in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" examined Jewish cooperation with the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust, and names Baeck as one of those functionaries who withheld the truth from their communities of the end awaiting them, believing it more "humane" to bear the secret since "living in the expectation of death by gassing would only be the harder". Baeck, according to Arendt, also thought the existence of a Jewish police force within the camps would render the "ordeal easier" whereas in her view they turned out to be more brutal. Auschwitz escapee Siegfried Lederer testified to Baeck about the death camp, but Baeck believed that revealing the truth to the Theresienstadt prisoners could cause "catastrophe".