“Power corrupts” is a global, historical truism, possibly even more so when conquerors ensnare the vanquished to do their dirty work. Such was the case for Jews in the mid–20th century in Europe’s Nazi-controlled ghettoes. The Nazis often appointed Jewish leaders to decide on the people to be deported—often a death sentence. The Jewish-run panels were called Judenrats. In Leslie Epstein’s King of the Jews, adapted from his novel of the same name, an ethnic German Nazi enforcer in Łódź, Poland, authorizes a group of Jews to select fellow Jews for deportation.