In both cases, they almost always ended up being killed. Often "functionaries" in ghettos such as the members of the Judenrat (ghetto council) and the Jewish police force were kept alive until most of the rest of the ghetto was liquidated but most would eventually be murdered. Those who were more compliant survived longer, but most were eventually murdered, some took their own lives. Those who tried to resist were often removed and sometimes executed. Generally those appointed to the Judenrate were people the Nazis believed would be compliant, so active resistance by Judenrat members was somewhat uncommon. Two good case studies of leaders of different Judenrate are that of Chaim M. Rumkowski, the leader of the Lodz Ghetto Judenrat, and Adam Czerniakow, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat.

Rumkowski was reviled by the Jews of Lodz, hated for his belief that he would keep the most people alive by going along with the Nazis. However he was most hated for encouraging parents to hand over their children to the Nazis during September of 1942. The Germans planned to round up some 20,000 people, the elderly, the people in hospitals, and the children, and deport them to the Chelmno extermination camp to be murdered. On September 4, Rumkowski stood before the Jews of Lodz and told them "give me your children". The next day Rumkowski was forced to print an order that all Jews would remain in their homes until further notice. This round-up (aktion) was called the Sperre Aktion, and it claimed the lives of some 15,000 people, 6,000 of whom were children. Another 500 Jews were murdered in the ghetto for resisting the deportation of themselves or their family members. Those deported during the Sperre were torn away from their families and murdered in Chelmno. Rumkowski had been reviled before, after the Sprerre, he was hated with a burning passion. Rumkowski always saw himself as making efforts to spare greater violence that could occur if the Jews resisted, and as making attempts to save himself and his family. On both accounts he failed. He was murdered, along with his family, in Auschwitz on August 30, 1944, among the last of those deported to their deaths from the Lodz Ghetto.

Adam Czerniakow faced many of the same decisions as Chaim Rumkowski, and at the beginning had a similar philosophy of complying with the Nazis in hope to dissuade them from further violence. In his case as well, it didn't work. Though the resistance generally criticized Czerniakow, as did the leader of the Oyneg Shabbes underground archive Emanuel Ringelblum, his ghetto council eventually had some 6,000 employees whose work passes which for a time kept them alive, even if it could not ultimately stop their deportation to extermination camps. Czerniakow was known to at turns plead with and cajole the Germans into relieving their grip on Warsaw's Jews, neither tactic proved effective. Unlike Rumkowski, Czerniakow drew the line at facilitating deportations. Knowing he would not comply with the German's order to round up Jews in the ghetto, unwilling to see those he saw himself in charge of slaughtered, and perhaps fearing what would happen to him if he refused the Nazis, Adam Czerniakow took his own life. On July 22 of 1942, the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat, including Czerniakow recieved orders that starting that day deportations to "the east" would begin at a rate of 6,000 people a day whose names must be compiled by the Judenrat. By this point Czerniakow knew that deportation meant death, and refused to be complicit any longer. During the day of July 22, Czerniakow tried to get deportation exceptions for various groups including the children of Janusz Korczak's orphanage. He failed, and on July 23, just as the deportations began he swallowed a cyanide capsule, dying in his home. He left a note to his wife, and another to the Judenrat explaining that the failure to save the children was high on the list of his reasons for completing suicide.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/give-me-your-children-voices-from-the-lodz-ghetto

https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205839.pdf

https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205934.pdf

https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Judenrate_and_Other_Representative_Bodies