Lodz

City in Poland, about 75 miles (121 km) southwest of Warsaw.

The Jewish Community before the War

In 1827, the population of Lodz was 2,800, of whom 400 were Jews. The city grew rapidly as a result of the development of industry, especially textiles. The Jewish population, too, grew considerably. Before long, Lodz became Poland's second-largest city, next only to Warsaw, and the city's Jews came to constitute the second-largest Jewish community in Poland, after Warsaw. On the eve of World War II, it was a population of 665,000, of whom 34 percent (223,000) were Jews. Lodz also had a sizable German population, amounting to 10 percent of the total. The Jews contributed much to the growth of the city. Many of the industrial enterprises were founded by Jews, and more than 50 percent of the Jewish population derived their livelihood from industry. A Jewish proletariat came into being, a fact accounting for much of the Lodz Jewish community's unique character.

Early Stage of Occupation
On September 8, 1939, the Germans occupied Lodz, making it part of the Warthegau, which in turn was annexed to the Reich. On April 11, 1940, the occupiers renamed the city Litzmannstadt (after the German general Karl Litzmann, who had conquered it in World War I); most of the German documents concerning the Lodz Ghetto refer to it as the "Litzmannstadt Ghetto." Brutal persecution of the Jews began as soon as the city was occupied. On September 18, 1939, a number of decrees were promulgated that struck at the heart of the economic life of the Jews. All Jewish-owned bank accounts were blocked, and Jewish cash holdings were restricted to 2,000 zlotys (the equivalent of $377 at the time). Jews could no longer engage in the textile business, and Jewish enterprises were put in the hands of commissars, meaning, in effect, that they were confiscated and taken over by Germans. Jews could no longer use public transportation, could not leave the city without special permission, and were not allowed to have cars, radios, and various other items in their possession. Synagogue services were outlawed, and Jews had to keep their shops open on Jewish holidays, including the New Year and the Day of Atonement.

Intensification of Terror and Anti-Jewish Measures
On November 9, Lodz was officially annexed to the Reich, a step followed by an intensification of the German terrorization of the Jews and Poles. From the very beginning of the occupation, Jews were subject to expulsions, which came in waves. By March 1940, 70,000 Jews had left the city. On October 13 and 14, 1939, the Germans appointed a Judenrat (Jewish Council), which in Lodz was called an Aeltestenrat (Council of Elders) with Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski as its chairman.

Establishment of the Ghetto
On December 10, 1939, Friedrich Ubelhor, governor of the Kalisz-Lodz district, issued a secret order for the establishment of a ghetto in the northern section of Lodz, where the Jewish Baluty slum quarter was situated. "Needless to say [stated his order] the establishment of a ghetto is only a provisional phase...the ultimate goal must be the total purge of this scourge." The ghetto, blocked off on April 30, 1940, comprised an area of 1.54 square miles (4 sq km), of which only .96 square miles (2.5 sq km) was built up. Approximately 164,000 Lodz Jews were forced in. The density of population in the ghetto area was now seven times as great as it had been before the war. In 1941 and 1942, some 38,500 Jews from outside Lodz were moved into the ghetto: 20,000 from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Luxembourg, and 18,500 from provincial towns in the Warthegau. The total number of persons who passed through the ghetto was now 202,500, to which must be added the 2,300 babies born there, bringing the total to 204,800 men, women, and children.

Nazi Administration
The concerns of the Lodz Ghetto were in the hands of a ghetto administration (Gettoverwaltung) headed by Hans Biebow. On May 25, 1940, Biebow issued orders for factories to be set up in the ghetto (called Arbeitsressorte, or work sections). Provided with very cheap labor, these factories were to serve the Nazis as a source of easy profits and exploitation. The Jews in the ghetto, cut off as they were from all other possible sources of livelihood, were prepared to work for no more than a loaf of bread and some soup. The exploitation of the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto yielded a profit to the ghetto administration estimated at 350 million reichsmarks ($14 million).

The Aeltestenrat and its Activities
The German authorities allowed the Aeltestenrat, and primarily its chairman, Rumkowski, wide powers in the organization of the ghetto's internal life. The Aeltestenrat's main task was to organize the operation of the factories. It regarded the establishment of factories as the only possible means of saving the ghetto population from unemployment and starvation. Ninety-six factories were established in the ghetto, the majority producing textiles; in 1942 and 1943, they employed over 70,000 workers (see Table 1). Rumkowski greatly expanded the Aeltestenrat offices, its staff growing from 5,500 in February 1941 to 13,000 in August 1942. The services provided by the Aeltestenrat involved housing and sanitation, as well as the distribution of the small quantities of food permitted by the German authorities. Until October 1941, the Aeltestenrat also ran a school system, consisting of forty-five elementary schools and two secondary schools, which were attended by 15,000 pupils. Of special importance were the health services: Five hospitals were in operation in the ghetto up until the summer of 1942. Internal order in the ghetto was maintained by the Aeltestenrat's Judischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish ghetto police), whose maximum strength was 530. The Aeltestenrat also administered a prison, on Czarnieckiego Street.

Conditions in the Ghetto
The ghetto was surrounded by barbed-wire fences and guarded by a special SS unit. The ghetto of Lodz was completely isolated from the outside and nobody could enter or get out of the ghetto on an illegal basis. The Lodz Ghetto had a high mortality rate, owing to the extremely poor conditions. Overcrowding and substandard sanitary facilities led to epidemics, especially of typhus fever. In winter, the severe shortages of fuel caused intolerable suffering from the cold. The worst affliction of all, however, was starvation, and this was the chief problem the ghetto had to contend with throughout its existence. The average daily food ration per person was less than 1,100 calories. Some 43,500 persons - 21 percent of all the inmates - died in the ghetto from starvation, cold, and disease.

Deportations
In the first stage, deportations were to forced-labor camps outside the ghetto, and from there the Jews were sent on to extermination camps. Generally speaking, the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto were not aware of the final destination of the deportations. Beginning on January 16, 1942, the deportations from the Lodz Ghetto went directly to the Chelmno extermination camp. In the period from January-May 1942, 55,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies, who had been temporarily interned in Lodz, were deported to Chelmno. Between September 5-12 of that year, a second deportation operation to Chelmno took place. This time, the Germans did not require lists from the Aeltestenrat: German forces entered the ghetto, blocked off one section after another, and dragged the Jews out of their homes, using extremely brutal methods in the process. The Germans proca general curfew in the ghetto, Gehsperre (ban on movement), and that week of bloody murder came to be known as the Sperre by the surviving ghetto inhabitants, a term that became deeply embedded in their memory. The Gehsperre began with the liquidation of the ghetto hospitals, and then children and elders were the main victims of the Sperre. Between September 1942 and May 1944, the last Aktion of the ghetto was undertaken. The ghetto population at the end of that period, in May 1944, was 77,000.

Public Response
Public activities in the summer and fall of 1940 were initiated as welfare operations and establishment of soup kitchens, which developed into places for party meetings and public and cultural functions. These demonstrations were brutally suppressed with the help of German police forces. Each incident was followed by an outbreak of major strikes in the factories, most taking the form of hunger strikes. These strikes went on as long as the ghetto existed.
The political parties -- Poalei zion Left, the Bund and the Communists -- provided the strongest contigents for the mass demonstrations that were held to put pressure on the Aeltestenrat and force it to find a solution for the distress.
The political parties and the youth organizations inaugurated an energetic program of cultural activities, in an effort to counter moral deterioration and help bolster the spirit in the ghetto. Clandestine classes and regular lectures were held, and underground libraries were in operation. Of great importance was the work of the radio-monitoring teams. The possession of radio receivers and the distribution of newspapers were outlawed in the ghetto: The only paper to appear was the Aeltestenrat's Geto Zeitung (Ghetto Journal), and the only news it published were the decrees issued by the German authorities. Clandestine radios were therefore the only source of information on world developments and its dissemination in the ghetto. In early June 1944, the Gestapo uncovered a radio-monitoring team and made several arrests, followed by the execution of those arrested. The ghetto as a whole was isolated from the world and had no contact with any outside organization - either with Jews in other ghettos or with the Polish underground.

Opposition to Rumkowski's Policy of Compliance
The underground organizations sharply denounced the Aeltestenrat, and Rumkowski in particular, for having drawn up the lists of candidates for deportation in the first half of 1942. Rumkowski's policy was condemned, but the Lodz Ghetto underground was unable to come up with any alternative.

Liquidation.
In the spring of 1944, the Nazis decided to liquidate the Lodz Ghetto, and they reactivated the Chelmno extermination camp with this purpose in mind. On June 23, the deportations to Chelmno were resumed, on the pretext that they were forced-labor transports to Germany. By July 15, 7,176 persons had been transferred to Chelmno under German escort, to be killed there. From July 15 to August 6, the deportations were at a standstill. They were renewed on August 7, their destination now being Auschwitz. The ghetto population resisted only passively. The last transport left the Lodz Ghetto on August 30; by then, 74,000 persons had been deported to Auschwitz. Twelve hundred Jews remained, held in two assembly camps. A small group of the last ghetto, numbering about 800, were finally liberated by the Soviet army, on January 19, 1945. No precise figures are available for the number of Lodz Ghetto inmates who survived the concentration camps; estimates range from 5-7,000.