Chairman of the Altestenrat (Council of Elders) Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, with youth movement members, Lodz Ghetto.

Rumkowski, a Zionist businessman before the war, supported the activities of the youth movements (mainly the Zionist ones) at the beginning, and approved of the training kibbutzim established in Marysin in May 1940.

However, from the middle of 1941, Rumkowski changed his attitude, because the youth movements refused to join his efforts to organize labor as a way of saving the Jews in the ghetto. He dismantled the kibbutzim in Marysin, even taking revenge on those who defied him. Despite this, Rumkowski allowed the activities of the youth movements to continue, until the liquidation of the ghetto.