Lodz ghetto, 1940-1944: longest
existing Polish ghetto
Deportations: Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Poznan, Stutthof
Survivors of the Lodz ghetto:
approximately 5,000-7,000
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 (2.5sq 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 worksections). 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 ($14,000,000).
The Altestenrat and its Activities.
The Germans authorities allowed the Altestenrat, and primarilyits chairman,
Rumkowski, wide powers in the organization of the ghetto's internal life.
The Altestenrat'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 seventy thousand workers (see table
1). Rumkowski greatly expanded the Altestenrat offices, its staff growing
from fifty - five hundred in February 1941 to thirteen thousand in August
1942. The services by the Altestenrat involved housing and sanitation,
as well as the distribution of the small quantities of food permitted by
the German authorities. Until October 1941 the Altestenrat also ran a school
system, consisting of forty-five elementary schools and two secondary schools,
which were attended by fifteen thousand 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 Altestenrat's Judischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish ghetto police), whose
maximum strength was 530. The Altestenrat also administered a prison, on
Czarnieckiego Street.
Conditions in the Ghetto.
The ghetto was surrounded with 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 there. 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 foodration 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 to May 1942, fifty-five thousand Jews and five thousand gypsies, who had been temporarily interned in Lodz, were deported to Chelmno. Between September 5 and 12 of that year, a second deportation operation to Chelmno took place. This time the Germans did no trequire lists from the Altestenrat: 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 proclaimed a 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 old people were the main victims ofthe 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 seventy-seven thousand.
Jewish deportees from the Lodz ghetto who are being taken to the Chelmno
death camp, are transferred from a closed passenger train to a train of
open cars at the Kolo train station. (Circa 1942)
Photograph from the Sidney Harcsztark Collection, courtesy of USHMM
Photo Archives.
Public Response.
Public activities in the summer and fall of 1940, were initiated as welfare operations and establishments 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 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 Altestenrat'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 contacts 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 Altestenrat, 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 were left, held in two assembly camps. A small group of the
lastghetto numbering about eight hundred, 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 five thousand to seven thousand.
Courtesy of:
"Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"
©1990 Macmillan Publishing Company
New York, NY 10022