No. 179 £5THE LODZ GHETTO

The city of Lodz (Łódź in Polish) lies inwestern Poland, 140 kilometres south-west ofWarsaw. A centre of textile manufacture, inthe 19th century it developed into the coun-try’s second-largest city after Warsaw andthe principal centre of textile industry inEastern Europe, with Jews preponderant asworkers and manufacturers. By 1939 it had apopulation of nearly 700,000, of whom233,000 (33.5 per cent) were Jewish.Nazi Germany invaded Poland on Septem-

ber 1, 1939, and in a Blitzkrieg campaign offive weeks the whole country was subju-gated. Co-ordinated with the German attackand following a secret clause of the recentlyconcluded German-Soviet Non-AggressionPact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland onSeptember 17, the Red Army quickly occu-pying the eastern half of the country. War-saw fell to the Germans on September 28and the last Polish bastions capitulated onOctober 6 (see After the Battle No. 158).Following the German-Russian occupa-

tion, Poland was carved up into three parts:the eastern half was annexed by the SovietUnion; the western provinces were annexedby Germany and became part of the GermanReich, forming four new Reichsgaue (admin-istrative and party districts): Danzig-WestPrussia, Wartheland and Upper and LowerSilesia, each governed by a Reichsstat thalter/Gauleiter; and the remaining middle partbecame the so-called Generalgouvernement,ruthlessly ruled by its Governor-General,Hans Frank.Wehrmacht troops had entered and occu-

pied Lodz on September 8. Tens of thou-sands of inhabitants, including over 70,000Jews, had fled but 162,000 Jews stillremained in the city. When Poland was tornup, the city ended up in the Wartheland, themiddle one of the four new Gaue, ruled by its

Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter, SS-Ober-gruppenführer Arthur Greiser. No Germancity within the Reich (Germany and Aus-tria), not even Berlin or Vienna, had such alarge Jewish community so, at a stroke, Lodzbecame the largest centre of Jewish popula-tion within Greater Germany.Immediately following the occupation,

like everywhere in Poland, the local Jewsbecame victims of anti-Semitic violence, notjust from German soldiers and civilians butalso from Poles. The first official anti-Jew-ish measures followed soon. They began onSeptember 18 with the banning of religiousservices for Rosh Hoshanah (Jewish NewYear) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atone-ment), followed by the blocking of all Jew-ish bank accounts; the prohibition of allJewish organisations and institutions; theintroduction of a curfew from 7 p.m. to 8a.m.; the prohibition to trade in leather ortextile products (which to many Lodz Jewsmeant a professional ban); the ‘Arianisa-tion’ (expropriation) of all Jewish busi-nesses; the prohibition to own radios; andthe prohibition to use horse-carriages orlorries or make use of public transport — allwithin the space of a few weeks.In early October, the Nazis ordained that the

Jewish community was to each day make avail-able a workforce of 600 men for compulsorylabour. Hoping to avoid random round-upsfrom streets and homes, the Jewish communityproposed to themselves select and make avail-able such a force. In connection with that, theGerman Stadtkommissar (temporary city gov-ernor), Albert Leister, on October 13appointed Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski as‘Judenälteste’ (Eldest of the Jews), orderinghim to form a Judenrat (Council of Jews),charged with organising and supervising themobilisation of the Jewish workforce.

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NUMBER 179© Copyright After the Battle 2018Editor: Karel MargryEditor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite: www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battle is published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range:Foyles Limited, 107 Charing Cross Road,London WC2H 0DT. Telephone: 020 7437 5660.Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail: orders@foyles.co.uk.Website: www.foyles.co.ukUnited Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355E-mail: info@renniks.com. Website: www.renniks.comCanadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Army Outfitters/Military Antiques Toronto1884 Danforth Ave, Toronto, Ontario, M4C 1J4Telephone: 647-436-0876E-mail: armyoutfitters@rogers.comWebsite: www.servicepub.comNew Zealand Distribution:Battle Books NZ Limited, P.O. Box 5549 Lambton,Wellington 6145, New ZealandTelephone: 021 434 303. Fax: 04 298 9958E-mail: sales@battlebooks.co.nz - Web: battlebooks.co.nzUnited States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106E-mail: info@rzm.com Website: www.rzm.comItalian Distribution:Milistoria s.r.l. Via Sofia, 12-Interporto,1-43010 Fontevivo (PR), ItalyTelephone: ++390521 651910. Fax: ++390521 619204E-mail: info@milistoria.it — Web: http://milistoria.it/Dutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188,6860 AD OosterbeekTelephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nl

CONTENTSTHE LODZ GHETTO 2

ITALYThe Race for Messina 24

AUSTRALIAPort Stephens Amphibious TrainingCentre 44

Front Cover: The Jewish ghetto in thecity of Lodz (renamed Litzmannstadt bythe Germans in 1940) in Poland wasthe first large ghetto set up by theNazis and also the longest to survive.The signs at the entrances read‘Residential quarter of the Jews. Entryprohibited’. This is the one at StaryRynek (Old Market) — then and now.(Karel Margry)

Back Cover: The memorial to HMASAssault, the joint US and RoyalAustralian Navy amphibious trainingcentre that existed in Port Stephens,New South Wales, from November1942 to October 1943. The memorialstrands in Fly Point Park in Nelson Bay.(David Mitchelhill-Green)

Photo Credit Abbreviations: AWM — Australian War Memorial; BA — Bundes -archiv; IWM — Imperial War Museum;USHMM — United States HolocaustMemorial Museum; USNA — US NationalArchives; ZIH — �Zydovski Instytut Historyczny, Warsaw.

After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the German-occupied part of the countrywas split up into four different Reichsgaue, which were annexed by Germany, andthe Generalgouvernement area further east. Reichsgau Wartheland (as it was knownfrom January 29, 1940) was governed by Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Gov-ernor) SS-Obergruppenführer Arthur Greiser, who had his seat in the city of Posen(the German name for Poznan). It was in his fief that the Nazi authorities in early 1940set up a Jewish ghetto in the city of Lodz, one of the very first to be created in all ofGerman-occupied Europe. (In total, the Nazis set up an estimated 1,100 to 1,200 ghet-tos, nearly all of them in Eastern Europe. There was in fact only one ghetto in theWest, at Amsterdam in the Netherlands.) The killing centre set up by the Nazis in theWartheland to liquidate Jews, gypsies and other ‘undesirables’ in their territory wasat Kulmhof (Chelmno), 60 kilometres north-west of Lodz.

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Rumkowski, a 62-year-old insurance agentwithout much formal education, was not aprominent member of the established localJewish leadership. A religious Zionist,before the war he was principally known forhis work in organising a large orphanage forJewish children. He first came to the fore onSeptember 12, when the Kehillah, the Jewishcommunal council (many leaders of whichhad fled before the German invasion), votedfor a new chairman. Abram Lajzor Plywacki,of the Agudath Israel religious party, waselected as new chairman with Rumkowskihis deputy. However, the latter soon provedthe chief driving force and before longassumed paramount position within thecouncil.

For the first two weeks after his appoint-ment, Rumkowski lived under the illusionthat he would be able to deal with the Ger-man rulers on equal terms. However, he wassoon confronted with the reality of the situa-tion. On November 1, Jewish intellectualswere arrested; on the 11th, the newly-createdJudenrat was arrested and most of its mem-bers tortured and shot or dragged away toconcentration camps. The following day,Rumkowski, confirmed as leader of the Jewsby the Nazis, formed a new Judenrat. How-ever, many of the nominee members chose toflee the city, forcing him to look for new can-didates.

On the nights of November 14/15 and15/16 — a few days after the first anniversaryof the ‘Reichskristallnacht’ (Reich CrystalNight, night of pogroms) in Germany — thetwo largest synagogues in Lodz were setalight and destroyed by fire. New anti-Jewishmeasures followed in quick succession. OnNovember 14, on order from the Regierungs -präsident (regional governor) FriedrichUebelhoer, Jews in Lodz were obliged to

wear yellow armbands, and Jewish shopswere to be marked as such. From December2 Jews were forbidden to steer or use anyform of vehicle, and on December 11,Gauleiter Greiser ordained that all Jews

were to wear a yellow star on the right-handfront and rear of their clothing.

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The Jewish ghetto in Lodz (named Litzmannstadt by theGermans) existed from May 1940 to August 1944. The veryfirst to be set up in Poland, and the second-largest afterWarsaw, it was also the longest surviving of all the ghettoscreated by the Nazi regime. Hermetically sealed from theoutside world, the ghetto was left to govern itself, understrict Nazi supervision. Led by its Judenälteste (Eldest of theJews) Chaim Rumkowski, the ghetto tried to survive by

opening up a large number of workshops and factories andmaking itself indispensable for the German war economy.However, with a population of over 163,000 (at its highestpoint) cramped in a tiny area of just four square kilometres,it became a place of unbelievable overcrowding, hunger,misery and suffering. Over 43,000 people perished there andanother 150,000 were sent away to be murdered by gas inthe Nazi death camps.

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THE LODZ GHETTOBy Karel Margry

Chaim Rumkowski consistently stuck to his motto ‘Our only way is work’. However,his dictatorial leadership and disputable decisions made him the most-controversialfigure in the ghetto’s history.

FORMATION OF THE GHETTOThe population of the Wartheland in 1939

comprised about 4.6 million people, of whom3.96 million (85 per cent) were Poles, 327,000(seven per cent) Germans and 366,000 (eightper cent) Jews, the latter living in some 150different communities. From the very begin-ning it was the Nazis’ intention to remove allnon-Germans from the new Gau and replacethem with German settlers from elsewhere,either colonists from the Reich or ethnicGermans from Eastern Europe (Galicia andVolhynia in eastern Poland, the Baltic coun-tries, Bessarabia and Bukovina in theUkraine). At the same time all non-Germans— be they Poles or Jews — were to bemoved out into the Generalgouvernement.On November 12, 1939, the Höhere SS-

und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and PoliceLeader) in the Wartheland, SS-Obergrup-penführer Wilhelm Koppe, acting on a direc-tive from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himm-ler, ordered the start of deportation of Poles

and Jews from the Wartheland. By February1940 some 200,000 Poles and 100,000 Jews —including 30,000 Poles and 30,000 Jews fromLodz — were to be deported to areas southof Warsaw and Lublin in the General -gouvernement. Later directives stipulatedthat over 680,000 persons, including all ofLodz’s 233,000 Jews, were to be sent away.By mid-December, over 87,000 persons

had already been deported in 80 train trans-ports. However, these initial deportationsdid not really affect Lodz. There were tworeasons for this: firstly, the German authori-ties were not yet decided that Lodz wouldremain part of the Wartheland; secondly,and more importantly, the city’s industry wasof vital importance to the German war econ-omy and the Germans simply needed thePolish and Jewish labourers to keep it going.In particular it was Hermann Göring, in hiscapacity as chief of the economic Four-YearPlan, who recognised that the Lodz workerscould not be missed.

A more general obstacle to the deporta-tions from the Wartheland formed itself whenHans Frank, the ruler of the Generalgou-vernement, showed himself decidedly unwill-ing to accept more Poles and Jews into his fief.Despite vehement protests from GauleiterGreiser, Frank consistently refused to allow inmore deportation transports, arguing it wasimpossible to absorb so many newcomers.

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Through the ghetto ran two main thoroughfares — the Hohensteiner Strasse (Zgier-ska) and the Alexanderhof-Strasse (Limanowskiego), which were considered indis-pensable for German traffic. They were therefore declared ‘Arian’ streets, whichmeant they were off-limit for Jews. This in effect cut the ghetto into three separatesections and considerably hampered traffic from one part to another. Initially, Jewscould only cross these streets at specific points — two on Hohensteiner and one onAlexanderhof-Strasse — at specific times, so crowds would build up at these pointswaiting for the German guards to open the gates. This is the southern one on Hohen-steiner. The sign reads ‘Residential quarter of the Jews. Entry prohibited’.

It was located at the south-western corner of Alt-Markt (Stary Rynek) — marked [1]on the ghetto plan. The view is westward, looking into Am Bach (Podrzeczna). Thecorner building has changed since the war.

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All streets in Lodz/Litzmannstadt, includ-ing those in the ghetto, were given Germannames during the Nazi occupation. Theghetto inhabitants used both names inter-changeably. [1] Alt-Markt (Stary Rynek) [2]Kirch-Platz (Plac Koscielny). [3] Baluter Ring(Balucki Rynek). [4] Gestapo/Schupo. [5]Hospital No. 1. [6] Gemüse-Markt (RynekJojne Pilcera). [7] Ordnungsdienst (JewishPolice). [8] Firemen’s Square. [9] Bazar-Platz (Plac Bazarowy), today Plac Pias-towski. [10] Kulturhaus (House of Culture).[11] Zigeuner-Lager (Gypsies Camp). [12]Faeces dumping ground. [13] JewishCemetery. [14] Central Prison. [15] Rade-gast (Radogoszcz) Railway Station.

The Lodz Ghetto

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Left: Stary Rynek, the Old Market, had always been a centreof Jewish life in Lodz and a busy hub of commerce, as illus-trated by this picture from 1915. Right: A colourful art installa-tion covered the square when Karel Margry visited Lodz,

obstructing much of the view. The square today has houseson three sides but all have changed their appearance sincethe time of the ghetto, having been given arcaded façades ina post-war redevelopment.

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Ghetto Fence

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Orthodox Main Synagogue (destroyed on November 15/16, 1939)

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The end result of all this was that the Jewsof Lodz were for the moment not to bedeported. However, since in Nazi racist ide-ology they were regarded as ‘alien’ and ‘ven-omous’ to German society, they were to beconcentrated and isolated in a special closed-off area. The creation of a Jewish ghetto inLodz had been discussed in German circlesfor some time and its proposed shape andfunction was first formally laid down byRegierungspräsident Uebelhoer in a memo-randum on December 10, 1939. Although hedid not quite know or prescribe ‘by whichmeans the ghetto and with it the city of Lodzwill be cleaned of Jews’, Uebelhoer left nodoubt that the whole set-up was just a provi-sional one, awaiting sterner measures: ‘Finalgoal must in any case be that we utterly burnout this pestilent lump’.The actual setting-up of the ghetto was

ordered by SS-Brigadeführer JohannesSchäfer, the Polizeipräsident (Chief ofPolice) of Lodz, in instructions issued onFebruary 3 and 8. The ghetto would be madeup of the town districts of Stare Miasto (OldCity), Baluty and Marysin, all located at thenorthern end of the city. These neighbour-hoods, which included the large JewishCemetery and many factories, representedthe poorer part of Lodz and contained agreat many wooden houses with few ameni-ties. Gas and electricity supply was limitedand over 95 per cent of the 31,000 apart-ments had no toilets, running water or con-nection to a sewage system.In this area of just 4.13 square kilometres

all of the city’s Jews were to be concentrated.Some 62,000 of them already lived there. Allnon-Jewish residents were given sevenweeks, until April 30, to move out and all100,000 Jews living in other parts or suburbsof the city were ordered to move into theprescribed area by that same date, the latter

transfer taking place in several shifts, districtper district, ordered and enforced by theGerman police. Any attempt to flee or delaythe house-moving was forcibly suppressed,the German police on one night, March 6/7,shooting 200 Jews in their homes and on thestreets in order to terrorise the Jewish popu-lation into complying. Those ordered intothe ghetto in most cases had no time to selltheir property and could take very little oftheir belongings with them — a tacticdesigned to rob the Jews of part of their

assets. What they left behind was subse-quently appropriated by the German state.The ghetto was officially declared closed

on May 10, 1940. From that date onwards,Jews (including even Jewish EldestRumkowski) were forbidden to leave theghetto, and Germans or Poles were forbid-den to enter it. Entry permits could only begiven out by the Police President. Within theghetto a curfew from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. was inforce. The number of people registered asinhabitants was 163,777.

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Three months after the creation of the ghetto, in July 1940, inan attempt to solve the pedestrian traffic problem, largewooden foot-bridges were built at each of the three crossingpoints. The Germans used the opportunity to extract more capital from the ghetto, charging the Jews a hefty 60,000

Reichsmark for them. This is the bridge at Stary Rynek, pictured by Wehrmacht photographer Zermin of Propaganda-Kompanie 689 in 1941. Jews could only move along Hohen-steiner Strasse via the pavements on either side, which wereseparated from the roadway by a barbed-wire fence.

Looking north up Zgierska today. Zermin was standing at the extreme southern endof the ghetto. The church in the background is the Church of the Most Blessed VirginMary.

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Left: The second crossing point on Hohensteiner Strasse was300 metres further north, at Kirch-Platz (Plac Koscielny), thesquare immediately next to the church. This picture was takenin the summer of 1940, before the pedestrian bridge was built.Note the sign on the corner, identical to the one seen at StaryRynek, and marking the entrance to the Jewish quarter. Right:The building on the corner, No. 4 Plac Koscielny, housed sev-eral departments of the Jewish self-administration, amongthem the Statistics Department and one of its sections, theGhetto Archives Office. Formed in November 1940, the task ofthe latter was to assemble documents and materials, not somuch for present use but with the express purpose that futuregenerations would be able to know about and understand theghetto. It was here that, from January 12, 1941 to July 31,1944, a team of collaborators, mostly journalists and writers,compiled an official Ghetto Chronicle, in which they kept adaily record of important data and events, originally in Polishand later in German. Its initial authors were Julian Cukier,

Abraham Kamieniecki, Szmuel Hecht, Bernard Ostrowski andJozef Zelkowicz; from September 1942 their work was takenover by Oskar Rosenfeld, Oskar Singer, Peter Wertheimer,Bernhard Heilig (all four deported to Lodz from Prague in Octo-ber 1941) and Alice Chana de Buton (deported from Vienna).Each day of the Chronicle began with a listing of the weatherconditions, number of people in the ghetto, births and deaths,food deliveries, reports from the factories and workshops, etc,and continued with a variety of stories and reportages aboutevents and daily life in the ghetto, often embellished with alisting of current rumours and examples of ghetto humour. TheChronicle was a public effort, so the compilers could notalways openly voice their opinion and sometimes had toshrewdly shroud their descriptions. All authors and editors ofthe Chronicle perished in the Holocaust, either in the ghettoitself or after deportation to Auschwitz, but a copy of theirwork was rescued and it remains a primary source of informa-tion on the ghetto to this day.

The same spot but now with the foot-bridge in place. Thesepictures by PK photographer Zermin show that the bridgessolved the traffic problem only very partially. With the exces-sive overpopulation in the ghetto, there were always long

queues waiting at either end for the two-way traffic over them.Note the barbed-wire fence along the pavements on bothsides. Note also Zermin’s colleague, a cine cameraman, filminginto the ghetto on the right.

The same view today. A new building has been erected on the corner with Telegrafen-Strasse (Lutomierska) on the left.

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People crossing the foot-bridge, pictured by PK Zermin, withthe tower of the Church of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary risingbehind.

Located inside the ghetto, the church was used as a storehousefor stolen Jewish property, and also later as workplace for thefeather and down sorting unit, one of the ghetto workshops.

Right: One of the few ‘droshkies’ (open,horse-drawn wagons) available to theJews in the ghetto has stopped outsideNo. 13 Telegrafen-Strasse (Lutomierska),one of two stations of the so-called Ret-tungsbereitschaft (First Aid Team). Com-prising some 11 to 19 doctors and 15 to 28medical orderlies they provided medicalaid to the ghetto inhabitants, the horse-drawn wagons being used as ambulances.Between June 1940 and June 1942 alone,they attended to 38,817 cases. At No. 7, inmid-distance on the left, was one of theghetto’s many production sites, a glovesand hosiery workshop. Led by DorianRadziejewski, a well-known manufacturerin Lodz before the war, it employed 400people, including 200 home-workers, pro-ducing gloves, socks, sweaters and otherknitwear. It later moved to No. 75 Holz-Strasse (Drewnowska). This colour imageis one of a unique series of 393 colourtransparencies taken by Walter Genewein,the chief of the financial department of theGerman Ghetto-Verwaltung, between1941 and 1944. Stored in a simple woodencase, they surfaced in 1987 at an antiquar-ian shop in Salzburg, Austria. The shop-keeper did not want to disclose the origi-nal owner of the trannies but research byAustrian historians Florian Freund,Bertrand Perz and Karl Stuhlpfarrer soonascertained that they must have beentaken by Genewein, a fact later confirmedby his widow Helene. Born on May 4, 1901in Saalfelden near Salzburg, Geneweinhad joined the Nazi party in 1938 and wason the Ghetto-Verwaltung staff from 1940to 1944. His photos, taken with an Agfa9 x 12 plate camera, were presumablyintended to illustrate the agency’s successin making the ghetto a vital factor in theGerman war economy. Note the car onthe right: P-45091 was a staff vehicle ofthe Ghetto-Verwaltung with a special per-mit to enter the ghetto. Genewein died inSalzburg in 1974. Right: The cobblestonesand all of the houses along the street havegone in the post-war development of Lodzbut the church remains to pinpoint thespot.

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A month before, on April 11, 1940, follow-ing a Führer decree, Gauleiter Greiser hadofficially renamed Lodz into Litzmannstadt— after a German general from the FirstWorld War, Karl Litzmann (1850-1936), whoin 1914 had won a battle near the city andlater became an NSDAP member and statepolitician — so it was under that name thatthe ghetto would be known: Gau-GhettoLitzmannstadt. It was the very first largeghetto formed by the Nazi regime.After it was closed, the Germans sur-

rounded the entire 11-kilometre ghettoperimeter with a barbed-wire and woodenfence, guarded by a battalion of the Ord-nungspolizei (Order Police, Orpo). Alsoknown as the Wach-Bataillon Litzmannstadt,it fell under the commander of the localSchutzpolizei (Protection Police, Schupo),Oberst Walter Keuck. The guards, placed at50- to 100-metre intervals, had orders toshoot on sight anyone caught trying to enteror leave the ghetto or smuggle goods in orout. They also were to challenge, and shoot ifnot complied with, anyone coming within 15metres of the wire fence.In order to further separate the ghetto

from the rest of the city, entire streets werepulled down, creating a strip of no-man’s landbetween the two. Two main streets — theHohensteiner Strasse (Zgierska in Polish)and the Alexanderhof-Strasse (Limanows -kiego) — designated for German use only,cut through the ghetto, in effect bisecting itinto three parts. Jews were only allowed tocross over via certain gates and at designatedtimes only. Later, in July 1940, big woodenfoot-bridges were constructed over these‘Arian’ streets to allow Jewish pedestrians topass from one part of the ghetto to another.Now that all Jews were concentrated in a

single district, the question arose how tofeed them and who was to pay for that. Tomanage that problem, the city of Lodz cre-ated a special office, the Ernährungs- undWirtschafts-Stelle Ghetto (Ghetto FoodProvisioning and Economic Bureau). Thesystem of food supply to the ghetto wasdesigned to further rob the Jews of theireconomic wealth. The foodstuff, deliveredin bulk to the Judenrat, was to be paid forwith what money and valuables the Jewshad left. When that source dried up, thefood was to be bought with what the ghettoinmates earned with their labour in theworkshops and factories. In order to speedup extraction of money from the Jews, onMay 21, 1940 the Germans announced theabolishment of all convertible currencies inthe ghetto, replacing them with a new legaltender known as Mark-Quittungen orGhetto-Geld. This forced the inhabitantsto release all remaining Reichsmarks andforeign currencies before they becameworthless. By August 1940, the inmateshad surrendered over five million Reichs-mark in money and valuables. Procuringfood and other commodities with moneyearned through labour again worked to thedisadvantage of the ghetto inhabitants.Although the Reich Labour Ministry paid

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Right: The Baluter Ring (Balucki Rynek),the market square located at the junctionof the two ‘Arian’ streets, was the nervecentre of the ghetto. This was theUmschlagplatz, the place where all thefoodstuff and other necessities supplied tothe ghetto, and the raw materials for itsindustry, were brought in and where allthe goods manufactured by the ghettoworkshops went out. A neutral space,both the German Ghetto-Verwaltung andthe Jewish self-administration had theiroffices in wooden barracks built on thesquare. Here three officials of the Ghetto-Verwaltung, including its chief HansBiebow (with his back to the camera), aretalking with Judenälteste Chaim Rum -kowski (with white hair and glasses).

Today, a huge indoor market hall sprawls over most of the square, but the tall build-ing seen in the left background in the wartime picture survives. We are looking to thesquare’s eastern side.

Nos. 23-25 in this building housed the meeting room of the Judenrat (Jewish Council)and the administrative office of the Gesundheits-Abteilung (Health Department), thelatter directed by Jozef Rumkowski, the brother of the Eldest of the Jews.

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the German ghetto administration sixReichsmarks per day for every workingJew, the latter only paid out wages of 80Pfennig per person per day.The Ernährungs- und Wirtschafts-Stelle

Ghetto soon developed into the main agencymanaging all the affairs connected with theghetto: besides providing food to the ghetto,it handled all industrial contracts, managedthe supply of raw materials, took charge offinished products, issued labour instructionsand other orders to the Judenrat, etc. To bet-ter reflect its expanded function, the officewas renamed Ghetto-Verwaltung (GhettoAdministration) in October 1940.The man appointed to lead the Ernäh r -

ungs- und Wirtschafts-Stelle and its succes-

sor the Ghetto-Verwaltung was HansBiebow, a 37-year-old corn and coffee mer-chant from Bremen, who would remain inoffice for the duration of the ghetto’s exis-tence. His chief assistants were FriedrichRibbe, deputy; Josef Hämmerle, head of theaccountancy department, and WalterGenewein, head of the financial department.They headed a staff that would eventuallygrow to over 400 people.To control and check on the ghetto

inmates, the German Sicherheitspolizei(Security Police, Sipo) set up two officesalongside the Ghetto-Verwaltung. TheStaats polizei (State Police, Stapo), whichhad a bureau in the city, the Stapo-StelleLitzmannstadt, set up a Gestapo station

inside the ghetto tasked with watching outfor any form of resistance or sabotage, and aspecial office within the Stapo-Stelle, theReferat für Judenangelegenheiten (Officefor Jewish Affairs), led by SS-Hauptsturm-führer Günter Fuchs, dealt with all ques-tions regarding deportations into and out ofthe ghetto. The Kriminalpolizei (CriminalPolice, Kripo), represented by the localKripo-Stelle Litzmannstadt under Krimi-naldirektor Dr Ernst Zirpins, set up a 20-men Kripo detachment in the ghetto underKommissar Bruno Obersteiner. Officiallycharged with combating and investigatingordinary crimes, particularly smuggling, inpractice they mostly engaged in seizingvaluables.

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This picture was taken on Baluty Market on June 7, 1941, onthe occasion of an official visit to the ghetto by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. He is seen sitting in his car talking toChaim Rumkowski, who stands surrounded by German policeand SS officers. Hans Biebow can just be seen behind his colleague in the brown Nazi party uniform. Himmler reputedlyasked Rumkowski: ‘What are you doing here?’ Rumkowski:“We work and we are building a city of labour here’.

Himmler: ‘And how is the work here going?’ Rumkowski: ‘Notbadly, I believe. Hopefully, it will get better. I am doing every-thing so that the ghetto will work more and work better. Mymotto is Work, Peace and Order.’ Himmler: ‘Then go on working for the benefit of your brethren in the ghetto. It willdo you good.’ After that, Himmler, accompanied byRumkowski, visited the tailors’ workshop at No. 16 Rem-brandt-Strasse (Jakuba), the largest in the ghetto.

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Left: Across the square, at its western end, stood the build-ing that housed both the 6. Polizei-Revier (borough of themunicipal Schutzpolizei) and the Gestapo station responsi-ble for supervising the ghetto. Note the sentry guarding the

entrance to the Umschlagplatz compound. Genewein tookhis picture from inside the enclosure. Right: The buildingstands virtually unchanged at the junction of Zgierska andLimanowskiego.

It is important to note that — unlike theconcentration camps, which were governedby the SS — the ghettos set up by the Naziswere administered by German civilianauthorities. In the case of Lodz, located as itwas in the Reichsgau Wartheland, the chainof command ran from Gauleiter Greiserdown through the Regierungspräsident ofthe Kalisch region (Friedrich Uebelhoer)through the Oberbürgermeister of Litz-mannstadt — Franz Schiffer (until May1940), Dr Karl Marder (until May 1941),Werner Ventzki (until August 1943) andOtto Bradfisch (until December 1944)respectively — to the chief of the Ghetto-Verwaltung (Hans Biebow). The SS waspresent only in so much as that of the fourpolice branches involved in the ghetto —Gestapo, Kriminalpolizei, Ordnungspolizeiand Schutzpolizei — the first two were partof the SS empire and all four fell within thejurisdiction of its chief, Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler.

JEWISH SELF-ADMINISTRATIONWith the creation of the ghetto, the role of

the Judenrat, and its chairman ChaimRumkowski, changed. On April 30, 1940,Oberbürgermeister Schiffer charged Rum -kowski with the maintenance of law andorder, especially in the economic sphere; theextraction of funds; the employment oflabour; the provision of food, and the organi-sation of medical and social care in theghetto, making him personally responsiblefor the upkeep of all these matters.The directive gave Rumkowski far-reach-

ing powers. In a short time he organised aghetto self-administration comprising num -er ous organisations, including a police force(the Ordnungsdienst), a ghetto court of jus-tice, a ghetto prison, a fire-brigade, depart-ments for food, housing, labour, industry,finances (including a ghetto bank), statisticsand archive, medical care, social care (forchildren, orphans, disabled and aged people), cultural activities, etc. As his depart-ment chiefs, Rumkowski selected friends andother people he knew and trusted. Jobswithin the Judenrat were heavily soughtafter, as they meant higher food rations and,

in later stages, could provide protectionagainst deportation. Within a year, the per-sonnel employed by the Judenrat exploded

from a few hundred to over 7,000 persons.With its expansion came bureaucracy, cor-ruption and nepotism.

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Right: Furniture and other wooden prod-ucts from the ghetto workshops arebeing unloaded on Baluty Market. Thispicture well illustrates how the squarewas closed off from the rest of theghetto, being separated from it by a dou-ble fence, one of wire mesh, the other ofbarbed-wire. Ghetto inmates fill thepavement on the far side. Note that theJews in the ghetto were obliged to weara Star of David both on the back andfront of their clothing.

The same row of houses still stands on the northern side of the square.

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Left: Another view into the ghetto from the Baluty Marketenclosure, this time looking eastward into Insel-Strasse (Zaw-iszy Czarnego). This picture was taken by yet another PK photographer, Schilf, in 1940. As with the Warsaw Ghetto,Lodz was much-frequented by official photographers, be theyfrom the Propaganda-Kompanieen or from anti-Semitic

publications like Der Stürmer, their photos always designed to portray Jews as inferior ‘Untermenschen’ (subhumans) livingin overcrowded squalid slums. Right: The house on the cornerhas disappeared but the four-storey apartment block remains.An early inventory recorded that there were 450 four-storeybuildings in the ghetto.

Although formally Rumkowski was justthe head of the Judenrat, in practice he ruledall by himself, establishing an autocratic,even dictatorial, rule over his fellow Jews.Every judicial power, high and low, was con-centrated in his hands; he raised taxes,coined money (the notes, which featuredRumkowski’s signature, were known as‘Rumkis’ or ‘Chaimkes’ after his first name),issued an endless series of instructions anddecrees (announced to the populace bymeans of wall posters, well over 400 between1939 and 1944). A vainglorious man, he sur-rounded himself with a coterie of courtiersand flatterers. The ghetto newspaper sang hispraise; court poets dedicated cantatas to hisglory; the children in the ghetto schoolsinscribed New Year’s greetings to him. Forthe Germans he was only a Jew, goodenough to command other Jews, but one whoalso got a good beating on occasion. But inthe ghetto he displayed all the pomp of achief of state. He produced postage stampswith his own portrait on them and appearedin public in white cap and coat; he kept forhimself the right to arrest or pardon his ‘sub-jects’. He called the ghetto inhabitants ‘myworkers’, ‘my children’ and even ‘my Jews’.

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Right: With over 160,000 personspressed into an area of just 4.13 squarekilometres, the ghetto streets werealways full of people. The fate of thesechildren pictured by PK Schilf in 1940would be determined by decisions takenby Judenälteste Rumkowski later on: ifabove the age of ten, they would be putto work in the ghetto workshops toincrease productivity per capita(ordained in May 1942); if below, theywould be cruelly torn away from theirparents and sent to Chelmno to begassed (September 1942).

Right: The house in the left backgroundis the same as the one seen in the previ-ous picture, enabling us to identify thisas Hanseaten-Strasse (Lagiewniecka),looking north to Baluty Market.Hanseaten-Strasse (its northern half wasknown as Sonnleite) was one of themain streets in the ghetto. Along it laythree of the principal tailors’ workshops(at Nos. 45, 49 and 53), a brush work-shop, later turned into a metal-workingshop (at No. 63), another metal-workingshop (at No. 73) and two of the fiveghetto hospitals (at Nos. 34-36 and 37).

Left: The hospital at No. 34-36 was the Kasa Choryz m Lodzi(Clinic of the Lodz Sickness Fund). Built in 1927-30, it was rela-tively modern, and served as Ghetto Hospital No. 1. Rumkowskihad his private apartment on the first floor of one of the sidebuildings. After the ghetto hospitals were closed in September1942, the building served as one of the assembly locations fordeportations out of the ghetto, i.e. this is where people whohad been put on a deportation list had to report and stay withtheir allowed load of luggage, usually for one or two days,

before being escorted to the railway station as a group. In thefinal phase it served as the central office of the tailors’ work-shops division and, after dissolution of the ghetto in August1944, it housed part of the Aufräumkommando (clean-up unit)until October 22. This is another of the transparencies taken byWalter Genewein. Right: After the war, the facility was re-named Helena Wolf Hospital and operated until the late 1980sas a maternity hospital. Entered in the monuments register inthe 1970s, it is currently closed and in a rather sorry condition.

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‘OUR ONLY WAY IS WORK’Rumkowski also believed he had a mis-

sion: to preserve the lives of the Lodz Jewsthrough every peril. He was convinced thatthe only chance for the ghetto inhabitants tosurvive the Nazi persecution was to make theghetto an indispensable factor in the Germanwar economy, to faithfully carry out all theindustrial contracts and in doing so employas many labourers as possible. His motto,repeated again and again in his manyspeeches to the ghetto populace and to work-ers in the factories, was: ‘Our only way iswork’.Already on May 13, 1940, Rumkowski

notified Oberbürgermeister Marder that hehad registered 14,850 trained labourers —textile workers, wood workers, metal work-ers and other craftsmen — and could providea range of 70 different products.Beginning production with a single textile

workshop with 300 workers, by July 1941some 40,000 of the 160,000 ghetto residentswere employed in production. The numberof factories and workshops and diversity ofproducts grew continuously and by 1942there were over 73,000 persons employed inover 90 manufacturing sites. They workedalmost exclusively for the German Wehr -macht, producing an ever-wider diversity ofmilitary products: uniforms, boots, gloves,belts, epaulettes, medal ribbons, straw wintershoes, ear-muffs, camouflage jackets, sleep-ing bags, ammunition crates and boxes, etc.Other orders came from civilian businesses,mostly department stores and clothing mer-chants, who ordered a wide range of textileproducts: coats, dresses, underwear, stock-ings, carpets, rugs, etc. The Deutsche Wohnungshilfswerk (German HousingRelief Organisation, DHW) placed ordersfor prefabricated emergency homes andwooden furniture for bombed-out civilians.To increase output, many of the work-

shops introduced series-production and con-veyor-belt techniques, allowing the employ-ment of unskilled labour. Workers spent longhours, toiling six days a week, initially fornine hours per day, increased on April 29,1941 to ten hours. In May 1942, to offset adrop in production caused by the workers’increasing weakness from hunger, Rum -kowski ordained that all children above tenyears of age were to be put to work as well,and introduced a three-shift schedule. Wageswere held low because Gau authorities took30 per cent off the top, the Ghetto-Verwal-tung another 30 per cent, and the Jewish self-

administration another ten. The most-skilledworker received at best four ghetto marksdaily, non-skilled labour earned only onemark per day.

Rumkowski acted vigorously against anyform of labour unrest or industrial sabotage.Throughout the existence of the ghetto therewere outbursts of strikes and demonstrations,

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Right: Further south on Hanseaten-Strasse(Lagiewniecka), PK Schilf pictured thecrowd of people passing Rynek Jojne Pil-cera, the main marketplace in the ghetto.

Left: Rynek Jojne Pilcera was the main site for storing vegeta-bles supplied to the ghetto, hence its German name Gemüse-Markt. The vegetables — mostly kohlrabi, white cabbage, blackradish, carrots and the like — were always, and by intent, ofinferior quality and large quantities were already rotting away

when delivered. Nonetheless, forced by the starvation rations,most of the putrid stuff was still used by the ghetto kitchens toprepare the daily soup meals. Right: The open space of thesquare has now been divided up and is partly used as a carpark. However, the buildings around it remain unchanged.

The tramway still passes through Lagiewniecka today.

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the workers protesting variously against thelow wages, the quantity or quality of theirmeals, or the lack of coal to heat up homes orwork places. When the first strike occurred inAugust 1940, Rumkowski ordered the Ord-nungsdienst to beat the strikers into submis-sion, denouncing them as ‘irresponsible ele-ments’. Later he also resorted to banningstrikers from work, which meant the culpritslost their extra rations; putting gang-leadersinto prison, or the closing of entire work-shops. Ghetto policemen saw to it that workdiscipline was maintained and that no sabo-tage occurred.The productivity of the ghetto workshops

depended directly on the food situation: themore the workers were fed, the better theycould work. Nonetheless, the Germans neversupplied the ghetto with enough food(spending only 30 Pfennig per person per dayon provisions) and what was delivered —mainly potatoes, vegetables, flour, meat andErsatz coffee — was always of inferior qual-ity. As time went on, meat, fat and dairy pro-duce were supplied in ever-diminishingquantities and marmalade and sugar disap-peared altogether. Distribution had to beregulated too. In June 1940, Rumkowskiintroduced ration cards; food was henceforth

sold by Judenrat personnel in special shopsand on markets. In the autumn, with foodexpenses threatening to exceed income fromthe ghetto (and endangering profits),Biebow’s Ghetto-Verwaltung rudely over-rode Rum kowski’s system, announcing adrastic reduction of food supply and orderedRumkowski to introduce two kinds of foodrations, one for working people and a lowerone for non-workers. Communal kitchenswere introduced; all foodstuffs now went tothese facilities, which prepared and gave outmeals — mainly a piece of bread, a bowl ofwatery cabbage or potato soup, and anevening snack of radish greens or potatopeelings — to the population.With rations being continuously curtailed

further, the food situation grew ever morecatastrophic. In the summer of 1942 a fullyemployed worker received only 1,100 calo-ries daily, less than ordinary prison inmates,and a non-worker a mere 600 calories. Eventhe chief of the Ghetto-Verwaltung, Biebow,wanting to upkeep productivity of his lucra-tive enterprise, in 1942-43 repeatedlyprotested against claims — from theGestapo, from the Oberbürgermeister —that the ghetto population was using up toomuch food.

GHETTO SOCIETYThe daily life of the ghetto inmates was

determined by hunger, cold, exhaustion,work and the always-present fear of deporta-tion. Everybody suffered from the lack offood, fuel and medical supplies, and deathaffected every family. The hard labour andthe malnutrition, coupled with the unsanitaryconditions in the poorly-ventilated and over-crowded factories and homes, had a cata-strophic effect on the population. Sixty percent of the ghetto inmates suffered fromtuberculosis and there were outbreaks oftyphus and dysentery. Between May 1940and October 1941, i.e. in the first 18 monthsof the ghetto’s existence, its population sankfrom 163,000 to 144,000. The decrease waspartly caused by transfers out to forced-labour camps elsewhere, but most of it wasthe result of a rapidly-rising death rate.Between 1940 and 1944 over 43,000 peopledied in the ghetto. They were buried inclosely packed graves in a huge open plot ofthe Jewish Cemetery.In the congested conditions of the ghetto,

staying clean and warm posed insoluble prob-lems. Three or four families lived in spaceadequate for one. With barely any soap or hotwater, keeping a household clean and clothes

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In addition to the hundreds of official photos of the ghetto takenby the Germans and the unofficial snapshots taken by curiousWehrmacht soldiers, there also exists a large number of picturestaken by a team of Jewish photographers. Employed by theghetto’s Statistics Department, their main task was to take portraits for ID cards for the thousands of ghetto labourers butthey also clandestinely documented every aspect of the ghetto.Left: Mendel Grosman, born in Staszow on June 27, 1913, wasalready a professional photographer in Lodz before he came to

the ghetto in 1940. Just before being sent on to Königs Wuster-hausen camp in October 1944, he managed to hide his 10,000 neg-atives in the ghetto. He perished in late April 1945 during the sub-sequent death march from the camp but his sister recovered hisnegatives and brought them to Palestine where however theywere lost in the 1948 Israeli war of independence. Fortunately, hisfriend Nachman Zonabend independently managed to rescuenumerous prints, which are now preserved in two Israeli archives.Right:One of Grosman’s photos: children scavenging for coal.

Left: Henryk Ross, born in Warsaw on May 1, 1910, worked asa press photographer in Lodz before the war. Having beenassigned film stock to be used in taking the ID card portraits,he developed a clever technique — seen here — to make 12such portraits in one shot, thus saving film material for hisclandestine work. When the ghetto was dissolved in 1944, hewas fortunate enough to become a member of theAufräumkommando and was able to bury his 6,000 negatives

in a wooden crate in the ghetto and himself survive until lib-eration. He recovered his negatives, about half of whichproved irretrievably damaged by groundwater. He ran aphoto shop in Lodz until 1956, when he emigrated to Israel,taking his photos with him. He died in Tel Aviv in 1991. His3,000 negatives are since 2007 held by the Art Gallery ofOntario in Toronto, Canada. Right: One of Ross’s photos oflife in the ghetto.

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washed was an Herculean task. Toilets andlatrines, running water and all plumbing andsewage facilities were taxed beyond capacityand beyond repair. Fuel for cooking or keep-ing warm was always scarce. Coal was deliv-ered but never in sufficient quantities. In Jan-uary 1941, the Judenrat undertook asystematic programme of dismantling unin-habited places — stores, shops, fences — toprovide wood for fuel. Despite the bestefforts, the ghetto degenerated into a filthy,impoverished, muddy place of misery.In the coerced society of the ghetto, soli-

darity and egoism lived side by side. Therewas theft, corruption, betrayal, luxury andprivileges for some, and political strife (rang-ing back to differences between the pre-warpolitical factions, between religious and non-religious Jews, Zionists and non-Zionists,socialists and communists). At the sametime, these factions, especially their youthorganisations, worked to help the impover-ished; established bread distribution pointsand communal kitchens; organised schoolsand nurseries for the children (at their peak,in 1941, there were 45 schools with about10,000 pupils). They also set up kibbutzim(collective farms) for young Zionists in openpatches of land in the Marysin district, andled strikes and demonstrations.There also developed a many-sided cultural

life involving a rich programme of theatre andmusical performances, lectures and literaryclubs, libraries, religious services and Jewishfeasts, and cultural evenings. The GhettoArchive, part of the Statistics Department,compiled a comprehensive ghetto chronicle,between January 1941 and July 1944 painstak-ingly recording statistics and daily events forfuture generations. Numerous inmates wrotepersonal diaries or turned to visual arts, mak-ing paintings or drawing sketches. Many ofthese activities were allowed and could beorganised openly but some were forbiddenand hence were done in secret.Opportunities for more-active, let alone

armed resistance were completely non-exis-tent. Located inside Reich territory, sur-

rounded by a hostile German population, outof contact with the rest of the world, the ghettoinmates had no way of acquiring any weaponsor other ordnance needed for an armed revolt.Moreover, even if an uprising and break-outfrom the ghetto succeeded, they had nowhereto go, no partisan groups they could join, noorganised resistance groups that could help tohide them. A few inmates were able to secureor build wireless receivers, enabling them toillegally listen to radio broadcasts and so fol-low the course of the war. On June 7, 1944 (theday after the Allied landings in Normandy),six men — Jakob, Henoch and David Weksler(three brothers), Mojzesz and Aron Altzuler(father and son) and Mosze Tafel — werearrested by the German Kriminalpolizei forpossession of radios and distribution of an ille-gal news bulletin. A seventh man, ChaimWidawski, could not be found and he commit-ted suicide by poison two days later.Another aspect, fed by the ghetto’s complete

segregation from outside news, was the never-ending stream of rumours — some true, themajority fantastic — that daily went the rounds.

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At No. 17 Telegrafen-Strasse was theheadquarters of the Ghetto Fire-Brigadeand around the corner, along LustigeGasse (Wesola), was the so-called Fire-men’s Square. Commanded by HenrykKaufman, the fire-brigade possessed theonly motorised vehicles in the ghetto: asix-cylinder Chevrolet ladder-lorry, afour-cylinder Chevrolet pump-wagonand a BSA motorcycle combination — allthree of them found in scrap condition inthe ghetto and reinstated by Jewishmechanics. Genewein pictured the fire-fighters proudly demonstrating their lad-der-lorry on the square.

Chaim Rumkowski, the Eldest of the Jews, used the same square to address theghetto population on several occasions. This particular photo was taken on June 15,1940, but his most infamous and controversial speech here was held in the afternoonof September 4, 1942, when — having been ordered by the Nazis to provide 20,000persons for deportation (and almost certain death) — he pleaded with the inhabitantsto ‘give me your children’. In the following week, over 15,000 persons, the majority ofthem children below ten years of age and elderly people, were deported to theChelmno killing centre, where they were murdered in mobile gas-vans.

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Ulica Wesola is today named Ulica Zachodnia and the former fire-brigade building atNo. 14 remains.

DEPORTATIONS INTO THE GHETTOWhen it became clear that not all Jews

within the Wartheland would be shoved offinto the neighbouring Generalgouvernementwithin the foreseeable future, the local Ger-man authorities pleaded with GauleiterGreiser to concentrate these Jews in theLodz ghetto. As a first step, in late Septem-ber 1941, 2,900 Jews from the Kujawy region,including the towns of Leslau (Wloclawek),Brest (Brzesc Kujawski), Godetz (Chodecz),Kowal and Lubranitz (Lubraniec) werebrought into the ghetto.The overpopulation reached truly cata-

strophic proportions in the late autumn of1941 when, between October 16 and Novem-ber 4, 20 train transports brought in nearly20,000 Jews from Berlin (4,210 in fourtrains), Cologne (2,023 in two trains), Düs-seldorf (1,003 in one train), Frankfurt-am-Main (1,180 in one train), Hamburg (1,034 inone train), Vienna (4,999 in five trains),Prague (5,002 in five trains) and Luxem-bourg (514 in one train).These transports to Lodz — the first mass

deportations of Jews from the Reich to theeast — came about following a decisiontaken by Hitler on September 17 and repre-sented a turning point, a crucial change in

policy, in Hitler’s war against the Jews.Whereas it had always been the intention tomake the Altreich (Germany), the Ostmark(Austria) and the Protektorat (the formerCzech lands Bohemia and Moravia) ‘free ofJews’, Hitler’s original plan had been to waitwith this until the war with the Soviet Unionwas won so that all the Jews could bedeported to conquered territory in the east— to the ‘Russian swamps’ or behind theUral Mountains. (For a few months in 1940-41, the Nazi’s played with the alternative todeport all the Jews of Europe to the con-quered French island of Madagascar but thisscheme soon proved unrealistic). However,with the campaign in Russia taking longerthan expected, this was clearly not going tohappen in the near future, so Hitler decidedto start the ‘final solution’ by moving theJews to intermediate stations. With General-gouverneur Frank still refusing to allowmore Jews into his territory, Lodz Ghettowas an obvious choice.Besides ideological reasons, Hitler’s deci-

sion was based on two practical considera-tions: there was an acute shortage of housingin Germany and the removal of thousands ofJews would make their dwellings availablefor other Germans; also, the damage

wrought by the mounting Allied air offensiveagainst the Reich was markedly exacerbatingthe scarcity of housing, especially in cities inwestern Germany, making the evacuation ofJewish homes there even more urgent. Thisis reflected in the choice of cities: Berlin,Vienna and Prague were selected becausethey were the cities with the largest Jewishcommunities (73,000, 52,000 and 48,000respectively, in October 1941) but all the others were chosen because they lay withinrange of the Allied bombers. (Moreover, thetransports from the cities in West Germanyincorporated Jews from other bombed citiesin that same area, notably Emden, Duisburg,Essen, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach, Ober-hausen, Wuppertal, Rheydt and Trier).The massive influx — over 163,000 people

now populated the ghetto — confronted theJewish administration with many problems.To house the 20,000 newcomers, all schoolshad to be closed (they were never re-opened) and several factory buildings to begiven up. Even then, each person in theghetto now only had three square metres ofliving space. Food became even more scarce(in early November 1941 the bread rationwas further reduced) and the black marketand inflation soared.

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One block west of the firemen’s square lay Bazar-Platz (PlacBazarowy). Besides being the venue for more of Rumkowski’spublic speeches, this square was the site of several publichangings in the ghetto. The first of these — the execution of asingle man — occurred on February 20, 1942, and the entire

population was ordered to attend. Later there were severalmultiple hangings. The largest was on September 7, 1942,when 18 men were hanged, their crime being an attempt toescape from the labour camp at nearby Pabianice in order toevade ‘resettlement’ (i.e. deportation to Chelmno).

Bazar-Platz was named after the enclosed marketplace,known as the Tanfani Bazaar, which stood at its easternend.

The square is today called Plac Piastowski. Trees now obstructan open view, this comparison being taken from the south-west corner.

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The 20,000 ‘Westjuden’ (Jews from theWest) fell upon hard times: they were mostlyolder people; did not speak Polish or Yid-dish; had no connections; were not used toliving in slum-type mass quarters; had diffi-culty finding a job in the factories, hencereceived lesser food rations — in short theirchances of survival were slim from the begin-ning. By the end of April 1942, so within sixmonths, 3,186 (16 per cent) of them had diedfrom disease, hunger or exhaustion.Between November 5 and 9, 1941 — i.e.

immediately after the arrival of the 20,000Jews — five trains brought in 5,007 Sinti andRoma (gypsies) from the Burgenland andSteiermark regions in Austria. Over half ofthem were children. With Nazi ideologybranding gypsies as criminal, disease-infected and rebellious, they were locked upin a tiny special section of the ghetto, a fewhousing blocks surrounded by barbed wireknown as the Zigeuner-Lager, and put underquarantine. Billeted in utterly dismal condi-tions, in quarters without beds or furniture,and already weakened by their earlier stay ininternments camps in Austria, the gypsieslanguished away. A typhus epidemic soonriddled their camp, killing numerous per-sons, including several Jewish doctors tryingto give medical aid. Within two months 613had died from typhus and starvation.The German authorities in charge of the

ghetto — Regierungspräsident Uebelhoer,Oberbürgermeister Werner Ventzki andghetto administrator Hans Biebow — hadfiled repeated objections against the transferof 20,000 Jews and 5,000 gypsies to theghetto. They argued that it would onlyendanger the productivity of the ghetto;increase the number of non-working persons,who still had to be fed and housed; andenlarge the risk of epidemics and unrest.Their reasoning was strictly economic and

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Right: Standing on top of the foot-bridgeat the church, Genewein took this shotlooking eastwards across Kirch-Platz(Plac Koscielny) and into SulzfelderStrasse (Brzezinska). This was one ofLodz’s main thoroughfares, leading outof the city to Brzeziny (named Löwen-stadt during the Nazi occupation) and onto Warsaw. However, because an alterna-tive route was available around theghetto, there was no need for it to bekept open or declared ‘Arian’ so it wassimply blocked off at the ghetto’s easternend. Rynek Jojne Pilcera, the vegetablemarket seen on page 13, lies immediatelybehind the houses on the left. Note theGhetto-Verwaltung’s staff car on the left.

Left: Another picture by Genewein, taken further up SulzfelderStrasse/Brzezinska. The wooden houses on the left are typical ofthe 19th-Century abodes that comprised large parts of the OldTown district. Of a total of 3,361 residential buildings in theghetto, 1,406 (42 per cent) were wooden constructions, with fewamenities and no toilets, running water or sewage connection.These particular houses stood at the intersection of Sulzfelder

Strasse with Franz-Strasse/Knüpfer-Strasse (Franciszkanska).They were pulled down in November 1942 on order of theGhetto-Verwaltung in order to gain fuel for heating purposes(the Ghetto Chronicle recorded that each house yielded 70,000kilogram of firewood) and to create space. Right: The housesmay have gone but the tram track curving right into Fran-ciszkanska and the buildings in the far distance confirm the spot.

Ulica Brzezinska is today called Ulica Wolska Polskiego (Street of the Polish Army),one of the few streets that has been given a different Polish name since the time ofthe ghetto.

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coldly bureaucratic, focussed only on cost-efficiency and the maintenance of the indus-trial output of the ghetto. Their plea was sup-ported by General der Infanterie GeorgThomas, chief of the Wehrwirtschafts- undRüstungs-Amt (War Economy and Arma-ments Bureau) at the OKW (Armed ForcesHigh Command), who equally feared thatthe extra influx would endanger the ghetto’swar production. However, all their protestswere overruled by Himmler, who simplydenied their objections and repeated that itwas ‘the Führer’s wish to expel the Jews instages from west to east’.Faced with the dilemma of having to

absorb ever more Jews and gypsies into theirterritory and the impossibility to transferthem out to destinations further east, theNazi authorities in the Wartheland hadalready begun thinking of other means todispose of these unwanted people. Starting inthe summer of 1941 the option of mass mur-der was being discussed at GauleiterGreiser’s headquarters in Posen (Poznan).On July 16, 1941, the chief of the Umwan-derer-Zentralstelle (Gestapo EmigrationOffice) there, SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, in a memorandum to hissuperior SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Eich-mann in Berlin, described one of the optionsthat was being discussed: to concentrate allthe Jews in the Wartheland in one large hut-ted camp, put to work those who could work,and let the unproductive ones either starveto death or ‘be disposed of with some quick-working expedient. In any case this would bemore agreeable than letting them starve todeath.’ He added that Uebelhoer did notwant the Lodz ghetto to disappear as appar-ently good money was being made with it.

FIRST DEPORTATIONS TO CHELMNORather than invest more money in feeding

unproductive mouths, Himmler and Greiseropted for mass murder. In late October, aspecial unit, the so-called SonderkommandoLange, was ordered to prepare a killing centre at the little village of Kulmhof(Chelmno), 60 kilometres north-west ofLodz. Led by SS-Hauptsturmführer HerbertLange, the Sonderkommando had sinceOctober 1939 been engaged in murderingmentally defective patients from lunatic asy-lums, first in the Wartheland and then inMay-June 1940 also in East Prussia, bymeans of mobile gas-chambers. Now thissame Sonderkommando was to set up a mur-der facility to dispose of all the Jews and gyp-sies in the Wartheland. Using three gas-vans,the Chelmno facility began operations onDecember 8, their first victims being Jewsfrom the surrounding communities (see TheNazi Death Camps Then and Now).In early December, SS-Hauptsturmführer

Fuchs, the chief of the Lodz Gestapo JewishOffice, ordered Jewish Elder Rumkowski toselect 20,000 ghetto inmates for ‘resettle-ment’. It is unknown to what extentRumkowski knew or realised the fate thatawaited these people. Forced to personally

make the selection for these deportations, hedecided on certain categories: he chose the‘criminals’ from the ghetto prison and theirfamilies; families that had come in fromother towns; and so-called ‘supported fami-lies’ i.e. whose working members had beenassigned to work places outside the ghetto.To his discredit, he also included a number ofthose he saw as his personal enemies. Tohelp him with compiling transport lists andorganising the departures, on January 5 heset up a special Resettlement Commission,made up of various heads of department.Many of the ghetto populace still naïvely

believed Rumkowski’s promise that thedeportees would merely be sent to camps forforced agricultural labour and initially therewas little protest. Those selected for deporta-tion were allowed to take 12.5 kilograms ofluggage. Once assembled (in the ghettoprison or in some school building), usually inbatches of 1,000 per transport, they weremarched or moved by wagons to the Rade-gast (Radogoszcz) railway station, just half akilometre outside the ghetto on the north-eastern edge of Lodz, and put on trains toWarthbrücken (Kolo), from where trucksand a narrow-gauge railway took them theremaining five kilometres to Chelmno.

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Left: Disposing of excrement was an eternal problem in the ghetto and special teamshauling wagons full of human waste through the streets were a common sight. Thefaeces were dumped in a huge open pit on wasteland north of Matrosen-Gasse(Dworska) on the eastern edge of the ghetto. In all, there were hundreds of workersengaged in this unpopular and smelly task. Such an assignment was usually a deathsentence, the workers soon contracting typhus. This team was pictured on SulzfelderStrasse, just short of its intersection with Blech-Gasse (Towianskiego), the latter lead-ing straight to the dumping ground. Right: Same as Brzezinska has been renamedUlica Wolska Polskiego (Street of the Polish Army), so Towianskiego is today Obron-cow Westerplatte (Street of the Defenders of Westerplatte).

Left: From November 1941 to January 1942, there existed in theghetto the so-called Zigeuner-Lager (Gypsies Camp). A specialsection, heavily guarded and surrounded by an extra barbed-wirefence, it comprised just a few housing blocks in a confined spacedelineated by Sulzfelder Strasse — Blech-Gasse — Krimhild-Strasse (Starosikawska) and Konrad-Strasse (Glowackiego).Here, 5,007 Sinti and Roma gypsies deported from Austria, half of

them children, were incarcerated under utterly miserable condi-tions, causing over 600 of them to die from typhus within twomonths. The rest was then shipped off to Chelmno to be mur-dered by gas. Right: Known photos of the Gypsies Camp appearto show only the outer façades with the barbed-wire fence, notthe unfortunate inmates. This one is of the south-western corner,the building today being No. 82 Ulica Wolska Polskiego.

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The first inmates of Lodz to be sent awayand murdered at Chelmno were however notthe Jews but the gypsies. Between January 5and 12, 1942 — just two months after theyhad arrived in the ghetto — the 4,400wretched creatures still alive in the Zigeu -ner-Lager were put on trucks to the killingcentre and gassed there.The deportations of the Jews unrolled in

three waves. Between January 16 and 29, infreezing cold weather, the first 10,003 weredespatched to Chelmno in 14 trains and mur-dered there. Between February 22 and April 2,another 34,073 were sent away in 40 trains andkilled. Between May 4 and 15, 10,993 wereshipped away in 12 trains: 10,161 of the ‘West-juden’ — over half of the 20,000 that hadarrived seven months before — plus another753 ‘criminals’ and 80 persons who voluntarilyjoined the transports. By now, opposition hadgrown considerably: many of those included inthe transport lists made frantic appeals withthe Judenrat, applying to be made exempt; theSchutzpolizei came into the ghetto to violentlysearch out and round up those that had to go.In all, between January and May 1942, morethan 59,000 Jews and gypsies from Lodz weremurdered at Chelmno.In their place came thousands of able-bod-

ied skilled workers — tailors, furriers andshoemakers; men and women — from Jewishcommunities elsewhere in the Wartheland, inall some 15,000 between May and August1942. Brought in with them were the sowing-machines and other equipment and machin-ery from their workshops, which were inte-grated into the ghetto industry. Thenon-employable, unproductive inhabitants ofthese communities — women, children, sickand aged people — had been sent toChelmno and been gassed there.All clothing, goods and valuables taken from

the victims by Sonderkommando Lange wereput at the disposal of the German Ghetto-Ver-waltung as ‘reimbursement for the expendi-tures involved’ in the murder process. In lateMay, as large quantities of clothing, shoes,watches, etc, arrived back in the ghetto (to besorted, despatched to the Reich and sold viathe Nazi winter assistance fund), rumoursbegan to spread about the fate of the deported.

NEW DEPORTATIONS TO CHELMNOIn early September 1942, after a pause of

three and a half months, the deportationswere suddenly resumed. On September 1and 2, the Germans, with the help of the Jew-ish police, in a surprise raid brutally emptiedthe ghetto hospitals, despatching all thepatients to Chelmno in two trains. Patientswho protested were shot dead on the spot. Inall, 1,253 people, including 400 children,were sent to their death.The following day, Fuchs’s deputy, SS-

Sturmbannführer Herbert Weygandt, gaveRumkowski an order that 20,000 more wereto leave. Forced to make up the lists,Rumkowski and the Resettlement Commis-sion decided that all children under ten yearsof age (except those from members of theJudenrat, ghetto police and fire-brigade) andadults over 65 were to go. This made upsome 17,000 persons to which were added3,000 non-workers or persons unfit to work.

That following afternoon, September 4,Rumkowski delivered a speech to a crowd of1,500 assembled on the fire brigade’s squareon Lustige Gasse (Wesola) — certainly themost dramatic and infamous of all hisspeeches — in which he pleaded with themto ‘give me your children’ — an appeal thatnaturally caused great consternation andabhorrence with all present. Against dread-ful wailing and shouts from the crowd, heattempted to explain his coldly-pragmaticreasoning, saying that by surrendering theyoung, sick and old in favour of those whocould work at least a part of the people couldbe saved.The next day, September 5, the Germans

declared an Allgemeine Gehsperre (round-the-clock curfew), forcing the people to stayat home so that those on the deportation listhad no way to escape being rounded up.Instead of leaving it to the Jewish police, theGerman Schutzpolizei now took matters intheir own hands, brutally hunting down thevictims. The curfew lasted for seven harrow-ing days, until the 12th during which time15,685 persons — babies, toddlers, youngchildren, the unfit and ill, and elderly people— were deported and 164 to 570 shot on thespot.The deportations between January and

September 1942 — involving over 75,000people — had emptied the ghetto of nearlyall its non-working inhabitants and turned itinto a pure production centre for the Ger-man war economy. By late 1942, there weresome 89,500 people left, of whom the major-ity were workers or employed in the Jewishself-government. All orphanages, old-agehomes and hospitals were closed.Meanwhile, the mass killing at Chelmno

continued. By March 1943, Lodz was theonly remaining Jewish community left in theWartheland; all the others in the Reichsgauhad by now been annihilated. Completelyisolated and hermetically shut off from therest of society, the ghetto survived as a loneisland in a deadly-hostile world.Between September 1942 and June 1944,

there were no major deportations from Lodz.However, the food and health conditionsremained abysmal, keeping up a high deathrate, which caused a steady reduction of thepopulation and fluctuations in the workforce.Particularly bad hunger periods occurred inApril, August and September 1943 when theghetto food department ran out of its chieffoodstuff — potatoes — and the Germansfailed to deliver new stocks. Forced to workwithout food for days on end, people col-lapsed and died at their workplace. If any-thing, the ghetto now resembled a forced-

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The eastern half of the former Gypsies Camp later accommodated the ghetto’s firststraw-shoe factory. Opened on May 19, 1942 — four months after the dissolution ofthe Gypsies Camp — it exclusively manufactured winter boots made out of straw forthe Wehrmacht. Starting with 3,000 workers, by October 1942, 8,000 people wereemployed there. The workshop’s location at the outskirts of the ghetto presented aserious problem to its workers, mostly women and elderly people, many of them innone too good a physical condition, because of the long walk to get there. TheStrohschuh-Abteilung (straw-shoe section), led by Salomon Lewin, formed a sepa-rate Arbeits-Ressort (labour division) within the main Economic Department of theJewish self-administration. In addition to the workshop at No. 87 Sulzfelder Strasse,there were others at No. 7 Runge-Strasse (Widok) and No. 15 Fisch-Gasse (Rybna).

The building at what is today No. 86 Wolska Polskiego survives virtually unchanged.

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labour camp. By the end of 1943, there weresome 83,000 people there, of whom 75,000(90 per cent) were workers in 117 differentmanufacturing sites, producing an annualturnover of 27 million Reichsmark. Another

7,000 (8.4 per cent) were employed in theself-administration. Of the remaining 1,000persons, 600 were in sick bays and 400 werenon-working children of the administrationemployees (exempted from the September

deportations). In 1944, the proportion ofworkers would rise even higher. Hungerremained paramount and in the spring of1944 a wave of soup strikes went through theghetto.

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Left: In the north-east corner of the ghetto lay the JewishCemetery. Founded in 1892 as the second necropolis for Jewsin the Lodz area, this is where the more than 43,000 Jews whodied in the ghetto between 1940 and 1944 were buried. (Thefirst, smaller Old Jewish Cemetery lay on Wesola, close to the

Fireman’s Square). Genewein pictured its ornamental gate.Right: The gate is normally reached via Zmienna Street but thiswas not possible during the Nazi occupation as the cemeterywall there also served as ghetto boundary and Zmienna there-fore lay outside the Jewish quarter.

Left: Four bearers bringing a corpse into the cemetery. Mostbodies of deceased were transported to the cemetery bymeans of specially-constructed wagons featuring a sheet-

metal removable coffin with a hinged cover. Ritual washing ofthe corpse was forbidden. Right: The cemetery wall stands assilent witness to the grief of yesteryear.

Left: The 43,000 who perished in the ghetto were buried in thesouthern part of the cemetery, which came to be referred to asthe ‘ghetto field’. The dead were buried close together in nar-row graves without coffin, packed in sheets or old scraps ofpaper. The graves were left unmarked. Visible in the back-ground are the tombstones of the graves from pre-ghetto

times. The picture was taken by Mendel Grosman. Right: Sincethe war, numerous Jewish families have left plaques on thecemetery wall to commemorate relatives who perished in theghetto and have no known grave. There are also plaques fromtowns and cities from where Jews were deported to Lodz andplaques commemorating the gypsies that died here.

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THE FATE OF THE GHETTO IS DECIDEDBetween June 1943 and February 1944, a

struggle was fought out between the SS, whowanted to turn the ghetto into a proper con-centration camp under SS rule on the onehand and those who for various reasonwanted to maintain the status quo on theother.The SS wished for the ghetto to become a

regular concentration camp, supervised by theInspectorate of Concentration Camps, its eco-nomic activities overseen by the SS-Wirtschaft-Verwaltungs-Hauptamt (WVHA), its produc-tion sites becoming part of the Ost-IndustrieGmbH (the economic concern founded by theWVHA), its population reduced to just slaveworkers, and these slave workers overseen onsite by Kapos (prisoner foremen).Opposing this idea were the ones directly

involved and profiting from the existingghetto: the staff of the German Ghetto-Ver-waltung under Hans Biebow, who fearedthey might lose their comfy positions and besent to the front; the civil authorities in theWartheland (particularly the Kalisch regionunder Regierungspräsident Uebelhoer andthe municipality of Litzmannstadt/Lodzunder its Oberbürgermeister) who stood tolose a lucrative business; and the Wehrmachtarmaments bureau who wanted to maintaindirect control over the production sitesworking for the armed forces and who werein dire competition with the SS anyway,objecting to its growing power in all war mat-ters.The struggle began on June 11, 1943,

when Himmler — probably prompted by therecent uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, whichhad been violently quenched by the SStroops after a month of fighting on May 16— issued an order to turn the Lodz ghettointo a concentration camp. When this ideawas challenged by the local Rüstungs-Inspektion (Armaments Inspectorate) inLodz, who intervened with GauleiterGreiser, Himmler proposed instead to movethe ghetto workshops to the Majdanek con-centration camp at Lublin. When Majdanekhowever became threatened by the advanc-ing Red Army in November, Himmlerreverted to his original idea of making Lodza concentration camp.Discussions and correspondence between

the various parties involved continued forweeks until finally Gauleiter Greiser, takingthe opportunity of Himmler’s stay at Posenon February 12-13, 1944, intervened person-ally. In a direct meeting with the Reichs-führer-SS (with whom he got on well), hesecured an agreement that the ghetto wouldnot become an SS concentration camp butwould remain under Reichsgau administra-tion; it would however be gradually reducedin size, getting rid of all its non-working resi-dents and leaving only the Jews producingfor the war effort; and eventually be closeddown and eliminated altogether.

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Right: Deportations out of the ghettobegan in January 1942 and would continuein several waves until the final liquidationof the ghetto in August 1944. Initially theinhabitants may have naïvely believed thatthe deportees were being ‘resettled’ tolabour camps elsewhere but the realisa-tion that deportation meant death grewever stronger as time went on, especiallyas weak and elderly, sick and ill, and evenyoung children were sent away. Deporta-tions usually went in groups of 1,000.Those called up had to report to an assem-bly place — the Central Prison at Schnei-der-Gasse (Czarnieckiego), later also theformer ghetto hospitals and other build-ings, such as the Kulturhaus on Schneider-Gasse, the orphanage on Buchdrucker-Gasse (Okopowa), etc. This picture of atransport assembling at the Zentralgefäng-nis (Central Prison) was taken by MendelGrosman in 1942.

From there, they were then marched, under guard from the Jewish ghetto police andthe German Schutzpolizei, to the Radegast (Radogoszcz) railway station. Anotherpicture by Grosman from the same day.

The north-eastern quarter of the former ghetto has been considerably redevelopedsince the war and many of the old streets have been re-aligned or have partly disap-peared. This picture was taken in Berthold-Strasse (Jagiellonska), fortunately in astretch that has survived. Today named Ulica Jozefa Kolinskiego, it leads out of thetown towards the railway station. The church seen on the left in Grosman’s picture isthe Divine Providence Church, unfortunately masked by trees in our comparison.

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LIQUIDATION OF THE GHETTOReduction of the ghetto meant new mass

murder. In order to dispose of the non-pro-ductive inmates, the Chelmno killing centre(which had been closed down in late March1943) was resurrected. The 85 men of Sonder -kommando Lange, who had been transferredas a Feldgendarmerie unit to the 7. SS-Gebirgs-Division ‘Prinz Eugen’ and were cur-rently engaged in anti-partisan operations inYugoslavia, were recalled to the Wartheland.Still under command of SS-Hauptsturm-führer Hans Bothmann (who had succeededLange in April 1942), the unit soon had themobile gas-chambers back in operation.The deportations began on June 23 and

continued until July 14. During those threeweeks, 7,196 Jews were brought to Chelmnoin ten train transports and murdered there.Before they were killed, the victims weretold to write postcards with greetings to theghetto, designed to fool those left behindabout their fate.The final liquidation came two weeks

later. Between August 3 and 30, about 67,000Jews were deported from the ghetto toAuschwitz-Birkenau (see After the Battle No.157), where most of them perished in the gaschambers, only some 2,000 being assigned toforced-labour in the camp or sent on to otherwork camps. These final deportations did notgo smoothly. Every train leaving from theghetto was supposed to contain 5,000 peoplebut many refused to report at the assemblypoints. To contain the rising panic, Biebow,leader of the German Ghetto-Verwaltung,personally addressed the workers in severalmain workshops, deceivingly telling themthat they would be sent to labour campsdeeper in Germany, and Rumkowski wentaround giving more reassuring speeches.Still, the people refused to show up and theJewish and German police made dailyround-ups in order to get the prescribednumber for each transport. Rumkowski andhis family joined one of the last trains onAugust 28 and, on arrival at Auschwitz, hewas reputedly beaten to death by a memberof the Jewish Sonderkommando (the men

forced to worked in the gas chambers) asrevenge for his role in the genocide of hisown people.All that was left in the ghetto now was a

so-called Aufräumkommando (clean-upunit), whose task it was to dismantle theworkshops and factories, clear and sort thepossessions of the vanished inhabitants, anddespatch everything back into the Reich. Ini-tially it comprised two groups, one of 500men and women (mostly members of theJewish administration) concentrated in thehospital building at No. 36 Sonnleite(Lagiewnicka) and another of some 750 inthe tailors’ workshop at No. 16 Rembrandt-Strasse (Jakuba). When the former groupwas sent away to Königs Wusterhausen, asatellite of Sachsenhausen concentrationcamp, on October 22, only the 750 at Rem-brandt-Strasse remained. Some 120 others,including 30 children, had managed to evadethe deportations and remained behind inhiding. Whenever an individual or group ofthese was caught, they were sent to join theband at Rembrandt-Strasse.When the final liquidation came in August

1944, the Lodz ghetto had been in existencefor well over four years; it was the last and

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Henryk Ross photographed Grosmantaking pictures of the leaving transport.On the left stands a member of the Ord-nungsdienst (Jewish police), recognis-able by the cap and the armband.

Passing through the ghetto gates on the road to Radegast Station, seen in the back-ground. Note the sentry boxes and the narrow-gauge railway running between thestation and the ghetto. This is another photo by Ross from 1942.

Right: Taken just a short distance fromwhere the previous picture was made,this is the same view today, taken fromUlica Zagajnikowa, known as Bernard-Strasse in ghetto times.

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longest-surviving of all the ghettos set up bythe Nazi regime. Though it had lost a dramatic150,000 of its populace, there were still nearly70,000 people surviving there and the dreamof holding out until liberation was becomingmore realistic by the day. The western Allieshad landed in Normandy and were about tobreak out from the bridgehead to start the lib-eration of Western Europe. On the EasternFront, the Soviet Red Army had surged west-ward, liberated half of Poland and reached theeast bank of the River Vistula. They nowstood less than 120 kilo metres from Lodz.Liberation seemed tantalisingly near.Whatever criticism one could level against

Chaim Rumkowski, however despicable hisdespotic rule, lust for power, self-importanceand favouritism, it is undeniable that his strictadherence to his grand scheme — that theghetto inmates’ only salvation lay in work forthe German war industry — nearly paid off.Had not Stalin decided to halt his armies on theVistula, leaving the Polish underground armyto fight to its death in the Warsaw Uprising(see After the Battle No. 143), the Lodz ghettomight well have been liberated in August andtens of thousands of its inhabitants been savedfrom annihilation in the gas chambers.As it was, Lodz was entered by the RedArmy on January 19, 1945. The only Jewsleft to greet the Russians were the membersof the Aufräumkommando and the evaders— a mere 870 persons in all.

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Centre: Deportations into the ghettoincluded 20,000 Jews from Germany,Austria, Czechoslovakia and Luxem-bourg in October-November 1941; 5,000gypsies from Austria in November 1941,and 20,000 Jews from liquidated ghettosin the region in 1941-42. Deported fromLodz ghetto and murdered in the Nazikilling centres were nearly 150,000 per-sons: over 83,000 of them (including4,400 gypsies) at Chelmno between Jan-uary 1942 and July 1944 and 65,000 atAuschwitz-Birkenau in August-Septem-ber 1944. Right: A train of the type usedby the Reichsbahn in the deportationsstands preserved at the platform.

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Radegast Station was both arrival pointfor deportations into the ghetto and depar-ture point for deportations out. It alsoserved as freight station and depot fordeliveries of food, fuel and raw materialsfor industrial production and for shippingout goods manufactured in the ghetto. Thebuilding since 2004 houses the LodzGhetto Museum, a branch of the municipalTraditions of Independence Museum.