Exploring Lodz part 2

The gate to the Jewish ghetto.

After WW I, the textile industry in Poland started to collapse due to the loss of the Russian market. In 1939, Poland was defeated by the Nazi's. Lodz was renamed Litzmannstadt and the Nazi's started removing Polish political prisoners. The Ghetto was born. The Lodz ghetto was second in size only to Warsaw's. In September of 1939, Lodz city population was 672,000. Of these, 230,000 Jews and non-Jewish Poles were transferred to what would become the largest slave labour camp in occupied Nazi Germany. The Jews were forced to wear the yellow ellow star and their property was expropriated by the Gestapo.



On February 8,1940 the Nazi's ordered Jewish residents to specific Streets in the Old City. The 5th of March is known as Bloody Thursday when 350 Jews were shot in or in front of their homes. Over the next two months wooden and wire fences were erected. On the 1st of May, Jews were sealed in the ghetto. About half of the political elite and intellectuals managed to escape from Lodz to the Soviet occupied eastern Poland. 



This section of Lodz was cleared of all houses and other buildings in order to create a no man's land between the city and the ghetto. Policing of the ghetto was done by German Order Police on the outside but the interior was a Jewish police force. These two police forces ensured no escapees, no illegal food smuggling etc. The city contained 70,000 Nazi loyal Germans. They were told the Jews had infectious diseases. Because the ghetto was so heavily guarded there was no chance for any interaction or smuggling of food and goods unlike in the Warsaw ghetto.



This Catholic Church was confiscated and used to take the belongings of the people brought to the ghetto and was later used as a warehouse for clothes etc taken from the people killed at Chelmo. It was later used as sorting facility for feathers and down and became known as the White Factory.





The lines on the road are where the ghetto fence ran. Because there was a main road running through the ghetto there were bridges built for the Jews to cross the road. The Jews were dependent on the Nazi's for food etc. The Jews are an innovative group of people so they developed their own society within the ghetto. They had currency only good in the ghetto, cultural events like concerts, theatre and weddings. People traded goods and of course the wealthier and more socially prominent survived a little better. But gradually malnutrition and tuberculosis became rampant. A Jew named Chaim Rumkowski saw how vulnerable the Jews were so he proposed to the Germans that they take the artisans and skilled labours and put them work. He transformed the ghetto into an industrial manufacturing area and he believed that they only way they would survive was to be productive. They made goods for the German war machine and as more men were sent to the front to fight, more Jews were needed to make goods. More Jews were brought to the ghetto from outside areas.The German running the camp, Hans Biebow, saw this as a great opportunity and turned the ghetto into a slave labour camp. He was responsible for starving the population, assisting Gestapo rounding up Jews for deportation, and made money off the goods for the German war machine. He wanted Jews for cheap labour but also supported extermination.

Chaim Runkowski is bit of a a controversial figure in that he may have used his position to advantageto gain wealth or special favours from the Nazi's and wealthy Jews. No matter what, he is known for talking the Jewish population into sending their children to the extermination camps at Chelmo and Auschwitz. Over 15,000 children under 10, sick and elderly were sent. Rumkowski and his family were on the last train to Auschwitz 

where he was beaten to death. Hans Biebow on the other hand was the chief Nazi administrator of Lodz Ghetto. When the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto started, he encouraged the last surviving Jews to board the train to Auschwitz and Chelmo promising work in the east. Of those 245,000 Jews,  877 were held back to destroy the evidence and clean up the ghetto.The 877 were liberated and Biebow escaped to Germany but was recognized, tried and found guilty and hung.

Unfortunately Ed and I werent able to get to the rest of the Jewish area.

After WW II, the city of Lodz managed to maintain its infrastructure but lost its cultural diversity as the displaced pre-war Gremans and Jews were replaced by refugee Poles. Communist rule revitalized the textile industry and Lodz is now know for its world class film school but its history is in this park and surrounding area.