| Łódź Ghetto Ghetto Litzmannstadt | |
|---|---|
 Jewish children inside the Łódź Ghetto, 1940 | |
 Map of the Łódź Ghetto within the city. The walled-off area is shown in blue in the inset. The Jewish cemetery is at 16; Radegast train station at the top right at 17; Kinder KZ for Polish children is at 15. | |
| Location | Łódź, German-occupied Poland |
| Persecution | Imprisonment, forced labor, starvation |
| Organizations | Schutzstaffel (SS) Ordnungspolizei |
| Death camp | Chełmno extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau |
| Victims | 210,000 Polish Jews |
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe after the Warsaw Ghetto. Situated in the city of Łódź, and originally intended as a preliminary step upon a more extensive plan of creating the Judenfrei province of Warthegau,[1] the ghetto was transformed into a major industrial centre, manufacturing war supplies for Nazi Germany and especially for the Wehrmacht.[2] The number of people incarcerated in it was increased further by the Jews deported from Nazi-controlled territories.
On 30 April 1940, when the gates closed on the ghetto, it housed 163,777 residents.[3] Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until August 1944. In the first two years, it absorbed almost 20,000 Jews from liquidated ghettos in nearby Polish towns and villages,[4] as well as 20,000 more from the rest of German-occupied Europe.[5] After the wave of deportations to Chełmno extermination camp beginning in early 1942,[5] and in spite of a stark reversal of fortune, the Germans persisted in eradicating the ghetto: they transported the remaining population to Auschwitz and Chełmno extermination camps, where most were murdered upon arrival. It was the last ghetto in occupied Poland to be liquidated.[6] A total of 210,000 Jews passed through it;[3] but only 877 remained hidden when the Soviets arrived. About 10,000 Jewish residents of Łódź, who used to live there before the invasion of Poland, survived the Holocaust elsewhere.[7]
Establishment
When German forces occupied Łódź on 8 September 1939, the city had a population of 672,000 people. Over 230,000 of them were Jewish,[8] or 31.1% according to statistics.[9] Nazi Germany annexed Łódź directly to the new Warthegau region and renamed the city Litzmannstadt in honour of a German general, Karl Litzmann, who had led German forces in the area in 1914. The Nazi German authorities intended to "purify" the city. All Polish Jews were to be expelled to the Generalgouvernement eventually, while the non-Jewish population of Polish people reduced significantly, and transformed into a slave labour force for Germany.[8]
The first known record of an order for the establishment of the ghetto, dated 10 December 1939,[10] came from the new Nazi governor Friedrich Übelhör, who called for the cooperation of major policing bodies in the confinement and mass transfer of the local Jews.[8] By 1 October 1940, the relocation of the ghetto inmates was to have been completed, and the city's downtown core declared Judenrein (cleansed of its Jewish presence). The German occupiers pressed for the ghetto size to be shrunk beyond all sense in order to have their factories registered outside of it.[2] Łódź was a multicultural mosaic before the war began, with about 8.8% ethnic German residents on top of Austrian, Czech, French, Russian and Swiss business families adding to its vibrant economy.[9]
The securing of the ghetto system was preceded by a series of anti-Jewish measures as well as anti-Polish measures meant to inflict terror. The Jews were forced to wear the yellow badge. Their businesses were expropriated by the Gestapo.[2] After the invasion of Poland, many Jews, particularly the intellectual and political elite, had fled the advancing German army into the Soviet-occupied eastern Poland and to the area of future General Government in the hope of the Polish counter-attack which never came.[11] On 8 February 1940, the Germans ordered the Jewish residence to be limited to specific streets in the Old City and the adjacent Bałuty quarter, the areas that would become the ghetto. To expedite the relocation, the Orpo Police launched an assault on 5–7 March 1940, [12] known as "Bloody Thursday", in which 350 Jews were fatally shot in their homes, and outside. Over the next two months, wooden and wire fences were erected around the area to cut it off from the rest of the city. Jews were formally sealed within the ghetto walls on 1 May 1940.[2]
As nearly 25 percent of the Jews had fled the city by the time the ghetto was set up, its prisoner population as of 1 May 1940 was 164,000.[13] Over the coming year, Jews from German-occupied Europe as far away as Luxembourg were deported to the ghetto on their way to the extermination camps.[5] A small Romany population was also resettled there.[2] By 1 May 1941, the population of the ghetto was 148,547.[14]
Ghetto policing
To ensure no contact between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of the city, two German Order Police battalions were assigned to patrol the perimeter of the ghetto, including the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg.[15] Within the ghetto, a Jewish Police force was created to ensure that no prisoners tried to escape. On 10 May 1940 orders went into effect prohibiting any commercial exchange between Jews and non-Jews in Łódź. By the new German decree, those caught outside the ghetto could be shot on sight. The contact with people who lived on the "Aryan" side was also impaired by the fact that Łódż had a 70,000-strong ethnic German minority loyal to the Nazis (the Volksdeutsche),[4] making it impossible to bring food illegally. To keep outsiders out, rumours were also spread by Hitler's propaganda saying that the Jews were the carriers of infectious diseases.[4] For the week of 16–22 June 1941 (the week Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa), the Jews reported 206 deaths and two shootings of women near the barbed wire.[16]
In other ghettos throughout Poland, thriving underground economies based on smuggling of food and manufactured goods developed between the ghettos and the outside world.[17] In Łódź, however, this was practically impossible due to heavy security. The Jews were entirely dependent on the German authorities for food, medicine and other vital supplies. To exacerbate the situation, the only legal currency in the ghetto was a specially created ghetto currency. Faced with starvation, Jews traded their remaining possessions and savings for this scrip, thereby abetting the process by which they were dispossessed of their remaining belongings.[17]
Food consumption and malnutrition
Jews within the Łódź Ghetto had an average daily intake of 1,000 to 1,200 calories which led directly to starvation and even to death. The process of purchasing food relied heavily on the quantity and quality of the goods that the ghetto citizens brought from their houses into the ghetto. Previous social class and wealth of ghetto inhabitants often determined the fate of food accessibility. While the wealthy could purchase additional food, many of the lower class Jewish inhabitants relied heavily on the ration card system. Food embezzlement by police forces within the ghetto encouraged hierarchy even amongst Jewish neighbors. Food became a means of control for the German forces and by the Jewish policing administration.
Food deprivation often caused strain on family relations but parents, siblings, and spouses would also hold out on their portion of food for the benefit of loved ones. People would trade furniture and clothing to receive food for their family members or themselves. Jewish women invented new ways of cooking in order to make food and supplies last longer. Tuberculosis and other diseases were widespread due to malnutrition. The physical attributes of malnutrition in the Łódź Ghetto led to sunken eyes, swollen abdomens and aged appearances while also stunting the growth of ghetto children.[18]
Since 1940, the ghetto used its own currency, the Lodz Ghetto mark, which had no value outside the ghetto. The use of other currency was prohibited.
Organization
Administratively, the Łódź ghetto was subject to the City Council. Initially, mayor Karol Marder separated from the provisioning and economy department the branch for the ghetto at Cegielniana street (today Jaracza 11), whose manager was first Johann Moldenhauer, and then a merchant from Bremen, Hans Biebow. From October 1940, the facility was raised to the rank of an independent department of the city council – Gettoverwaltung, reporting to Mayor Werner Ventzki. Initially, the main tasks of the ghetto board were supplying, supplying medicines and settling the ghetto with the city. Soon, however, the inhabitants began to be plundered and exploited to the maximum, transforming the ghetto into a forced labor camp in hunger for food rations and extreme living conditions. From 1942, Hans Biebow and his deputies Józef Haemmerle and Wilhelm Ribbe demonstrated in the selection and displacement of ghetto inhabitants, and Biebow and his commercial capabilities were quickly appreciated by the dignitaries of the central authorities of the Warta Country. Biebow became the real ruler of the ghetto, and Gettoverwaltung officials arrived at a rapid pace – from 24 people in May 1940 to 216 in mid-1942.[19]