Today marks the 81st anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. Rather than posting photographs, I thought it would be better to read the testimonies of two who survived.
On March 13-14, 1943, the SS and police carried out the operation, shooting some 2,000 Jews in the ghetto. The SS transferred another 2,000 Jews, those capable of work and the surviving members of the Jewish Council and the Jewish police force (Ordnungsdienst), to the Plaszow forced-labor camp. The rest of the Jews, approximately 3,000, were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in two transports,
Willie Sterner: “Then, my father, my brothers, and I were pushed into another cattle car, which soon began to move. We too were pressed in like sardines in a can; there was no room at all to move. After spending many terrible hours in the cattle car, our train arrived in Krakow. Tired and hungry, we were pushed into military trucks and driven to the Krakow ghetto.
The Krakow ghetto was yet another place of horror, an ugly, dirty place. During the month that we were there, we were terrorized by the Nazis and by many of the OD, the Jewish police. We had little food or medical help, so many people died from illness and starvation. There were so many corpses lying on the streets that nobody paid any attention — we just walked over them. Our people died so fast that it was impossible to take care of them all. The burial squad was overworked, tired, hungry, and stressed. We were homeless and dressed like beggars, wearing old, dirty, torn clothing, and most of us had no shoes. Little children had no shoes for their small feet and wore rags. Hungry, dirty, and lonely, they asked passersby for food, but it was impossible to find a helping hand. There was so little food. Many of the children couldn’t even walk anymore and lay on the sidewalks. It was heartbreaking.
We were the lost people. We were nobodies. We had so little strength that we felt we couldn’t even think anymore; our minds felt shut down. We lived with indescribable brutality. We didn’t know where our loved ones were. We were no longer a proud Jewish people.”
Tauba Biber: “This one morning, orders – ‘get out, get out’ – and whatever. By then we only had a few bits belongings – you, we grabbed the belongings and lined up to march to Plaszow. Plaszow is the outskirts of Krakow, and it, in Plaszow children were not allowed, older people were not allowed and there were shot on the spot. But some people took a chance and smuggled in some children in the bag, in the rucksack, whatever way the could. Plaszow was a Jewish cemetery. When we got to Plaszow, as we arrived through the gates and it wasn’t even ready – it was no huts even built for us – we saw already three men hanging. Frightened, I, I just don’t know, and when I think back, we must have been completely already numb, without no feeling, we just obeyed and did what we had to do. There were inspections by the Gestapo. So the children had no right to be there, so for some, something happened that they decided, they knew that, they found out that there are children in the camp, so they decided to set up a nursery. So of course the parents were glad, the children would be able, will be looked after in the nursery, so of course the children were put there. And it didn’t take long, maybe two weeks after, we were standing on the appell, and the music was blaring – always in the most terrifying moments there was music. We see from a distance a lorry, an open lorry, with the children. Next to me was standing a mother with twins, two little girls, if there were 10, on the appell and they were going around looking – the Gestapo – if there was any children, or anybody that shouldn’t be there, and these two children clinging to their mother, ‘mother they’re coming, they’re going to take us away’. And so they did. And this lorry, while we were standing there on the appell, this lorry with the children drove off and never seen again. And that’s how those parents lost their children, with a trick that the children will be looked after. Well when I think back today – I don’t know – how can anybody survive? The first two years when we were still at home, with family, and knowing the peasants in our town, it wasn’t so bad, because the peasants were always helping, bringing us food, in exchange for other goods, but in the camps, that was impossible. And how we survived on this black water in the morning that was supposed to be coffee, or the grey soup at lunchtime with the little square of black bread that was like lime, and when we ate it, we didn’t feel any different. It didn’t satisfy in any way, and we were forever hungry…If you’re tired, you’re scared, you’re hungry, lack of sleep and always in fear from one minute to the next, we didn’t know what’s going to happen to us.”
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
One aspect of the Holocaust, which often is overlooked, is the life in the ghettos. The Nazis created at least 1,143 ghettos in the occupied eastern territories. There were three kinds of ghettos.
Closed ghettos were set apart by walls or fences with barbed wire. The Nazis compelled Jews living in the surrounding areas to move into the closed ghetto, thus exacerbating the extremely crowded and unsanitary conditions. Starvation, chronic shortages, severe winter weather, inadequate and unheated housing, and the absence of adequate municipal services led to repeated outbreaks of epidemics and a high mortality rate. Most ghettos were of this type.
Open ghettos had no walls or fences, but there were restrictions on entering and leaving. These existed in Poland and the Soviet Union, as well as in Transnistria, the province of Ukraine occupied and administrated by Romanian authorities.
Destruction ghettos were tightly sealed off and existed for between two and six weeks before the Germans or their collaborators deported and murdered the Jewish population concentrated there. These existed in the Soviet Union (especially in Lithuania and the Ukraine), and Hungary.
How many people were murdered in the ghettos is hard to ascertain because many ghettos were only in existence for a relatively short time. Also, many died as a result of starvation and diseases.
None of the ghettos were pleasant places to live. They often were described as hell on Earth.
The largest ghetto was Warsaw, where 400,000 Jews were crowded into 1.3 square miles of the city. Other ghettos included those in the cities of Łódź, Kraków, Białystok, Lvov (L’viv), Lublin, Vilna (Vilnius), Częstochowa, and Minsk. Many thousands of Western European Jews were. deported to ghettos in the East. Men, women, and children were forced to leave their homes taking only the possessions they could carry, and move into overcrowded houses and rooms. Leaving the ghetto was strictly prohibited.
The ghetto in Lodz, Poland’s second-largest city and major industrial center, was established on April 30, 1940. It was the second largest and most severely insulated ghetto from its surroundings and from other ghettos. It had interned approximately 164,000 Jews, which tens of thousands of Jews from the district, other Jews from the Reich, and also Sinti and Roma were added. The ghetto, although intended to be a temporary transit facility, lasted for more than four years after the interests of local Nazis led to a decision to exploit the Jewish labor force.
Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the overbearing and controversial chairman of the Lodz Judenrat, thought that labor would give the Jews an opportunity to go on living and the hope to survive. Consequently, he set up a multifaceted system in which the Jews of the ghetto worked for the Germans, including “Ressorts” (workshops) where even young children were subjected to slave labor. The Nazis, however, regarded the ghetto’s output as only a brief pause in the final solution, the extermination of Jews.
On January 15, 1942, deportations from Lodz to the Chelmno extermination camp began, where Jews were murdered utilizing gas vans. Rumkowski was forced to prepare lists of candidates for deportation and organize the rounding up of the Jews. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to lower the quota of Jews for deportation. By the end of the year, almost half of the Jews interned in Lodz had been murdered in Chelmno. The murder of the Jews of the Lodz ghetto and the surrounding areas continued intermittently until January 1945.
Despite the inhumane conditions that endured in the ghettos, communal institutions and voluntary organizations tried to instill life with meaning and to provide for the public’s needs.
Work in each ghetto differed. Inhabitants were used for anything from construction work to making clothes. Forced laborers worked extremely long hours in brutal conditions. Some work was used as a form of torture rather than for productivity, although most work did attempt to be productive by using free labor, typically for the war effort.
I can’t imagine how life must have been in the ghettos.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
Edith Hofmann was born in Prague in 1927; in 1941 she was 14 years old and sent with her family to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland. Her parents died within their first year there. When the Łódź Ghetto was liquidated in 1944, Birkin was sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp where she spent the rest of her time there working in an underground munitions factory.
After the war, Edith Hofmann moved to the United Kingdom. She went to Belfast by boat to visit her sister; attended high school in Derry. There was a Jewish community there. She followed a teachers’ training course in London. After that, she worked in Hendon and Edgware. She married in 1962 to a non-Jewish man, they were unable to have children so they adopted two boys and a girl. In the 1970s she studied A-level History of Modern Art and went on to take a course in fine art.
The following are excerpts from her testimonies.
About Life in the Ghettos “So when you came to the ghetto there was this dreadful dreadful smell. It was in the winter, and it was freezing, and you could smell rotten cabbages and beetroot; there was this smell of beetroot. And what we were given was beetroot soup, which I couldn’t eat at first, it was so awful. It wasn’t a sort of good beetroot soup, it was terrible beetroot soup, it was just water with bits of beetroot swimming in it. And I couldn’t eat it for a few days, but then I was so hungry I ate it and didn’t get enough of it. Or it was cabbage soup made of rotted cabbage, and I think we got a loaf of bread a week, and I think a little bit of sugar we got sometimes. And then we got what they called coffee, it was just a sort of brown water, it wasn’t really coffee, and with that, you cleaned your teeth and did everything. Another thing I remember on that first day is that cart where they picked up the dead people, you know when people died they came and collected all the dead people from the rooms, or out in the street, and just shoved them onto this sort of, like a cart, took them away. And people standing outside wailing you know, if a relative died, and get these people to collect them and they stood out there, wailing. It was very very frightening because people didn’t do that in Czechoslovakia, all this wailing and moaning and shouting and crying and screaming, all that. That was our first day in the ghetto. It was a very very severe winter, and people didn’t have fuel, they didn’t have food enough. They got diseases, they got typhus and typhoid and dysentery and all kinds of diseases. And lots and lots of them died, thousands of people. We… there were a lot of children my own age whom I knew in that same building, and we did sort of… we found a place in the, there was a sort of attic, and we used to gather in the attic sort of place, sing songs and makeup plays, and talk, and played games, you know, all kinds of games. And amused ourselves. We never went out for a walk together somehow, for some reason, but I remember being in that attic and singing and dancing a bit, and making our own amusement. In the spring then we used to go for walks; there was a place just outside the ghetto, but it was still in the ghetto you know, it was in the boundary of the ghetto, but it was like a sort of wasteground, there weren’t any houses, and occasionally there was a tree because I remember trying to eat the bark of it, to see if one could eat it, which you couldn’t. And there were a few trees, yes. So we used to go there, and through the barbed wires you could see a bit of countryside, so we had walks in the spring.”
About Auschwitz “When we arrived in Auschwitz we all had to get out, and then you had the Doctor there who selected us, who looked at people, and when he saw that you might be useful for work you went one side, and if you were old or ill-looking you went the other side, the women were somewhere else and the men were somewhere else, the children were with the women. All different groups of people. And luckily I went with the young and so-called healthy women. I made myself big and tall and strong, soon realised you know it was probably wise to do. So I went with these girls, they weren’t really women they were young girls. I think anybody over twenty had it, you know because they didn’t need that many for work. So, from what I remember, nobody was over thirty; I never met anybody over thirty after that.
Of course, we soon realised that there was this big chimney, you know, out of which came a lot of smoke, and the sky was red, the sky was red all the time. And you know, when we asked what it is they told us, and we couldn’t believe it. Well the Germans didn’t tell us, but other prisoners told us you know. ‘What’s this, what’s this smoke, what’s this fire, you know, why is the sky so red?’ What is this all about, you know, we couldn’t understand. But then we were told, very soon we were told you know, and we saw these transports of people coming; they came past us because there was this Lagerstrasse, you know, this road that was going to the gas chamber, from the train, and they came past. All these transports came past us, you know, thousands and thousands of people. And they never appeared again, they just disappeared into this building, you know. Somehow you know, you just got used to it; you were there. It’s more terrifying thinking back on it now, in a way, than then. Again, they said you know, they’re giving us bromide in the soup to keep us calm. But things were so bad, and you lost everybody, that it was just another blow, you know, you just got sort of immune to these things.”
Auschwitz was very frightening to a certain extent because it was full of Germans. Because until then we didn’t see a lot of Germans in the ghetto, only occasionally. It was full of Germans and the Germans with dogs, and there were these barbed wires, with electricity in it you know. Discipline, very strict discipline. This feeling of death, all these people going in the gas chamber. It was a very weird place, very weird place. With this atmosphere of death all the time you know, and this unbelievable situation of people being… you could smell, you could smell these people being burnt. All the time you smelt this… it was a little bit like you know, when people used to boil glue, it was the bones that smelt like glue. You had volunteers who would go with the Germans you know, and get a bit of food, and they were what was called the kapo, and the block leader you know. Because every one of these huts, it was a block, which was called a block, had a block leader who had a little cubicle all to herself, with the women a woman and with the men a man. Because there were only women in our block, we were separated then from the men, so the men had men and the women had women. And it was like a glass cubicle, so they could see us. And you could recognise them because they were not starved, you know, they looked normal in their faces, in their bodies, they weren’t hungry, they had enough to eat, and they had reasonable clothes on, they had good clothes on. So, you knew who they were, and they were very sadistic and very cruel, and they treated us, the other prisoners, very very badly. They were prisoners like us, but they had privileged positions you see.”
Hugo Jaeger was one of Hitler’s personal photographers who has been granted special access to the Third Reich and Hitler’s personal space. He is famous for being one of few photographers from that period who used colour photographs, which makes people assume that these photos have been “colourized” from black and white originals when in reality these are the originals.
Hugo Jaeger’s photographs normally celebrated the “glory and triumphalism” of the Third Reich. But in this set, he depicts the tragic circumstances of Jews. What his reasons were are not clear, was it compassion or just another bit of propaganda?
The pictures do tell a powerful tale.
Despite the awfulness of her predicament, this Jewish woman manages to smile brightly for the camera as she poses for Jaeger.
An elderly man with a yellow Star of David fixed to his chest, speaks with German officers as he and other Jews are being rounded up in Kutno, German-occupied Poland in 1939. The German officers appear to be sneering at him.
With their clean clothes and hair neatly coiffured, these three young women do not, at first glance, appear anything like Jaeger’s other subjects. But look closer and you find a star of David on the coat of the girl on the left
Ghetto boys in their tattered rags. The two boys smile for the camera, but the man in the centre, most probably their father, has a look of distrust etched across his face.
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
Officially called the Jewish Organization for the Maintenance of Public Order (Ger., Jüdischer Ordungsdienst; Pol., Żydowska Służba Porządkowa), Jewish police units were established under Nazi occupation in most East European ghettos. The establishment of a police force usually was connected with the creation of the ghettos, which excluded the Jewish population from general police jurisdiction and thus created a need for an alternative system of ensuring that the Jewish population complied with German occupiers’ orders. The absence of a general German order regarding the establishment of the Jewish police indicates that in all probability, it was the various local occupying forces—and not the Central Reich Government—that took the initiative to set up this force. Indeed, the composition of the Jewish police in different ghettos, their jurisdictional powers, and their status within the Jewish community varied from ghetto to ghetto, according to local conditions. A small ghetto could muster only a handful of individuals to join its police force, whereas the Warsaw ghetto
Ghetto police forces were officially branches of Judenräte (sg., Judenrat) but were also commanded directly by local non-Jewish police authorities and the SS. Therefore, police units in some ghettos became independent of the Judenräte. However, in other places the Judenrat and the ghetto police were indistinguishable. Initially, the primary task of the Jewish police was to maintain public order and to enforce German orders transmitted by the Judenräte to the Jewish population. Municipal authorities retained jurisdiction over criminal matters and disputes between Jews and non-Jews. At this phase, there were Jews who viewed the establishment of the Jewish police positively; some intellectual circles even openly supported it. Jews joined it for social motives and out of a desire to help maintain order in the ghettos and assist Jewish autonomy.
German authorities insisted that Jewish police officers be young, fit, and army-trained, with at least a high school diploma—but those principles were not always followed. Many police were refugees from other Jewish communities and few had been involved in organized Jewish affairs before the war.
Gradually the Germans expanded the workload of the Jewish police, calling upon them to fight epidemics, quell demonstrations, and fight fires. Other times the police were charged with overseeing distribution of foodstuffs and controlling prices as well as collecting taxes. They were part of the battle against those who disobeyed German orders, although the scope of their jurisdiction varied from place to place. Prisons were erected in the larger ghettos and detention rooms in the smaller ones; rarely were inmates transferred to the Germans. In most cases, ghetto police themselves carried out the punishment that ghetto courts imposed on the accused. Sometimes they even assisted in executing German-ordered death sentences.
Police were supposed to be paid by the Judenräte, but often their salary was insufficient and irregular. Thus they were open to bribes, a situation that adversely affected moral standards. Understanding that the Jewish police served to enforce German policy, many left it; their places were taken mainly by people with no obligation to the Jewish population and by other doubtful elements. As standards declined, so did the relationship between the police and the Jewish public, especially after Jewish police began taking part in sending Jews to
. Ghetto police personnel were generally exempt from labor service and were even empowered to release others from their labor obligations (in exchange for bribes). Guarding the ghetto walls also corrupted the police and placed them in confrontations with the public. Often Jewish policemen worked with local police and even with German soldiers to control smuggling. Their close ties with the German and local authorities and the opportunity for kickbacks led many Jewish communities to identify them with the occupying forces. Over time, corruption became part of the Jewish police identity, and many of them lived lives of luxury amid the remainder of the poor Jewish population. Thus, the original esteem in which the Jewish police were held was replaced with hatred and contempt.
Nonetheless, some police officers tried to improve the lot of the Jewish community, despite harsh German supervision. Several tried to fight corruption and were active in bolstering public supervision over the police force. Other officers intervened with German authorities on behalf of Jews, at times paying with their lives.
The onset of deportations to killing centers in 1942 led to a new phase in the history of the Jewish police. The Germans generally ordered ghetto police forces to assist in deporting Jews and sometimes even on selection. In return, the Nazis assured them that they and their families would not be deported. Police officers who refused to obey the orders joined the deportees or were killed on the spot. In most instances, the police complied with German demands.
During this period, the status of the ghetto police hit an all-time low in Jewish eyes. Even then, however, there were instances when police gave advance warning of expulsions and cautioned Jews to hide. In some ghettos, police actively opposed deportation orders and even made up the core of the armed resistance movement. Most of these ghettos were in the Soviet Union or in the eastern part of Poland occupied by the Soviets from 1939 to 1941. In the Generalgouvernement, by contrast, relations between Jewish police and underground organizations were more often hostile. In both regions, however, there was considerable variation.
The number of police units was greatly reduced in the wake of deportations, and families of former police officers, who until then had been safeguarded, were usually murdered. At the same time, some Jewish underground organizations tried to take revenge on the Jewish police.
At the end of the war, the role of Jewish police and their actions became a highly controversial issue among Holocaust survivors. Dozens of police officers were tried in Jewish honor courts for improper conduct. Some were expelled from the Jewish community while others were merely barred from holding public office. The names of other former officers were cleared. It took years for the courts to decide not to put Jewish police on formal trial.
Some researchers have claimed that in small communities, relations between the Jewish police and the Jewish public were better than those in larger ones. Others have argued that corruption was more widespread in the General government ghettos, whereas police in areas under Soviet control until 1941 generally played a more positive role in ghetto life. The latest studies have shown conclusively, however, that there is no consistent correlation between either the size of the Jewish community or the location of the ghetto and police behavior. A proper evaluation of the Jewish police must be based on the study of each individual ghetto.
Chaim Rumkowski led the Lodz Ghetto as head of the ghetto’s Jewish Council. Rumkowski remains a controversial figure in the history of the Holocaust. His detractors say that he used his position to advance his own power at the expense of others and that he betrayed his fellow Jews. The supporters of Rumkowski argue that he had no choice other than to work with the Nazis who controlled Lodz as they decided what went into the ghetto in terms of food and others supplies. I am staying on the fence on this one, simply because I don’t know what I would have done if I had been placed in his position.
Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski (February 27, 1877 – August 28, 1944) was a Polish Jew and wartime businessman appointed by Nazi Germany as the head of the Council of Elders in the Łódź Ghetto during the occupation of Poland in World War II.
He accrued exponentially more power by transforming the Ghetto into an industrial base manufacturing war supplies for the Wehrmacht army in the mistaken belief that productivity was the key to Jewish survival beyond the Holocaust. The Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944. All remaining prisoners were sent to death camps in the wake of military defeats on the Eastern Front.
Rumkowski is remembered for his speech Give Me Your Children, delivered at a time when the Germans demanded his compliance with the deportation of 20,000 children to Chełmno extermination camp. In August 1944, Rumkowski and his family joined the last transport to Auschwitz,and was murdered there on August 28, 1944 by the Jewish Sonderkommando inmates who beat him to death as revenge for his role in the Holocaust. This account of his final moments is confirmed by witness testimonies of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.
Before the Nazi invasion of Poland, Mordechaj (in Polish) Rumkowski was an insurance agent in Łódź; member of Qahal, and in 1925–1939 head of a Jewish orphanage at Krajowa 15 Street.
It has been said that his work at the orphanage was self-serving rather than charitable; according to Dr. Edward Reicher, a Holocaust survivor from Łódź, he had an unhealthy interest in children.Łódź was annexed by the invading Germans into the Reich. It became part of the territory of new Reichsgaue separate from the Generalgouvernement in the rest of occupied Poland. Smaller Jewish communities were dissolved and forcibly relocated to metropolitan ghettos. The occupation authority ordered the creation of the new Jewish Councils known as the Judenräte which acted as bridges between the Nazis and the prisoner population of the ghettos. In addition to managing basic services such as communal kitchens, infirmaries, post offices and vocational schools, common tasks of the Judenräte included providing the Nazi regime with slave labor, and rounding up quotas of Jews for “resettlement in the East,” a euphemism for deportations to extermination camps in the deadliest phase of the Holocaust.
On October 13, 1939, the Nazi Amtsleiter in Łódź appointed Rumkowski the Judenälteste(“Chief Elder of the Jews”), head of the Ältestenrat (“Council of Elders”). In this position, Rumkowski reported directly to the Nazi ghetto administration, headed by Hans Biebow.When the rabbinate was dissolved, Rumkowski performed weddings. The ghetto’s money or scrip, the so-called Rumki (sometimes Chaimki), was derived from his name, as it had been his idea.His face was put on the ghetto postage stamps.
As the Judenrat leader, Rumkowski was swayed by the slogan “Arbeit macht frei – Work sets you free” that appeared on the gates of several concentration camps. By industrializing the Łódź ghetto, he hoped to make the community indispensable to the Germans and save the people of Łódź. On April 5, 1940, Rumkowski petitioned the Germans for materials for the Jews to manufacture in exchange for desperately needed food and money. By the end of the month, the Germans had acquiesced in part, agreeing to provide food, but not money.Although Rumkowski and other “Jewish elders” of the Nazi era came to be regarded as collaborators and traitors, historians have reassessed this judgement since the late 20th century in light of the terrible conditions of the time. A survivor of the Łódź ghetto, Arnold Mostowicz, noted in his memoir that Rumkowski gave a percentage of his people a chance to survive two years longer than the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, destroyed in the Uprising.However, as noted by Lucjan Dobroszycki, the ultimate decision on the future was not his to make.
Probably the most controversial issue surrounding Rumkowski was not so much his belief that the Jews should work (under duress) for the Nazis for their own survival but the power he acquired within Lodz Ghetto. To some he was ‘King Chaim’ who established a power base in the ghetto that was too great for one individual. The internal stamps used in the Lodz ghetto carried an image of Rumkowski and his friends and supporters in the ghetto always seemed to live better lives than his detractors – or so it seemed to them. Rumkowski also carried out marriage ceremonies when rabbis were forbidden to work. He also referred to Lodz by its new German name – Litzmannstadt as opposed to Lodz.
The ghettoization of Łódź was decided on September 8, 1939, by an order of SS-Oberführer Friedrich Uebelhoer.
His top secret document stated that the ghetto was only a temporary solution to “the Jewish question” in the city of Łódź. Uebelhoer never implied the long-term survival.The ghetto was sealed on April 30, 1940, with 164,000 people inside.On October 16, 1939, Rumkowski selected 31 public figures to form the Council. However, less than three weeks later, on November 11, twenty of them were executed and the rest disappeared, because he denounced them to the German authorities “for refusing to rubber-stamp his policies.” Although a new Judenrat was officially appointed a few weeks later, the men were not as distinguished, and remained far less effective than its original leaders. This change conceded more power to Rumkowski, and left no one to contest or restrain his decisions. Rumkowski had the Jewish Ghetto Police under his control also.
The Germans authorized Rumkowski as the “sole figure authority in managing and organizing internal life in the ghetto”.Rumkowski gained power because of his domineering personality in as much as his words and actions.Biebow, at first, gave Rumkowski full power in organizing the ghetto, as long as it did not interfere with his main objectives: absolute order, confiscation of Jewish property and assets, coerced labor, and Biebow’s own personal gain.Their relationship seemed to work effectively. Rumkowski had leeway to organize the ghetto according to his wishes, while Biebow sat back and reaped the rewards. In trying to keep Biebow happy, Rumkowski obeyed every order with little inquiry, and provided him with gifts and personal favors. Of his willingness to cooperate with the German authorities, Rumkowski is said to have boasted in a speech, “My motto is always to be at least ten minutes ahead of every German demand.”He believed that by staying ahead of German thinking, he could keep them satisfied and preserve the Jews. Łódź was the last ghetto in Eastern Europe to be liquidated. However, only 877 inhabitants survived in the city until liberation by hiding with the Polish rescuers, and Rumkowski had nothing to do with it.
Because of the confiscation of cash and other belongings, Rumkowski proposed a currency to be used specifically in the ghetto – the ersatz.
This new currency would be used as money, and by this alone, a person could buy food rations and other necessities. This proposal was considered arrogant and illustrated Rumkowski’s lust for power. The currency was, therefore, nicknamed by ghetto inhabitants as the “Rumkin”.It dissuaded smugglers from endangering their lives to get in and out of the ghetto with goods, as people could not pay for them with regular currency. Rumkowski believed that smuggling of food would “destabilize the ghetto with regard to the prices of basic commodities” and prevented it from taking place.
Rumkowski did not allow public protests expressing dissent. With the help of the Jewish police, he violently broke up demonstrations. On occasion, he would request the Nazis to come and break up the commotion, which usually resulted in protesters being killed. The leaders of these groups were punished by not being allowed to earn a living, which in effect meant that they and their families were doomed to starvation. Sometimes the strikers and demonstrators were arrested, imprisoned, or shipped off to labor camps.By the spring of 1941, almost all opposition to Rumkowski had dissipated. In the beginning, the Germans were unclear of their own plans for the ghetto, as arrangements for the “Final Solution” were still being developed. They realized that the original plan of liquidating the ghetto by October 1940 could not take place, so they began to take Rumkowski’s labor agenda seriously. Forced labor became a staple of ghetto life, with Rumkowski running the effort. “In another three years – he said – the ghetto will be working like a clock.”This sort of “optimism” however, was met with a damning assessment by Max Horn from Ostindustrie, who said that the ghetto was badly managed, not profitable, and had the wrong products.
By the end of January 1942 some 10,000 Jews were sent aboard Holocaust trains to Chełmno based on selections made by the Judenrat.Additional 34,000 victims were sent there by 2 April, with 11,000 more by 15 May 1942, and over 15,000 more by mid September, for the total of an estimated 55,000 people. The children and the elderly as well as anyone deemed “unfit for work” in the eyes of the Judenrat would follow them.
Rumkowski actively cooperated with the German demands hoping to save the majority of the ghetto inmates. Such behaviour set him at odds with the Orthodox observant Jews, because there could be no justification for delivering anyone to certain death. Following the creation of the extermination camp at Chełmno in 1941, the Nazis forced Rumkowski to organize several waves of deportations. Rumkowski claimed that he tried to convince the Nazis to reduce the number of Jews required for deportation and failed.
Give Me Your Children
On German orders Rumkowski delivered a speech on September 4, 1942 pleading with the Jews in the ghetto to give up children 10 years of age and younger, as well as the elderly over 65, so that others might survive. “Horrible, terrifying wailing among the assembled crowd” could be heard, reads the transcriber’s note to his parlance often referred to as: “Give Me Your Children”. Some commentators see this speech as exemplifying aspects of the Holocaust.
A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They [the Germans] are asking us to give up the best we possess – the children and the elderly. I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I’ve lived and breathed with children, I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters! Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers: Give me your children!
— Chaim Rumkowski, September 4, 1942
Rumkowski was adamant about his position as head of the Judenrat, confiscating property and businesses that were still being run by their rightful Jewish owners in the ghetto.
He established numerous departments and institutions that dealt with all of the ghetto’s internal affairs, from housing tens of thousands of people, to distributing food rations. Welfare and health systems were also set up. For a time, his administration maintained seven hospitals, seven pharmacies, and five clinics employing hundreds of doctors and nurses. Despite their effort, many people could not be helped due to the shortage of medical supplies allowed in by the Germans.
Rumkowski helped maintain school facilities. Forty-seven schools remained in operation schooling 63% of school-age children. There was no education in any other ghetto as advanced as in Łódź. He helped set up a “Culture House” where cultural gatherings including plays, orchestra and other performances could take place. He was very involved in the particulars of these events, including hiring and firing performers and editing the content of the shows. He became integrated in religious life. This integration deeply bothered the religious public. For example, since the Germans disbanded the rabbinate in September 1942, Rumkowski began conducting wedding ceremonies, and altering the marriage contract “He treated the ghetto Jews like personal belongings. He spoke to them arrogantly and rudely and sometime beat them”
Due to Rumkowski’s harsh treatment, and stern, arrogant personality, the Jews began to blame him for their predicament, and unleashed their frustration on him instead of the Germans, who were beyond their scope of blame.The most significant display of this frustration and resistance was a series of strikes and demonstrations between August 1940 and spring of 1941. Led by activists and leftist parties against Rumkowski, the workers abandoned their stations and went to the streets handing out fliers:
There are conflicting accounts regarding Rumkowski’s final moments. According to one contemporary source he was murdered upon his arrival at Auschwitz by the Jews of Łódź who preceded him there.This version of events however has been challenged by historians. Another report, submitted by the Sonderkommando member from Hungary, Dov Paisikovic informs that the Jews of Łódź approached the Sonderkommando Jews in secrecy, and asked them to kill Rumkowski for the crimes he himself committed in the Łódź Ghetto; so they beat him to death at the gate of the Crematorium No. 2 and disposed of his corpse.
. Ghetto police personnel were generally exempt from labor service and were even empowered to release others from their labor obligations (in exchange for bribes). Guarding the ghetto walls also corrupted the police and placed them in confrontations with the public. Often Jewish policemen worked with local police and even with German soldiers to control smuggling. Their close ties with the German and local authorities and the opportunity for kickbacks led many Jewish communities to identify them with the occupying forces. Over time, corruption became part of the Jewish police identity, and many of them lived lives of luxury amid the remainder of the poor Jewish population. Thus, the original esteem in which the Jewish police were held was replaced with hatred and contempt.
History of Sorts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.