We Must Never Forget

The Lodz Ghetto

Dawid Sierakowiak was a young Jewish Pole who lived in the city of Lodz, when the Germans invaded the country and overtook his city. He and his family were victims of the cruel-beyond-words Nazis and the indifference of his fellow Poles. Before he perished in the Lodz ghetto, he recorded his experiences in a series of journals. The journals that survived (two were burned for fuel by other inhabitants of what was his home in the ghetto) give us a view into the stark, painful life that existed behind the ghetto walls.

It was only seven days after the Germans started to attack Poland when they occupied Lodz, a city about 75 miles southwest of Warsaw. Within four days, Jews were beaten, robbed and had their property stolen and vandalized. Then only six days after the occupation, on September 14, 1939, on Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish religion, the Nazi’s ordered all businesses to stay open and the synagogues to be closed. They began the anti- Jewish policies that had also spread to other areas where the Nazis established control. While Warsaw was still trying to fight off the Germans, Lodz (besides Poles, the city was populated with ethnic Germans, as well as 230,000 Jews) was already occupied by Germany. The persecution of the Jews in Lodz began.

Within a few months, the Nazis set up the Lodz ghetto, and it was filled with approximately 204,800 men, women, and children (approximately 2,330 were born behind the ghetto walls). As the Germans selected the unfortunate (or were they the fortunate ones, what with the horrid conditions in the ghetto?) to leave for what were really extermination camps, more and more cattle cars filled with people would arrive.

Just how many people is 204,800? I can’t picture this – can’t visualize the amount of people that were crammed in this ghetto.

I live in a community North of Boston, in Lynn, Massachusetts. To clarify my understanding, I did some research on the population of my own community, as well as other nearby cities.

If you combine the populations (according to the 2000 Census) of Lynn (89,050), Salem (40,407), Revere (47,283), Saugus (26,070) and Nahant, (3620) in Massachusetts, it comes to a total of 206,438 human beings. This total is about 1,638 more than the amount of people who were put into the Lodz ghetto. For my purposes, this is close enough.

The area of the Lodz ghetto was 1.59 square miles in the beginning, but was later reduced to about 1.47 square miles by the Germans. All of the cities I listed are much larger than the small size of this ghetto. The community that is the closest in size to the Lodz Ghetto close to my community is Nahant, which is described in Wikepedia as “the smallest municipality, area wise” in Massachusetts.

Nahant is a peninsula that can only be reached by a causeway which connects it with Lynn. It is about 1.2 square miles – notably a bit smaller than the Lodz ghetto. Perhaps if we imagine the beaches as added livable land (as though any part of the ghettos were livable), or the strip of highway that leads to Nahant, then we can approximate a closer comparison to the land area in this ghetto.

The reported population in the last census for Nahant in the year 2000 was 3620. I have a map of all the cities with the combined population that I am comparing, along with Nahant, in order to make this bleak picture even clearer. Look at the map, and try to imagine about 204,800 people imprisoned in an area that would normally hold about 3 to 4000 people, at the most. I know I can’t even begin to imagine this.

To say that Lodz, as well as the other sealed ghettos that the Nazis established, was overcrowded is an understatement, ast the very least. Those prison walls were filled with people who were dying everyday of starvation; some simply dropped right in the streets, while others were beaten to death. They lacked food, water, sanitation and fuel, for cooking and for heat, (much needed for the cold, Polish winter). They were walled-in and cut off from the rest of the city, and were regarded as slaves. Eventually the prisoners began to realize their fate, even though the Germans did their best to hide their intentions, so they would go quietly and quickly to their deaths. They were horribly beaten with starvation and disease, and the emotional and psychological toll that resulted.

Those who could work were sent as slave labor to factories that mostly made German army uniforms, in the city. Those who couldn’t were killed – the young, the old, and anyone who was too weak or sick to work, were quickly sent to extermination camps at Auschwitz and Chelmno. Some were shot right in the streets of the ghetto – or worse.

The German authorities appointed Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski as the Judenrat Chairman of the Lodz ghetto. Rumkowski was zealous in organizing the ghetto to satisfy the Nazis. He was directly responsible for providing heat, work, food, housing, and health and welfare services. He performed marriages when the rabbis were forced to stop working, and he had his face printed on the ghetto postage stamps and a shortened version of his name was used to represent the ghetto money – the Rumkie. He even allowed hangings in the ghetto, and set up a complex internal “government,” and was continuously bombarding people with a mirror of the German lie, “Arbeit macht Frei,” – “Work Will Set You Free.”

Some say that he honestly felt that by sacrificing the ones that the Germans were going to kill, he could save others. Others felt that he was an egotistical, self-serving traitor. In his journal, Dawid Sierakowski referred to a speech by Rumkowski as “the demagoguery of a megalomaniac.” He also states that, when the Germans came to take those they determined were not fit to work, it was common that healthy people would be ‘traded’ for the sick or elderly relatives of Rumkowski, or other Jewish peole who had (ever so temporary) more power in the ghetto.

Many think that it is possible that Rumkowski truly believed he could save some, even if it was impossible to save all. Others refer to him as a traitor, and a collaborator. However, since I never lived this experience, I find it difficult to make a judgment. How can I? I live in a comfortable home that is in a free country, and I am selfom hungry. My needs are met, and my worries are small compared to the victims under the Nazi rule. Try as I may to understand all of this – it is simply beyond my comprehension.

Stories have surfaced from this time period which reflect the very best about the human condition – and the worst. do we know how we would act under similar circumstances? Could we have elevated our very souls above the dehumanizing conditions – and, if the situation presented itself, could we resist the intoxication of power in a powerless world?

Or, to quote a character from the movie “Uprising,” (which was about the Auschwitz ghetto revolt):

“Can a moral man remain moral in an immoral world?”