Lodz Ghetto

Lodz ghetto or the Ghetto Litzmannstadt was the second-largest ghetto established for Jews and Roma in German-occupied Poland. It was originally intended as a temporary gathering point for Jews but the ghetto became a major industrial centre, providing much needed supplies for Nazi Germany. Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until Aug 1944, when the remaining population was transported to Auschwitz. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated.

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had run a Jewish orphanage before the war, was appointed 'Elder of the Jews' by the Nazis in 1939. He was a man of extraordinary energy and determination, who turned the ghetto into a hive of industry in the vain hope of securing the survival of most of its inhabitants by making them economically too valuable to the German war effort to be murdered. To achieve this aim, he agreed to the introduction and enforcement of a ruthless system of labour exploitation, a permanent state of hunger for most of his workers, and the creation of an utterly degraded class of Jewish collaborators and slave drivers. Having been responsible for the deportation of thousands of ghetto inmates to their deaths - which earned him the label 'collaborator' - Rumkowski was deported with his family to Auschwitz on 30 August 1944, where they were all murdered.