Collection GB 1556 WL 559 - Lodz Ghetto: Various papers

c 42 frames

Comprises at least two separate deposits.

GB 1556 WL 559 1940s collection c 42 frames 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.

Comprises at least two separate deposits.

Jewish Central Information Office

Microfilm of facsimile documentation from the Lodz ghetto, 1940s, including material on the controversial role of the chairman of the Judenrat, Mordechai Rumkowski, including printed public ghetto announcements in Yiddish and German dealing with such subjects as food rationing, forged ghetto money, saluting Germans, sanitary conditions, the use of electric cookers, and arrangement for the 're-settlement' of ghetto inmates, 1941-1944; fragment of a calendar covering part of the year 1942, the front bears an image of Rumkowski with the ghetto in the background and the month of January opens with the slogans 'work', 'bread', 'care of the sick', 'protection for the children', 'peace in the ghetto'; plan of Lodz ghetto entitled 'plan of Litzmannstadt showing Jewish populated areas' [1940] and school reports from former pupils of the Humanistischen Lyzeum, Lodz.

Not arranged

Open

Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.

German and Yiddish

Microfilm

Detailed description on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk.

Entry compiled by Sarah Drewery.

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Mar 2008 Concentration camps Eastern Europe Genocide Holocaust Humanitarian law Jews Lodz Lodz ghetto, Poland Nazism Occupied territories Poland Political doctrines Racial discrimination Racial segregation Religious groups Third Reich Totalitarianism War crimes World wars (events) World War Two (1939-1945) Wars (events)

Jewish Central Information Office

Microfilm of facsimile documentation from the Lodz ghetto, 1940s, including material on the controversial role of the chairman of the Judenrat, Mordechai Rumkowski, including printed public ghetto announcements in Yiddish and German dealing with such subjects as food rationing, forged ghetto money, saluting Germans, sanitary conditions, the use of electric cookers, and arrangement for the 're-settlement' of ghetto inmates, 1941-1944; fragment of a calendar covering part of the year 1942, the front bears an image of Rumkowski with the ghetto in the background and the month of January opens with the slogans 'work', 'bread', 'care of the sick', 'protection for the children', 'peace in the ghetto'; plan of Lodz ghetto entitled 'plan of Litzmannstadt showing Jewish populated areas' [1940] and school reports from former pupils of the Humanistischen Lyzeum, Lodz.

Not arranged

Open

Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.

• English

• Latin

German and Yiddish

Detailed description on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk.

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

• English