Haunting voices from the Lodz ghetto 1944

Excerpts from The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941-1944 edited by Lucjan Dobroszycki, Yale University Press, 1984:

Friday, 16 June 1944–The proclamation [No. 416] still speaks of voluntary registration. But in the present state of affairs this formulation is very much out of date; and presumably the entire apparatus that has always operated in such situations [i.e. forced evacuation] will be set in motion immediately…The actual goal is multiple, large-scale shipment of workers outside the ghetto…about 900 [are] to leave [next Friday]…Then 3,000 people will leave each week for the next three weeks, in transports of 1,000.

Chaim Rumkowski

Soon after, notices were delivered to those assigned for “resettlement” in accord with the Gestapo memo delivered to Chaim Rumkowski, The Eldest of the Jews. A portion of that memo is recorded below…

Sunday, 18 June 1944–Memorandum: On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, a shipment of 1,000 people is to depart for labor outside the ghetto. The first transport is to leave on Wednesday, 21 June 1944…[commentary follows] no time limit or numerical limit has been specified, so there is uncertainty in this regard. This has led pessimists to conclude that the true goal is the gradual liquidation of the ghetto.

In fact, Reichfurher-SS Himmler had issued the order for liquidating Lodz ghetto just eight days prior.

Monday, 19 June 1944–There has been no essential change in the situation…The first workshop lists have gone into effect, and departure orders have reached those involved…when [the commission] issues the departure order, it simultaneously suspends the worker’s ration card and, where applicable, those of the entire family…People who were resettled into this ghetto are fighting with traditional tactics: by night they go into hiding at the apartments of others, hoping thereby to elude the Order Service…Word has it that the first dispatch of approximately 600 people wwill leave not on Wednesday [21 June 1944], but on Friday the 23rd, because the requisitioned freight cars will not be available. This report has led the ghetto, always susceptible to optimistic rumors, to hope that the entire resettlement action is not yet a certainty.

In their defense, very few deportations had occurred from the ghetto the previous year and reports of Russian advances in the war with Germany had given some residents hope of imminent liberation. Unbeknownst to the victims, Himmler and the SS had accelerated their “Final Solution to the Jewish problem,” and hence the aforementioned liquidation order of 10 June ‘44.

Sketches of Ghetto Life: Escape into Hell–The postmen are rushing through town, or rather, they have a rush job to do. But they themselves are trudging through the streets, up and down the stairs. Their bags are full now. When there is a knock at the door, the tenant knows it is neither the milkman nor the baker; and the normally welcome mailman frightens people with his knock in broad daylight as if it were midnight. No sooner are their departure orders in people’s hands than they have resolved to resist…They move into their hideouts, fix them up, stock them with whatever supplies of food they may have…Their ration cards are suspended; there will be no bread, no soup in the workshops, not even vegetables. The bit of food that normally kept them from starvation will no longer be available. But instinct drives them, fear hounds them…People refuse to leave hell because they have grown accustomed to it.

Beginning 23 June 1944 and ending 14 July 1944, ten transports carried 7,196 people from Lodz to the death camp at Chelmno. After a brief interruption of the ghetto’s liquidation, transports resumed. This time, death transports would not cease until nearly every Jew in the ghetto was delivered to Auschwitz.

Chelmno Transport in open rail cars

 

Lodz Photo Gallery

 

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Lodz (Lizmannstadt) Ghetto, Poland

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Map of Lodz Ghetto from The Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/Lodz/images/lodzmap.jpg

Background:

Origin of the word ghetto, 1605–15. The name of an island near Venice where Jews were forced to reside in the 16th century (Dictionary.com, Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009).

The policy of building ghettos was set out in a secret memorandum of 21 September 1939 by Reinhard Heydrich to the commanders of the SD Einsatzgruppen and other central offices of the Third Reich. The letter contained general instructions on solving the “Jewish question,” in two main stages. The first stage was the concentration of all Jews in designated areas, the second stage followed the total annihilation, camouflaged under the term “final goal” (Endziel). Rumours regarding the creation of a ghetto spread through the city already at the end of September or the beginning of October 1939.

Story:

The city of Lodz is located about 75 miles southwest of Warsaw and had the second largest Jewish community in prewar Poland. In early February 1940, the Germans established a ghetto in the northeastern section of the city. About 160,000 Jews, more than a third of the city’s population, were forced into a small area. Lodz had been a key industrial center in prewar Poland. The Lodz ghetto thus became a major production center under the German occupation. As early as May 1940, the Germans established factories in the ghetto and used Jewish residents for forced labor. By the summer of 1941 there were some 40,000 Jews at work in the ghetto, moving it toward its eventual status as “the most industrialized ghetto in Europe” ^[1] By August 1942, there were almost 100 factories within the ghetto. The major factories produced textiles, especially uniforms, for the German army. Living conditions in the ghetto were horrendous. Most of the quarter had neither running water nor a sewer system. Hard labor, overcrowding, and starvation were the dominant features of life. More than 20 percent of the ghetto’s population died as a direct result of the harsh living conditions.

“Resettlement Action”

On Friday, 9 Jan 1942, the first 2,000 warrants were sent out for those to be resettled, including prisoners, laborers and other “undesirables.” A proclamation dated 9 Jan 1942 (No. 353) instructed families on how to settle property (ie. Sell or donate their furniture). Approximately 1,000 summonses per day were mailed. The summons enjoined its recipient to report beginning on 13 Jan 1942 to an assembly point at 7 Szklana Street. Approximately 700 people per day were expected to leave on transports beginning Friday, 16 Jan 1941. This was the beginning of a “resettlement action” to deport 10,000 people from the ghetto by the end of the month. Registration occurred at the assembly point from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. without interruption. In the first few days, mostly the homeless reported voluntarily and others had to be taken by force. Beginning on schedule, 55 deportees each were loaded onto approximately 20 passenger cars and transported by rail daily to Chelmno where they were put to death^[2]. By 29 Jan 1942, more than 10,000 people had been taken from the ghetto and killed, including 5,353 men and 5,750 women, roughly 6% of the entire ghetto population.

Another 10,000 were deported on seven transports from 22 – 28 Feb 1942. Unlike provisions made for the earlier deportees, these people were not allowed to carry possessions, food or money on the trains. No one in the ghetto knew for sure the destination of these transports, but rumors circulated that this was actually a resettlement to other areas of occupied Poland. Rumors also persisted that the deportations would soon be suspended. All rumors proved false. In fact, March 1942 saw the increase in deportations to Chelmno; nearly 27,000 people were removed from the ghetto never to be heard from again.

April saw a temporary suspension of deportations to Chelmno. Transport No. 40 left the station in Lodz on 1 Apr 1942, bringing the total number of deportees executed to 44,056 since the resettlement action began. In addition, nearly 6,300 others died of disease, starvation and other causes, some natural. The suspension lifted in May and the first transport consisting of one thousand newly arrived Jews from Western Europe were removed from the ghetto Monday, 4 May 1942. Again, all personal belongings were stripped from the deportees as they boarded trains for Chelmno. By 18 May 1942, nearly 11,000 Western European Jews had been deported while another 4,000 had died in the ghetto. Further deportations to Chelmno were suspended until September.^[3]

When the camp was reactivated in April 1944 until July 1944, another 25,000 Jews were deported from the ghetto and gassed at Chelmno.

Chelmno Extermination Camp

The camp was established in November 1941. The extermination process began on 8 December 1941, with the ghetto population of the cities and towns of the Warthegau, first from the neighboring Kolo, Dabie, Sompolno, Klodawa and many other places, and later from Lodz itself. The first Jews arrived at Chelmno from Lodz in the middle of January 1942. From that time onwards an average of 1000 a day was maintained, with short intermissions, till April 1943.

Until the spring of 1942 the remains were buried in large common graves. In the spring of 1942 two crematoria were built, and after that, all the dead were burnt in them (and the bodies previously buried as well). Details about the furnaces are lacking, for the investigator could find no witnesses who had been in the wood in 1942 or 1943. Those who lived near had only noticed two constantly smoking chimneys within the enclosure.

The furnaces were blown up by the camp authorities on 7 April 1943. Two new ones were, however, constructed in 1944, when the camp activities were resumed. The ashes and remains of bones were removed from the ash-pit, ground in mortars, and, at first, thrown into especially dug ditches; but later, from 1943 onwards, bones and ashes were secretly carted to Zawadki at night, and there thrown into the river. An estimated 340,000 deaths occurred from 8 Dec 1941 until January 1945 when the camp was “liquidated.” ^[4]

There were few survivors of the most intense phase of murder at Chelmno. In mid-January 1942, Yaakov Grojanowski escaped and made his way to Warsaw where he informed the ghetto leadership of what he had witnessed. As a result, fairly accurate information about the mass killings at Chelmno was transmitted via the Polish underground and reached London in June. 

LINKS OF INTEREST
Lodz Ghetto in Pictures

Personal stories

Survivors recall Lodz ghetto horror (BBC)

Voices from Lodz ghetto (USHMM)

Survivors, Officials remember… (CBS News)

Jew Wishes On Lodz…and Shabbat

Ghetto deportations

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