Children play in the Lodz ghetto, ca. 1940-44. Photo by Mendel Grosman, courtesy of the USHMM.

In August 1944, the Łódź ghetto, the last remaining ghetto in Poland, was liquidated by the Germans and the surviving Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The town of Łódź, which contained the second largest Jewish community in prewar Poland, was occupied one week after the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.  On February 8, 1940, the Germans established the Łódź ghetto in Bałuty, the poorest neighborhood in Łódź, isolating it from the rest of the town with barbed-wire fencing and patrolling it with special police units. On April 30, the ghetto was sealed and cut off from the rest of the city, incarcerating more than 160,000 people in a small area.

Within the ghetto, families were limited to one room that included a stove but no water or sewage system. More than 20 percent of the ghetto's population died as a direct result of the harsh living conditions, mainly due to hard labor, overcrowding, and starvation. Many aspects of daily life were controlled by the Judenrat, a council of Jewish leaders established by the Germans, which was required to implement Nazi orders. Judenrat members also provided basic community services to the Jews in the ghetto and maintained a system of schooling for Jewish children, which was provided by Jewish teachers living in the ghetto. Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the Łódź ghetto Judenrat, played an important role in the daily operation and eventual liquidation of the ghetto. Rumkowski’s philosophy of “rescue through labor” stemmed from his belief that if the Jews were put to work, they would be more valuable to the Germans and less likely to be deported. Therefore, as early as May 20, 1940, the ghetto was turned into an urban work camp consisting of more than 100 factories which, using ghetto residents for forced labor, produced textiles, especially uniforms, for the German army. Rumkowski also organized a system of child labor in the ghetto, employing 13,000 children over the age of ten by July 1942 in community workshops. In 1941 and 1942, almost 40,000 Jews were deported to the Łódź ghetto from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and Luxembourg. About 5,000 Roma (Gypsies) from Austria were also deported to the ghetto. In January 1942, German authorities began to deport Jews from Łódź to the Chelmno death camp. By September 1942, they had deported over 70,000 Jews and about 5,000 Roma (Gypsies) to Chelmno. From September 5-12, 1942, 25,000 children under age ten and adults older than sixty-five were deported. Many children who were employed were spared from this deportation. In spring 1944, the Germans decided to liquidate the Łódź ghetto. Its population numbered approximately 75,000 Jews in May 1944. On June 16, 1944, Rumkowski was urged by the Germans to issue a proclamation calling for “voluntary registration for labor outside the ghettos.” Workshop managers were compelled to create lists of people deemed not essential to production. In June and July 1944, the deportations from Łódź continued, and about 3,000 Jews were deported to Chelmno. Rumkowski signed the final deportation order on August 2, 1944, and the ghetto was liquidated. The Germans deported the surviving ghetto residents to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rumkowski and his family were also deported to Auschwitz, where they perished. The liquidation of the Łódź ghetto highlights the important and controversial role that the Judenrat played in ghetto life. Rumkowski’s dual role as a seeming collaborator with the Germans and as a figure who attempted to prolong Jewish survival in Łódź showcases the controversial nature of the Judenrat in its obligation to work under German demands and its simultaneous aim to help the Jews. It is important to discuss with our students the controversy over Judenrat members like Rumkowski that he seemed to play a double game by helping the Germans but also tried to prevent Jewish deportation. Teachers might compare Rumkowski with other Judenrat leaders, such as Adam Czerniaków, the head of the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat, who committed suicide rather than deport the Jews. Were the choices these members made moral or immoral? How can we weigh their decisions appropriately and in historical context? We can also demonstrate the ways the Judenrat utilized children in the Łódź ghetto as laborers in order to spare them from deportation. Students might consider whether the children were helping themselves through their labor or simply being used to the advantage of the Germans. We can discuss how, even amid terrible ghetto life and horrendous living conditions, education was still valued, and teachers managed to teach Jewish children what they viewed as essential to survival. Why do you think education was maintained as a basic necessity when the Jews were deprived of so much else? As Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt have noted in their book, Holocaust: A History, “Ghetto conditions squeezed out childhood occupations” (p. 222). Students might consider the circumstances of being suddenly stripped of their childhood and forced to work in order to survive.