Lodz Ghetto, Litzmannstadt Getto Exhibit, 10 April 2013
On our 2nd day into the History of the Third Reich we went to the Island of Rugen to visit the about 5 km long -Nazi Workers Seaside Resort Building- called Prora.
At the Prora Museum was also a traveling exhibition about the Lodz-Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Getto Exhibit displayed. This set of pictures is about that Litzmannstadt Getto (German spelling) displays of the exhibit. I wasn’t really aware of that Jewish Getto and learned that it was in the general area where I was born in 1942. It seems this is maybe one of the best documented Gettos in pictures and was maybe the last Getto in East Europe to be terminated. Most of the Jewish residents of this Getto were murdered in the near by Killing Camp Chelmno, known as the Kulmhof Concentration Camp. There is plenty material on the internet just use the subject names for your search. This set has 18 images and has this URL, you may want to learn to look at a large version of the picture so you can read the descriptions of the exhibit:
www.flickr.com/photos/44567569@N00/sets/72157633997270863/Here are some sample images:
---This is the title of the exhibit. This set of pictures is about that Litzmannstadt Getto (German spelling) displays of the exhibit. On 8 Sep 1939 Lodz was occupied by German troops. In Apr.1940 the town was re-named Litzmannstadt after the German general Karl Litzmann. 34% of the 665,000 inhabitants were Jews, making Lodz an important centre of Jewish culture in Poland.
---This is one of the rooms of the Litzmanstadt Getto (German Spelling) exhibit. It caught my interest because if I had heard of it had slipped my mind. It seems this is maybe one of the best documented Gettos in pictures and was maybe the last Getto in East Europe terminated. I wasn’t really aware of that Jewish Getto and learned that it was in the general area where I was born in 1942. It seems this is maybe one of the best documented Gettos in pictures and was maybe the last Getto in East Europe terminated. Most of the Jewish residents of this Getto were murdered.
---This map shows both Lodz and Chelmno
This following paragraph about Chelmno came from this URL:
www.deathcamps.org/occupation/lodz%20ghetto.htmlExtermination Camp Chelmno (Kulmhof)
The extermination camp at Chelmno was a typical death camp, i.e. a place designed exclusively for killing all who where brought there. The only ones to be saved were a small group of workers selected by the Germans for work connected with their criminal activities.
The extermination camp at Chelmno demands special attention, because during the German occupation only a very few people in Poland ever knew of its existence and the hundreds of thousands of its victims.
The village of Chelmno (district of Kolo) is situated 14 km. (8 3/4 miles) from the town of Kolo, through which runs the main railway line from Lodz to Poznan, and which is connected with the village of Chelmno by a branch line. Lodz, the second largest city of Poland, which in 1939 had a Jewish population of 202,000, was relatively near (60 km or 37 1/2 miles); the road to it was good and little used.
In the village there was a small country house surrounded by an old park, which was owned by the State and stood empty. In the vicinity was a pine-wood, sections of which, densely planted with young trees, were almost impenetrable. This site the German occupation authorities selected for their extermination camp. The park was enclosed by a high wooden fence which concealed everything that went on behind it. The local inhabitants were expelled from the village, only a few workers being left to do the necessary jobs. Inside the enclosure were two buildings, the small country house and an old granary, besides which the Germans constructed two wooden hutments. The whole enclosure where hundred of thousands of people were done to death measured only 2 hectares (5 acres).
Those who were brought here for destruction, were convinced till the very last moment that they were to be employed on fortification work in the East. They were told that, before going further, they would have a bath, and that their clothes would be disinfected. Immediately after their arrival at the camp they were taken to the large hall of the house, where they were told to undress, and then they were driven along a corridor to the front door, where a large lorry, fitted up as a gas-chamber, was standing. This, they were told, was to take them to the bath-house. When the lorry was full, the door was locked, the engine started, and carbon monoxide was introduced into the interior through a specially constructed exhaust pipe. After 4-5 minutes, when the cries and struggles of the suffocating victims were heard no more, the lorry was driven to the wood, 4 km (2 1/2 miles) away, which was enclosed with a high fence and surrounded with outposts. Here the corpses were unloaded and buried, and afterwards burnt in one of the clearings.
---This Jewish man (Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski ) was picked by the Germans to organize the Jewish Getto residents. Under German watchful eyes he build up a Jewish Administration of the Ghetto.
This following paragraph is from this URL:
www.deathcamps.org/occupation/lodz%20ghetto.htmlThe ghetto was ruled by the Ghetto-Verwaltung (Ghetto Government) with its chief Hans Biebow. Special banknotes and coins were issued, as well as special stamps. A dedicated German police squad, led by Walter Rudolf Keuck, supervised the ghetto and guarded the Jews. The ghetto area of four square kilometers became the most densely populated part of Lodz.
Around 200,000 Jews (including approximately 38,500 deported Jews from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Luxemburg) vegetated in wretched wooden houses comprising 31,271 apartments. Living and, particularly, sanitary conditions were disastrous. Apart from the lack of food, only 725 apartments had running water, there was no sewerage, no coal or wood for heating the rooms, no warm clothes and shoes. As a consequence, 21% of the ghetto population died in various epidemics, of starvation or were frozen to death.
This following paragraph is from this URL:
www.deathcamps.org/occupation/lodz%20ghetto.htmlEconomic plunder took place in two ways, the confiscation of Jewish property and enforced labour in as many as 96 newly built ghetto workshops and factories, where starvation forced the Jews to work strenuously for a piece of bread and some soup. This work as well as all other Jewish affairs within the ghetto was managed by the Judenrat (Lodz: Ältestenrat / Council of the Eldest), which was established by the Germans in October 1940. It was led by Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (official title: Ältester der Juden / Eldest of the Jews).
The Judenrat managed the inadequate food rations, 5 hospitals, 47 schools, the allocation of quarters, the Jewish Order Service and even a ghetto prison.
---This paragraph is from this URL:
www.deathcamps.org/occupation/lodz%20ghetto.htmlBecause the ghettos were only intended to be temporary, the fate of the Lodz Jews was extermination. On 16 January 1942 deportations to Chelmno Exterminatin Camp began. The Ältestenrat was forced to select a specific number of people for each transport.
Between January and May 1942, 55,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies were sent to Chelmno Between 5 and 12 September 1942, 12,000 Jews were deported to the same destination. This bloody week was known as Gehsperre (gehen = to walk, Sperre = block / Engl.: curfew). During the Aktion Gehsperre the ghetto hospital was closed. Its patients were the first to be deported, followed by nearly all other elderly or infirm people. Children were separated from their parents and also deported.
Rumkowski prepared this deportation, which was of course based on German orders. In his famous speech he said: "They demand what is most dear to (the ghetto) – children and old people."
By September 1942, all Jews from the Warthegau (German expression for the annexed Western part of Poland) had been either murdered or expelled, apart from the 77,000 Jews remaining in Lodz. Consequently the extermination facilities in Chelmno were closed and the deportations from the Lodz ghetto ceased.
---The Jewish photographers, employed by the Jewish administration for ID card and other documentation also took pictures of the Getto life but life was very hard. Some picture were buried in 1945 and were recovered after the war.