The Nazi Holocaust: Volume 1 9783110968736, 9783598215599

Table of contents :
Series Preface
Introduction
Part One: East European Ghettos
Epidemics and Mortality in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1939–1942
Religious, Educational and Cultural Problems in the Eastern European Ghetto under German Occupation
The Mind and Spirit of East European Jewry during the Holocaust
The Cultural Life of the Vilna Ghetto
Historical Research or Slander?
The Judenrat: Conscious or Unconscious “Tool”
The Judenäte – Some Conclusions
The Ghetto as a Form of Government
Jewish Elites under German Rule
Adam Czerniakow – The Man and His Supreme Sacrifice
The Judenrat in Warsaw
The Last Days of Adam Czerniakow
The Trial of Alfred Nossig: Traitor or Victim
The Reports of a Jewish “Informer” in the Warsaw Ghetto – Selected Documents
Dictator of the Lodz Ghetto: The Strange History of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski
King of the Ghetto: Mordecai Haim Rumkowski, the Elder of Lodz Ghetto
The Ghetto in Litzmannstadt (Lodz)
Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto
Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland – Postures and Attitudes
The Relations between the Judenrat and the Jewish Police
Two “Saviors” Who Failed: Moses Merin of Sosnowiec and Jacob Gens of Vilna
The Judenräte in the Lithuanian Ghettos of Kovno and Vilna
The Concept of Labor in Judenrat Policy

Citation preview

THE NAZI HOLOCAUST

THE NAZI HOLOCAUST Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews

Edited by Michael R. Marnis Series ISBN 0-88736-266-4 1. Perspectives on the Holocaust ISBN 0-88736-252-4 2. The Origins of the Holocaust ISBN 0-88736-253-2 3. The "Final Solution": The Implementation of Mass Murder ISBN 0-88736-255-9 vol. 1 ISBN 0-88736-256-7 vol. 2 4. The "Final Solution" Outside Germany ISBN 0-88736-257-5 vol. 1 ISBN 0-88736-258-3 vol. 2 5. Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe ISBN 0-88736-259-1 vol. 1 ISBN 0-88736-254-0 vol. 2 6. The Victims of the Holocaust ISBN 0-88736-260-5 vol. 1 ISBN 0-88736-261-3 vol. 2 7. Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust ISBN 0-88736-262-1 8. Bystanders to the Holocaust ISBN 0-88736-263-X vol. 1 ISBN 0-88736-264-8 vol. 2 ISBN 0-88736-268-0 vol. 3 9. The End of the Holocaust ISBN 0-88736-265-6

THE NAZI HOLOCAUST Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews

6

The Victims of the #

Holocaust

Volume 1

Edited with an Introduction by

Michael R. Marrus University of Toronto

Meckler Westport · London

Publisher's Note The articles and chapters which comprise this collection originally appeared in a wide variety of publications and are reproduced here in facsimile from the highest quality offprints and photocopies available. The reader will notice some occasional marginal shading and text-curl common to photocopying from tightly bound volumes. Every attempt has been made to correct or minimize this effect The publisher wishes to acknowledge all the individuals and institutions that provided permission to reprint from their publications. Special thanks are due to the Yad Vashem Institute, Jerusalem, the YTVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, and the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, for their untiring assistance in providing materials from their publications and collections for use in this series. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Victims of the Holocaust / edited by Michael R. Mamis. p. cm. — (The Nazi Holocaust; v. 6) Includes index. ISBN 0-88736-260-5 (v. 1 : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-88736-261-3 (v. 2 : alk. paper). — $ (set) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) 2. Jews — Europe — Politics and government. 3. World War, 1939-1945 — Concentration camps. I. Marrus, Michael Robert. Π. Series. D804.3.N39 vol. 6 940.53Ί8 s——dc20 [940.53Ί8] 89-12246 CIP British Library Cataloging in Publication Data The victims of the Holocaust. - (The Nazi Holocaust; v.6). 1. Jews, Genocide, 1939-1945 I. Marrus, Michael R. (Michael Robert) Π. Series 940.53Ί5Ό3924 ISBN 0-88736-260-5 v.l ISBN 0-88736-261-3 v.2 ISBN 0-88736-266-4 set Copyright information for articles reproduced in this collection appears at the end of this volume. Introductions and selection copyright © 1989 Meckler Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in review. Meckler Corporation, 11 Ferry Lane West, Westport, CT 06880. Meckler Ltd., Grosvenor Gardens House, Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0BS, U.K. Printed on acid free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Contents Series Preface Introduction

Part One: East European Ghettos Epidemics and Mortality in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1939-1942 ISAIAH TRUNK Religious, Educational and Cultural Problems in the Eastern European Ghetto under German Occupation ISAIAH TRUNK The Mind and Spirit of East European Jewry during the Holocaust ERICH GOLDHAGEN The Cultural Life of the Vilna Ghetto SOLON BEINFELD Historical Research or Slander? NATHAN ECK The Judenrat: Conscious or Unconscious "Tool" RAUL HILBERG The Judenäte—Some Conclusions YEHUDA Β AUER The Ghetto as a Form of Government RAUL HILBERG Jewish Elites under German Rule LUCJAN DOBROSZYCKI Adam Czerniakow—The Man and His Supreme Sacrifice ARYEH TARTAKOWER The Judenrat in Warsaw YOSEF KERMISZ The Last Days of Adam Czerniakow MENDEL KOHANSKY The Trial of Alfred Nossig: Traitor or Victim MICHAEL ZYLBERBERG The Reports of a Jewish "Informer" in the Warsaw Ghetto— Selected Documents CHRISTOPHER R. BROWNING and ISRAEL GUTMAN

4 8 9 .11 16 16 17 19 20 21 23 23

24

Dictator of the Lodz Ghetto: The Strange History of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski SOLOMON F. BLOOM King of the Ghetto: Mordecai Haim Rumkowski, the Elder of Lodz Ghetto SHMUEL HUPPERT The Ghetto in Litzmannstadt (Lodz) BENDET HERSHKOVITCH Between East and West: Jews from Germany in the Lodz Ghetto AVRAHAM BARKAI Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland—Postures and Attitudes AHARON WEISS The Relations between the Judenrat and the Jewish Police AHARON WEISS Two "Saviors" Who Failed: Moses Merin of Sosnowiec and Jacob Gens of Vilna PHILIP FRIEDMAN The Judenräte in the Lithuanian Ghettos of Kovno and Vilna YITZHAK ARAD The Concept of Labor in Judenrat Policy YISRAEL GUTMAN

295

307 340 378 440 471

488 501 521

VOLUME TWO

Part Two: Central and West European Jewry The Problem of the Rescue of German Jewry during the Years 1933-1939: The Reasons for the Delay in Their Emigration from the Third Reich ABRAHAM MARGALIOT The Dispute over the Leadership of German Jewry (1933-1938) ABRAHAM MARGALIOT The "Reichsvereinigung of the Jews in Germany"(1938/9-1943): Problems of Continuity in the Organization and Leadership of German Jewry under the Nationalist Socialist Regime O. D.KULKA Sisterhood Under Siege: Feminism and Anti-Semitism in Germany, 1904-1938 MARION KAPLAN Women and the Holocaust The Case of German and German-Jewish Women SYBIL MILTON

553 572

594

608

631

The Dual Role of the "Jewish Center" in Slovakia LIVIA ROTHKIRCHEN The Official Jewish Leadership of Wartime Hungary RANDOLPH L. BR AHAM The Ambiguity of Collaborationism: The Center of the Jews in Romania (1942-1944) BELAVAGO The Jewish Leadership of France LENIYAHIL A Jewish Leader in Vichy France, 1940-1943: The Diary of Raymond Raoul-Lambert YERACHMIEL (RICHARD) COHEN The Jewish Community of France in the Face of Vichy-German Persecution: 1940-44 YERACHMIEL (RICHARD) COHEN Jewish Leadership and the Holocaust: The Case of France MICHAEL R. MARRUS The Trap of Legality: The Association of the Jews of Belgium MAXIME STEINBERG The Controversy Surrounding the Jewish Council of Amsterdam: From Its Inception to the Present Day JOSEPH MICHMAN The Controversial Stand of the Joodse Raad in the Netherlands: Lodewijk E. Visser's Struggle JOSEPH MICHMAN

668 677

696 719

736

756 780 797

821

844

Part Three: The Camps The Concentration Camps as Part of the National-Socialist System of Domination FALK PINGEL Social Differentiation in the German Concentration Camps W. GLICKSMAN Social Stratification in the Concentration Camps YISRAEL GUTMAN The Zionist Character of the "Self-Government" of Terezin (Theresienstadt): A Study in Historiography LIVIA ROTHKIRCHEN "Operation Reinhard": Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka YITZHAK ARAD

909 924 952

986

1021

The Gas Chambers UWE DIETRICH ADAM Belzec Death Camp MICHAEL TREGENZA Auschwitz: The History and Characteristics of the Concentration and Extermination Camp HERMANN LANGBEIN Ghetto in an Annihilation Camp: Jewish Social History in the Holocaust Period and Its Ultimate Limits OTTO DOV KULKA The Prisoner's First Encounter with Auschwitz MICHAEL UNGER Sajmiste—An Extermination Camp in Serbia MENACHEM SHELACH Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations BRUNO BETTELHEIM The Case of Bruno Bettelheim and Lina Werun Oiler's Seven Beauties ELI PFEFFERKORN

1057 1085

1115

1133 1151 1168 1186 1222

Copyright Information

1241

Index

1247

Series Preface The Holocaust, the murder of close to six million Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War, stands as a dreadful monument to mankind's inhumanity to man. As such, it will continue to be pondered for as long as people care about the past and seek to use it as a guide to the present. In the last two decades, historical investigation of this massacre has been unusually productive, both in the sense of extending our understanding of what happened and in integrating the Holocaust into the general stream of historical consciousness. This series, a collection of English-language historical articles on the Holocaust reproduced in facsimile form, is intended to sample the rich variety of this literature, with particular emphasis on the most recent currents of historical scholarship. However assessed, historians acknowledge a special aura about the Nazis' massacre of European Jewry, that has generally come to be recognized as one of the watershed events of recorded history. What was singular about this catastrophe was not only the gigantic scale of the killing, but also the systematic, machine-like effort to murder an enäre people — including every available Jew — simply for the crime of being Jewish. In theory, no one was to escape — neither the old, nor the infirm, nor even tiny infants. Nothing quite like this had happened before, at least in modern times. By any standard, therefore, the Holocaust stands out. While Jews had known periodic violence in their past, it seems in retrospect that the rise of radical anti-Jewish ideology, centered on race, set the stage for eventual mass murder. As well, Europeans became inured to death on a mass scale during the colossal bloodletting of the First World War. That conflict provided cover for the slaughter of many hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Turkey, a massacre that Hitler himself seems to have thought a precursor of what he would do in the conquest of the German Lebensraum, or living space, in conquered Europe. Still, the extermination of every living person on the basis of who they were, was something new. For both perpetrators and victims, therefore, decisions taken for what the Nazis called the "Final Solution" began a voyage into the unknown. As the Israeli historian Jacob Katz puts it: "This was an absolute novum, unassimilable in any vocabulary at the disposal of the generation that experienced iL" For more than a decade after the war, writing on the Holocaust may be seen in general as part of the process of mourning for the victims — dominated by the urge to bear witness to what had occurred, to commemorate those who had been murdered, and to convey a warning to those who had escaped. Given the horror and the unprecedented character of these events, it is not surprising that it has taken writers some time to present a coherent, balanced assessment. The early 1960s were a turning point. The appearance of Raul Hilberg's monumental work, The Destruction of the European Jews, and the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 stimulated debate and investigation. From Israel, the important periodical published by the Yad Vashem Institute [Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority], Yad Vashem Studies, made serious research

available to scholars in English. German and American scholars set to work. Numerous academic conferences and publications in the following decade, sometimes utilizing evidence from trials of war criminals then underway, extended knowledge considerably. As a result, we now have an immense volume of historical writing, a significant sample of which is presented in this series. A glance at the topics covered underscores the vast scale of this history. Investigators have traced the Nazi persecution of the Jews before the implementation of the "Final Solution," showing links both to Nazi ideology and antisemitic tradition. They have indicated how the Germans coordinated their anti-Jewish activities on a European-wide scale in the wake of their territorial conquests, drawing upon their own bureaucracy and those of their allies, enlisting collaborators and various helpers in defeated countries. They have also devoted attention to the victims — whether in East European ghettos or forests, in Central or Western Europe, or in the various concentration and death camps run by the SS. Finally, they have also written extensively on the bystanders — the countries arrayed against the Hitlerian Reich, neutrals, various Christian denominations, and the Jews outside Nazi-dominated Europe. The volumes in this series permit the reader to sample the rich array of scholarship on the history of the Holocaust, and to assess some of the conflicting interpretations. They also testify to a deeper, more sophisticated, and more balanced appreciation than was possible in the immediate wake of these horrifying events. The literature offered here can be studied as historiography — scholars addressing problems of historical interpretation — or, on the deepest level, as a grappling with the most familiar but intractable of questions: How was such a thing possible? *

*

*

I want to express my warm appreciation to all those who helped me in the preparation of these volumes. My principal debt, of course, is to the scholars whose work is represented in these pages. To them, and to the publications in which their essays first appeared, I am grateful not only for permission to reproduce their articles but also for their forbearance in dealing with a necessarily remote editor. I appreciate as well the assistance of the following, who commented on lists of articles that I assembled, helping to make this project an educational experience not only for my readers but also for myself: Yehuda Bauer, Rudolph Binion, Christopher Browning, Saul Friedländer, Henry Friedlander, Raul Hilberg, Jacques Komberg, Walto: Laqueur, Franklin Littell, Hubert Locke, Zeev Mankowitz, Sybil Milton, George Mosse, and David Wyman. To be sure, I have sometimes been an obstreperous student, and I have not always accepted the advice that has been kindly proffered. I am alone responsible for the choices here, and for the lacunae that undoubtedly exist Special thanks go to Ralph Carlson, who persuaded me to undertake this project and who took charge of many technical aspects of iL Thanks also to Anthony Abbott of Meckler Corporation who saw the work through to completion. Finally, as so often in the past, Irecordmy lasting debt to my wife, Carol Randi Marrus, without whom I would have been engulfed by this and other projects. Toronto, July 1989

Michael R. Marrus

Introduction Historians have not taken lightly the task of discussing the victims of the Holocaust, and the topic appeared at one time to be an area of the most intense controversy. Some of the earliest writing on the subject contended that the Jews, or their leaders, responded passively to Nazi persecution, even to the point of cooperating unwittingly with the machinery of destruction, and failed to offer any significant resistance to oppression and murder. Such assessments derive, in the first instance, from calls to resistance made by the Jews themselves: "like sheep to the slaughter," indeed, was an ironic, taunting slogan of the Jewish underground which appealed to the Jews to launch an effectively suicidal assault upon their tormentors. One historiographical tradition has maintained this critical posture, identifying a disposition of Jewish leaders to defer to those who wielded power, to succumb to Nazi ruses, and to become, in effect, pliant instruments of the enemies of their people. Such hypotheses have increasingly been put to the test as historians have looked carefully at the specific circumstances of Jewish victimization during the Holocaust For the most part, historical research has tended to emphasize the hopelessness of the Jews' situation and their terrible suffering at the hands of the Germans — particularly in the East European ghettos and the Nazi camps. Various accounts emphasize the Nazis' consistent and successful use of deception and blackmail in dealing with their quarry. Studies of the victims have also stressed their creative and resourceful strategies for survival, conceived with inadequate information, pitiful resources, and pursued against overwhelming, brutal opposition.

Part One

East European Ghettos

3

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS EPIDEMICS A N D WARSAW

MORTALITY

GHETTO,

IN

THE

1939-1942

B y ISAIAH T R U N K

In their campaign of annihilation against the Jewish population of Poland the Nazis employed not only the well-known technique of "deportations" to the death camps, but also used bacteria. Until now this subject has hardly been investigated. It is now clear, in the light of the facts known to us, that this method occupied a prominent place in Hitler's project to exterminate the Jews. By deliberate design the German authorities created conditions in the ghettos which made the outbreak of epidemics inevitable. Once an epidemic did break out, the Germans proceeded to "combat" it in a way which was sure to aggravate it and to spread it still further. By their practices the Germans attained the dual objective of isolating the ghetto from the outside world by a stringent quarantine and of decimating its inhabitants. The epidemics were blamed on the Jews themselves and the Polish population was frightened away from the ghettos by the spectre of the Jews as germ carriers. Moreover, attempts were made to justify the mass killings of Polish Jews on the grounds of safeguarding the health and the lives of the general population. On July 11, 1943, Governor-General Frank, in an audience given to a delegation of German physicians, in Cracow, publicly stated that the extermination of three million Polish Jews was unavoidable for reasons of public health.1 Far from helping the Jews against epidemics, the German authorities definitely interfered with the attempts of the Jews to combat disease. Thus, when a plague of spotted typhus raged in Warsaw and Kutno, the German health authorities prohibited the importation of anti-typhoid serum to the ghettos of those towns. The serum had to be smuggled in by clandestine methods and was not within the reach of people of small means. In the Kutno ghetto the Germans expressly 1

Hirszfeld, L., Historia jednego iycia (Warsaw 1946) p. 220.

4

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST EPIDEMICS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

said there would be no injections available to Jews and Poles.2 At first, Jewish hospitals were even debarred from ordering medical supplies outside the ghetto and a secret collection of medicines and medical supplies had to be organized. The Czyste hospital in Warsaw was forced by the German public health authorities to employ uliron for the treatment of spotted typhus. This drug had a toxic effect on the organism, causing the body to become blue and cold, and many deaths resulted from this treatment. A film record was taken of every patient after the treatment and the hospital personnel was threatened with penalties if the recommended "cure" was not applied.3 What was to pass as a fight on epidemics in fact served to aggravate them. There is no doubt that the higher German authorities had a clear idea of the real causes which brought about spotted typhus in the ghettos. On September 9, 1951, Governor-General Frank made the following entry into his diary: The Chief of the Office of the Gouvernement, Dr. Hummel: The danger of spotted typhus has increased because of the lowered resistance of the population, especially of the youth. The nourishment of the ghetto inhabitants is insufficient. On top of that come the shortage of soap, and the overcrowding. The number of reported cases of spotted typhus today amounts to 2,405. The actual number must be much greater . . . The confinement of the Jews to the ghetto is in itself a boon. It is now important entirely to isolate the ghetto.4 Another method used to hasten the liquidation of the Jewish population was that of starvation. Hunger yielded a large number of direct victims and caused a deterioration in the sanitary conditions in the ghettos (a hungry man cannot easily be made to observe even the most elementary rules of hygiene), increasing the cases of tuberculosis, heart ailments and other diseases. Our thesis that the Germans included epidemics as a method in their plan to annihilate the Jewish population in Poland is based on materials from the Warsaw ghetto. W e have used the following materials: the Ringelblum archives, the bulletins of the statistical department of the Judenrat, the minutes of the Jewish social service organi2 Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (hereafter designated as JHI), testimony no. 307 by Dr. Jendraszko, who had permission to enter the ghetto for treating patients. 3 Testimony of L. Bielicka-Blum, former director of the nurses' school at the Czyste Hospital. 4 "Okupacja niemiecka w Polsce w iwietle dziennika Hansa Franka i protokolow posiedzen Rz^du Gen.-Gubernii," ia Biuletyn Glotvnej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, vol. ii, p. 38.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS ISAIAH TRUNK

zation, the ghetto reports supplied by "Aryan" liaision personnel to the underground Polish movement, the underground archives of the Jewish Bund and information in the underground press. In depicting health conditions in the Warsaw ghetto all these sources agree as regards statistical figures. Variation is never more than several score. This is probably to be explained by the fact that all the above-mentioned documents must have emanated from one information center. In this conection it is important to establish the statistical value of the sources we have used. Given the extraordinary conditions of life in the ghetto one could hardly expect the statistical material to be fully reliable. For example, the official figures on cases of illness do not by any means cover the actual number. Fear of eventual "deportations" led the Jewish officials to suppress, where possible, reports on such contagious diseases as typhoid fever, spotted typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis, etc. If the absolute numbers are not complete, they are, however, fair approximations. The picture, therefore, of the health situation and of the mortality in the Warsaw ghetto which we shall attempt to present here, will be relatively correct, even though some deviations from the actual facts may be possible here and there. I SANITARY CONDITIONS AND MORTALITY AMONG WARSAW JEWS BEFORE T H E ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GHETTO

The war with Hitler Germany and the two week siege of Warsaw brought about a catastrophic deterioration in the health condition of the general population and of the Jews in particular. The Jewish quarter in the northern part of Warsaw was strongly bombarded, especially on September 14, 15 and 24, 1939, on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, causing many dead and wounded. The disruption of the water supply, the transportation system and of electric power and the shortage of food had an adverse effect on the health situation and there was a rise in mortality. In the month of August 1939, one month before the outbreak of the war, the number of Jews who died in Warsaw was 360. In the month of September, in the same year, the first month of the war, the number was 1,936. (This does not include those who remained buried under the rubble after bombardment.) The mortality in the following months also was pretty high: 1,850 in October; 1,395 in November; 1,179 in December. This average of over 1,000 deaths per month

5

6

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST EPIDEMICS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

continued on to May 1940, when only 856 cases were recorded. The high mortality among the Jews of Warsaw during the months of September 1939 to June 1940 was the result both of the bombardment and of the progressive deterioration of living conditions in the city, which was flooded by a stream of refugees and exiles from the western and northern provinces of occupied Poland. The situation during the first months of the war resulted in an epidemic of abdominal typhus. There were 2,057 cases of this disease among the Jews of Warsaw recorded in the three months of September, October and November—an average of 685 per month. In December there were 540 cases, but in January 1940 the number fell to 104; in February it was 25 and in April only 10. The Litter figure was maintained during the following summer months. Evidently the preventive inocculations of the fall of 1939 still retained their effect.5 Spotted typhus made its appearance in Warsaw in December 1939, during which month 88 cases were recorded among the Jews. The records show 191 cases for January; 214 for February; 398 for March; 407 for April. That was the peak month of the early period of the epidemic. In May die epidemic began to recede; 335 cases were registered during that month, to be followed by 123 in June, 68 in July and only 18 in August. At the same time there was a drop in the mortality: 856 in May, 650 in June, with further decreases as time progressed, gradually approaching the pre-war figure with 445 deaths in November, that is, only 20 per cent more than in August 1939. The average mortality from spotted typhus was not very high. Thus, out of 1,266 patients stricken with spotten typhus who were admitted to the hospital during the period from February to June, the number of those who died was 167, that is, about 13 per cent/' As regards other contagious diseases, the numbers were higher, but not much higher, with the exception of tuberculosis, of which the number of cases rose from 5 in March to 21 in April (even before the setting up of the ghetto). In those circumstances, recuperation through change of climate was out of the question. The percentage of tubercular cases was especially high in quarters occupied by refugees and exiles.7 The methods used by the German police in combatting spotted typhus (stringent quarantine of all occupants of the house and even 5

Ringelblum Archives (hereafter designated as R A ) , no. 83, p. 3JHI Archives, Bulletin of the statistical department of the Warsaw Judenrat (Polish) no. 5, p. 6. 7 RA, no. 83, p. 5. β

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

ISAIAH TRUNK

of the neighbors of the patient, the steaming disinfection of garments, linen, etc., the isolation of whole street blocks) greatly hindered the control of the epidemic, since it often happened that, for fear of the quarantine and the stringent disinfection, some people covered up the case and did not even call a doctor. When the epidemic became severe, the whole Czyste hospital was closed off and even the physicians and the nurses were not permitted to leave the premises. This situation continued for over three months—until August, when the epidemic nearly stopped. In the Jewish community the campaign against the unsanitary conditions and the epidemic diseases was carried on during that period by the TOZ organization and by the section for fighting epidemics specially set up by the Jewish Social Service. Thus, in the month of April, twenty-one refugee centers in which sanitary conditions were unsatisfactory were liquidated and new ones opened in their place. All such centers and kitchens for refugees were placed under medical and sanitary supervision. An extensive activity was undertaken to disinfect the refugees. In April 1940, the number of persons given a thorough washing in nine bath establishments was 12,908, while six specially organized brigades of workers effected the disinfection of 198 residences and 35,000 pounds of laundry. Sanitary commissions were established with every communal district committee to supervise their work. The feeding of the inhabitants of houses blocked off by the quarantines was organized for its duration.8 II T H E E F F E C T O F T H E G H E T T O O N INCREASE I N SICKNESS AND MORTALITY

The ghetto was one of the most effective instruments for accelerating the extermination of the Jews. Three objectives were attained by the confinement of the Jews to the ghettos. In the first place, the concentration of Jews within a limited and strictly supervised area made it easier for the German authorities to exercise control over the Jews and to ruin their economy. In the second place, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions provided a fertile soil for diseases and epidemics; in the third place, the isolation of the Jews from the outside world deprived them of all possibility of receiving help from the outside. 8

Records of the Jewish Social Service (JSS), no. 114, p. 6-7; circular no. 3 of JSS, May 1940.

7

8

T H E VICTIMS O F T H E H O L O C A U S T EPIDEMICS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

In order to have a clear idea of the connection between the ghetto and the high mortality, it is necessary to study such aspects of ghetto life as population density, social and economic structure, food policy, refugees, exiles, etc. 1. Density of Population and Living Conditions According to the census ordered by the German authorities on October 28, 1939, the number of Jews in Warsaw was 359,827. This was 28.2 percent of the total population of die capital.® This, however, did not represent the full number, since many refugees who filled the city on the day when the count was taken were not reported. According to the report of the supply department of the Warsaw Judenrat, 10 the number of Jews in the ghetto in December 1940, i.e., immediately upon its establishment, was 392,911, or 31 percent of the whole population. During the period from January to April 1941 the Germans forced into the Warsaw ghetto another 70,000 Jews from the western part of the Warsaw district. In April the Jewish population of Warsaw was 450,000, which made up 32.9 percent of the total.11 The statistical bulletin of the Warsaw Judenrat gives the figures for March 15, 1941 as approximately 445,000 Jews.12 Table I illustrates the density of the population in the ghetto of Warsaw as compared with the so-called "Aryan" part of the city. TABLE I

D E N S I T Y OF P O P U L A T I O N I N T H E W A R S A W G H E T T O I N M A R C H 1 9 4 1 « Entire City Population 1,365,500 Area ( i n hectares) •14,150 D w e l l i n g units . . . . 2 8 4 , 9 1 2 N u m b e r of residents per hectare . . . . 96.5 N u m b e r of residents per room 4.8

"Aryan" Part

Ghetto

920,000 13,810 223,617

445,000 ••340 61,295

Percentage in the Ghetto 32.6 2.4 21.5

66.6

1,308.8

—

3.2

7.2

—

• Comprising also 8 0 0 city parks and 85 hectares of public squares. • · 2 9 hectares were taken up by the cemetery and 4 hectares by the ball field "Skra." These places served the sole purpose of burying the dead. n 10

11 12

"

Bulletin of the Warsaw Judenrat, no. 1, May 3, 1940. Records of the JSS, file no. 4 0 9 .

Ibid.

Bulletin of the Warsaw Judenrat, no. 14. Archives of JHI.

E A S T EUROPEAN GHETTOS ISAIAH T R U N K

This table hardly requires comment: 32.6 percent of the population was squeezed into 2.4 percent of the total area of the city. The density in the ghetto per hectare was thus almost 2 0 times that of the "Aryan" section; the density of inhabitants per room 2\ times greater. These figures, moreover, do not give a full picture of the living conditions in the Warsaw ghetto, especially among the more than 1 5 0 , 0 0 0 refugees and exiles. No statistics can convey the horror of the so-called "centers," where frequently 2 0 to 2 5 people lived in one room of 14 by 2 0 feet. 14 The following is found in the diary of an attendant in a refugee center, under the entry of March 12, 1 9 4 1 : . . . Λ room with three windows, about 70 people and 25 cots. An agglomeration of filthy, lice-ridden and hungry individuals lying on cots. They haven't undressed for four weeks . . . Most of them are asleep from sheer exhaustion . . . In the corner lies a woman of about 35 with two small children.15 There are similar descriptions of the centers at 7 Dzielna St. and at 9-11 Dzika St. Ruined buildings were occupied by the homeless from the provinces. Here too street urchins made their home. In the winter of 1941, 17 children were found frozen in cellars of the devastated houses.16 It was not only the refugee centers which presented such a sorry spectacle. The native Warsaw Jews were not much better off. Here is a description of the living conditions in the so-called "special houses," taken from a report: Ragged and torn, covered with tatters, these human shadows inhabit cellars, basements and pantries. Often those dwellings consist of nothing but the four naked walls, without a single article of furniture or a single garment. People are seen lying on the bare ground, on straw; beds are conspicuous by their absence. Whatever bedding one finds has the color of mud. Sometimes they lie in a heap of feathers, the pillowcases having been sold a long time ago. There are houses whose evicted tenants lie around on the steps or have managed to discover a still unoccupied cellar.17 Although the mortality rate was enormous the overcrowding in the ghetto did not diminish. On the contrary, the area of the ghetto having been reduced several times, the density increased and living conditions became increasingly unbearable. In September 1941 over "

18 1(1 17

RA, no. 8 3 .

Ibid., no. 116.

Ringelblum notes of November 1941 ( m s ) . J H I Archives, file no. 4 0 1 .

9

10

THE VICTIMS O F THE HOLOCAUST

EPIDEMICS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

50,000 Jews were put out of their dwellings (from Sienna St., Ogrodowa St., part of Zelazna St. and other streets) and were assigned to quarters which could accommodate only 17,000 souls.18 At the end of January 1942, after the ghetto had been reduced in size several times, its area was about 300 hectares and was inhabited by some 400,000 Jews. The density at that time was 1,333 souls per hectare, or about 85,000 per square mile. 2. Social and Economic Structure According to the figures of the statistical department of the Warsaw Judenrat, the economic structure of the Jewish population in the ghetto on June 30, 1941 presented the following picture: 19 Proprietors of business enterprises Proprietors of industrial enterprises Independent artisans Employed in business enterprises Employed in workshops and factories Employed in the Judenrat and communal institutions Laborers in German installations Total

5,115 3,105 8,185 1,276 2,814 3,788 2,000 26,283

To this number should be added about 10,000 persons whose income was derived from their own capital20 as well as a large number of smugglers and others who lived by illegal occupations (which we estimate at from 2,000 to 3,000). This makes a total of about 40,000 economically active and self-sustaining individuals who, together with their families, made up some 120,000 persons. It must also be borne in mind that a certain number of small factories and workshops were carried on in secret and were not included in the count. These establishments operated with many interruptions on account of the constant shortage of raw materials. Grocery stores constituted 90 percent of the "business enerprises."21 When we take into consideration the fact that by the end of June 1941 the Jewish 18

Bulletin (underground organ of the "Bund") no. 14 (24), December 20,

1941.

10

These figures are found in the underground organ of the "Bund," Za nasx4 i

wasz4 wolnoic, July 1941, p. 8. 2° RA, no. 349, p. 20.

21

Za nas&t i wasz4 wolnoic, July 1941.

E A S T EUROPEAN GHETTOS ISAIAH TRUNK

population numbered about 435,700, the picture we get is that slightly over a quarter of the population (27.5 percent) made a living somehow, while the rest starved and were dependent on communal support. One year later the picture was as follows: In June 1942 the number of persons employed in crafts, industry and in German installations was 47,000; in trade and allied occupations, 18,000; in transportation, 2,500; in all other occupations, 17,500. The total number of workers and employees amounted to 88,000, of which 47 percent were employed in crafts, 5 percent in industry, 24 percent in commerce, and 2 4 percent in all other branches.22 Comparing the occupational structure of the ghetto population in June 1941 with June 1942 we notice the following changes: The number of economically independent persons has greatly diminshed. In June 1941 the number of artisans, small manufacturers and traders was 16,405, which made up 62.5 percent of the economically active persons, while laborers and employees amounted to 9,678, i.e. only 37.5 percent. But in June 1942 the number of wage earners came to nearly 85,000, certainly a much larger percentage of all the economically active persons than in 1941. The absolute number of employees and workers increased nearly ten times. 23 (Unfortunately, the statistical data for June 1942 does not provide any classification into economically self-employed and wage earners). A change also occurred in the industrial enterprises. In June 1941 the number of "independent" industrial entrepreneurs was 3,105, that is, 11.8 percent of all actively employed individuals, making up, together with their employees, certainly about 20 percent; but in June 1942 the number of people employed in industry made up only 5 percent of the total. This means that during that year the Jewish factories and workshops were practically all liquidated. On the other hand, the number of people employed in crafts rose from 4 6 percent in June 1941 to 47 percent in June 1942. The growing impoverishment of the ghetto population is attested by the number of those exempted from the payment of the two zloty for ration cards imposed on consumers by the Judenrat and by the Der jüdische Wohnbezirk in Warschau (Judenrat publication), June, 1941. This figure is not accurate because a great many fictitious workers were registered in the so-called "shops," in order to escape deportation through the possession of a worker's card. A number of communal leaders were also registered as employees in communal institutions as a protective fiction. The exact number of fictitious workers and clerks is not known. 22

23

11

12

THE VICTIMS O F THE HOLOCAUST

EPIDEMICS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

increase in the number of people fed in the public soup kitchens. In April 1941, out of a total of 443,583 ration cards, 127,518, that is 28.8 percent, were exempted from payment; in August, out of 420,116 cards, 127, 263, or 30.3 percent, were exempted; in October, out of 394,348 cards, 139,348, or 35.3 percent, were exempted. 24 W e thus see that in October 1941 more than one-third of the population was so poor that it could not afford to pay the two zloty impost on ration cards. The large mass of the Jews did not even have the few zloty to buy the few food products on die coupons and they used to sell the coupons to the house administrators and others. In April 1940 an average of 59,314 plates of soup were distributed daily; in July 1941 the number was 117,500. By the end of September the number came to nearly 130,000 plates of soup daily. Later the number declined, not because the number of the needy was reduced but because of the difficult material condition of the relief committee. In January 1942, the number was still 80,000 daily.25 3. Food Policy In the light of the policy pursued by the Germans towards the Jewish population, this section ought more properly to be entitled "Starvation." There is no doubt that hunger formed an important part of the Nazi plan for the destruction of the Jews. Governor-General Frank entered the following into his diary on October 5, 1941: "The Governor-General is of the opinion that it will be impossible to provide the Jewish population with food." 28 Nearly one year later, on August 24, 1942, he wrote quite frankly: "Let me note, incidentally, that we have condemned 1,200,000 Jews to death by starvation. It is, of course, obvious that the fact that the Jews will not die of hunger will hasten — so let us hope — the issuance of anti-Jewish decrees."27 The food that came into the ghetto was confined almost exclusively to bread. Other products, such as flour, sugar, marmalade, meat, eggs, etc. were seldom distributed and then in very small quantities. Even the bread, however, was given out in smaller quotas than had been apportioned, and the tendency was to reduce the rations. Ac24 25

26

Bulletin of the Warsaw Judenrat, no. 14. Records of the JSS, no. 404, January 1, 1942.

Biuletyn Glownej Komisji ... vol. ii, p. 4θ. ™ Ibid., p. 33.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS ISAIAH TRUNK

cording to a report of the supply office of the Judenrat, the difference between the quota apportioned and the quota received for the period covering December 1940 to April 1941 was as follows: The amount of bread, figuring at 2 5 0 grams per person daily (or flour at 130 grams), that should have come in was 5,200,537 kilograms; the actual amount that was received was 3,354,200 kilograms, i.e. less than two-thirds. The amount of sugar (at 250 gr. per month) that came in was 128,346 kilograms, instead of 410,000. 2 * During the succeedmonths the food deficit was even greater. The following few examples will give a picture of die distribution of food. During November 1940 the distribution of bread was 3,200 grams per person, or a daily average of about 5 ounces. In 1941 the total per month was 2,500 grams, or a little more than 3 ounces. In 1942 the rate was still smaller, the distribution taking place more seldom. Thus, in March of 1942 bread was given out only twice: 1,000 grams and 250 grams per person. In May it was 1,000 grams.29 As regards other foodstuffs, as already pointed out, they were given out sporadically and in very small quantities. Thus, in 1941 the sugar ration oscillated between 120 and 170 grams.30 In 1941 no food besides bread was provided. The following are a few examples of the food distribution in 1942: between January 25 and 31 each Jew received, on coupons, 750 grams of bread and 5 kilograms of beets; during the week of March 8-14, 250 grams of marmalade and 520 grams of synthetic honey; during the week of May 31-June 6, 250 grams of bread and 100 grams of candy (only for children) and so on. The cost per person of these commodities during those months ranged from 0.03 to 1.13 zloty per day. For purposes of comparison it is worth noting that during the month of May 1941 the rations for the Polish non-Jewish population were 3,500 grams of bread, 400 grams of sugar, 400 grams of wheat flour, 250 grams of cereal, 250 grams of white bread, 5 eggs, 100 grams of meat, and marmalade according to demand. The supply office of the Judenrat had die right to import into the ghetto only unrationed food, mainly vegetables. The nutritional value of the food received is indicated in the following figures. 28 Records of the TSS, file no. 409. file no. 406. 3 0 RA, no. 1193.

>» Ibid.,

13

14

T H E VICTIMS O F T H E H O L O C A U S T EPIDEMICS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO TABLE II CALORIC VALUE OF OFFICIALLY RATIONED F O O D JANUARY-AUGUST Minimum Daily Requirements of Calories 2,380* Minimum Requirements of Nutritional Elements

1941« PERCENTAGE

RECEIVED January

August

January

August

2 1 9 gr.

1 7 7 gr.

9-2

7.0

RECEIVED January

Proteins, 5 5 gr. Carbohydrates, 4 3 0 gr. Fats, 4 2 gr.

DURING

PERCENTAGE August

January

August

4 gr.

3 gr.

7.2

5.4

51 gr.

4 1 gr.

11.8

9.5

—

—

—

—

* This was the minimum number of calories consumed by a laborer in pre-war Poland.

As may be seen from the table, the caloric value of the rationed foods during these months hardly covered 10 percent of the minimum requirements. During this entire period no fats were given out to the Jewish population. It must also be borne in mind that the quality of the food was very poor, that it was not very nourishing, and that often the products were not really what they purported to be. According to the reports of the chemical and bacteriological institute of the Health Department of the Judenrat, out of 8 6 specimens of bread analyzed between July 7 and December 31, 1941, there were 47 which proved to be unsatisfactory; out of 45 specimens of flour, 17 were unsatisfactory; 34 cases of honey showed 27 unsatisfactory, etc. All told, the 33.3 percent of all the food examined proved to be unsatisfactory.32 It is clear from the above that if the Jewish population of the ghetto would have relied solely on the food legally allowed it by the Germans, it would have died of starvation within a very short time. A survey made in the Warsaw ghetto in December 1941, covering ten groups of the population, showed that even the street beggars, who were fed the worst, consumed an average of 7 8 4 calories daily, while the daily average for the whole ghetto population was 1,125 calories per person, the highest being 1,665 calories. Thus, even the beggars ate twice as much as the Nazis provided. Naturally, this tremendous deficit in fodstufis had to be made up si ibid. Ibid., no. 191.

32

15

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

ISAIAH TRUNK

by illegal means, mainly by smuggling. The German authorities carried on a bitter fight against smuggling. Importing food into the ghetto was punished by heavy fines, but it also entailed the risk of death. Any Jew who crossed the ghetto boundary without authorization or who was caught on the "Aryan" side "was in danger of being shot. (In November 1941 eight Jews were shot in the Jewish prison for just such a violation.) Despite all this, smuggling in the ghetto did not stop. Prices for smuggled food were very high and only a thin layer of the ghetto population could afford it. It is interesting to note some of the prices on the black market. TABLB III FOOD PRICES ON THE BLACK MARKET DURING THE FIRST HALF OF 1941 (PER KILOGRAM) 33

Rye bread Corn bread Groats Beans Sugar Potatoes Horse meat Lard

January

June

3.45 zl. 5.00 8.00 6.50 920 1.20 5.00 15.50

18.15 21. 27.60 2 5.00 2995 35.80 6.75 20.30 72.30

The prices rose very sharply between January and June 1941—an average rise of 300-500 percent. The family budget for a household of four, based on the staples of bread, groats, potatoes and fat, in June 1941, would present the following picture: Bread (in addition to the 300 grams per person daily) 34 . . 36 kg. at 18.15 zl. 653.40 zl. Groats (in addition to 0.5 grams monthly) 2 kg.at25.00 50.00 Potatoes (in addition to 12 kilograms monthly) 48 kg. at 6.75 324.00 Fats (in addition to 0.3 kilograms monthly) 1.2 kg. at 72.30 86.76 Total 33

1,114.16 zl.

Ibid., no. 1193. These figures are taken from "Ankete vegn farbroykh in der varshever geto," in Bieter far geshikhte, vol. ii (Warsaw 1948) 273-87. 34

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

16

EPIDEMICS IN THB WARSAW GHETTO

A family of four, to avoid starvation, had to spend about 1,120 zlotys a month on the black market, in addition to the food bought for ration coupons. Together, that made a food budget of 1,150 to 1,200 zlotys a month. What were the earning opportunities in the ghetto? First of all, it must be pointed out that the group of gainfully employed constituted a very thin layer of die ghetto population. Even they, however, did not earn enough to pay the prices on the black market. The German decree to freeze wages at the pre-war level was in flagrant contradiction to the rise in prices. While prices increased by forty times, the wages rose to about twice what they had been before the war. The average wage in the leading branches of production in the ghetto, such as carpentry and brush-making, in 1941 ranged between 2.50 and 3.00 zlotys per hour. A skilled carpenter or brush-maker, working 10 to 11 hours a day, would thus make from 750 to 1,000 zlotys a month. A master artisan employing 3 or 4 workers in his workshop would net 60 to 100 zlotys per day, or 1,800 to 3,000 zlotys per month/ 5 This means that the earnings of a skilled worker hardly sufficed to buy the necessary food not given on his ration coupon. This does not take into account rent, heating, lighting, laundry and other household expenses. On the whole the inhabitants of the ghetto made up their deficits by selling their belongings—from clothing and furniture to pillow cases. According to the above-mentioned survey, in the fall of 1941 the average sale of clothing and furniture amounted to 20 million zlotys per month.3® The. large majority of the ghetto population (60 percent) had to depend for its sustenance on the rationed food. A substantial number, consisting of the very poorest, had to do without that too, unable to buy the few rationed foods allowed them, and had to depend on the community soup kitchens. According to a survey carried out in the Warsaw ghetto during the months of May-July 1941, over 62 percent of the population was dependent in one way or another on the Jewish social agencies and on food from the public kitchens. The public kitchens, even during the period of their most intensive activity, could not take care of all the needy cases. The nutritive value of the soup 35

Winkler, I., "Dos geto kemft kegn virtshaftlekher farnikhtung," Ibid., vol. i, p. 25. "Ankete . . p. 282.

17

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS ISAIAH TRUNK

was very low, ranging between 170 and 277 calories." The content of the soup consisted mainly of oats, which the Germans occasionally allowed into the ghetto to supplement the rations. The horrible effects of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto may be judged from two known cases of cannibalism, in which mothers ate portions of the bodies of their dead children. One case took place on December 15, 1941 at 53 Sliska Street; the other at 30 Solna Street (date unknown ). SR III T H E N E W OUTBREAK OF SPOTTED TYPHUS

(1941-42)

The inevitable result of the conditions under which the Jews lived in the ghetto during the winter of 1940-41 was a new outbreak of spotted typhus. This time the epidemic reached greater proportions than the one in the early part of 1940, before the confinement of the Jews to the ghetto. In 1941 the number of officially registered cases of spotted typhus amounted to 15,449 (compared to 1,758 cases in 1 9 4 0 ) . The following are the monthly figures: January, 57; February, 129; March, 2 0 1 ; April, 241; May, 367; June, 841; July, 1,742; August, 1,805; September, 2,492; October, 3,438; November, 2,156; December, 1,980. 39 The epidemic began to grow in severity during the summer months, reaching its peak in the month of October. Comparing the course of the epidemic in 1941 with that of 1940 we see that whereas in 1940 it had almost disappeared by the autumn months ( an average of 2 0 cases a month), in 1941 it reached its peak during the same months. The figures given above include only the officially registered cases. The actual number was much greater. In an entry in September 1941, Ringelblum wrote: "Some assert that there are four to five thousand unreported cases of typhus. The Germans speak of 14,000 concealed cases." Another document of the Ringelblum Archives contains a reference to the fact that the physicians estimated the actual number of cases to be five times the number officially registered.40 For reasons which we shall discuss later, every attempt was made to evade the obligation to report cases of illness to the health department. Even if we accept the lowest estimate of September 1941 ( 4 to 37

Ibid., p. 281.

RA, no. 1920; Archives of the JHI, file I V / 2 , in which the cases are reported from the "Aryan" side. 3 9 Diagram of the statistical bureau of the Warsaw Judenrat in the JHI Museum. ohnelAerwerkat&ttea Mill laruallonuaa niaht aar unfertigen, sondern ««ob ausbessern« konnten in dl α aar lilwlitunh hin uuoh aadare Reparatur» und Auabeeeeruageurbeitea torganoaueen «erden· 80 werden UlliUraoliUli· bereits repartiert. Andere* lederarsaugnisa« laaeea aloh durah battler herstelle* auabaaaern. Sua Olaiahe gilt Xur Kabel, Kugen, Autoteile undvlele andere Anttkal, die antwodar uofort oder jiuali kurser Sohukung cur Yarurt>alt\Mig, Itapuratur oder Uaborholung in Warkat&ttea daa. JUdiaohaa ifohabaslrks gelungen kdiinten* 8a tietat denn der Jtldlsohe Holuibasirk groaaa Arbeite· •Ogllohkeltan» die bloher nooh nlolit puageautst alad. Ola »erelkarun* lat durohaua urbaltafreudlg. Sie will Beaoh&ftlgung hüben, voll sie dudur.oh dem Arbaltalager entgeht, entlohnt wird und eadlloh uuoh dia Zuqu^ebensalttelkurte» erhalt«

XY. Kklturborlaht Paa Verbot dar Konzart» dan Jüdlaohen Slnfonloorolieaters hat uuaaerordantlioh groeaaa »«'lauern hervorgerufen.Sie bilde tan fur einen groueun Tail der Uevolkurung, die ernste jcuast Habt« eine willkommen* ΐι-holuitg. Wonn dua Verbot uuireohterhultua bleibt, lat aa fruglloU, ob duo Ore he a tor 1» Stiihde aa^n wird, naoh der Zwoluonutaeerr« wieder aiaau regelmässigen Koazartbe trieb aufzunehmen. Slua kdante nur dunn moglloh aala, wonn Komponisten vrlo Mundeliiokin u.n.^ die «war Juden wuran, Uber inline upatifiooh jUdi-jelm liuoik aolirieben, .uufgafuhrt werdan dürfea. Ilioruutar w.iran uuoh dia jUdiaohan Kompoalatea

291

292

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTS FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO l«loht«ror Unteriuil tunromudlk su reo linen «1· Xulmaa, Abruhoa, Full· Oilliurt u.a. Zur /.«It bollea y«rbundlur.gea mit don Behörden aolmvbwu. Mun aprioht duvon, Auou Ait· Oroheate r auch Ola nouo· .l'ulrenut «rltuivun u o l i . ^Le.baftfla y.jtl tunn" Ιπ Kiiffuolmuu "U^tiHtu" Im Xiif/U»IUVMI» "Satuku" in der Oerighteotruoue wird BUT Zeit din KitburuVtjirotfi'unm in Vbt-ji olaor "Lobenden Zoltung" ubgowlukvlt, dan uuun«roriloutlioh publlkumunlrkaan l e t . "Rediückearu* diu«·* Zultun? ulndi Uiudyeiaγ SzVoagel, Jdcef J.ljiaki, AadrteJ Klaut, Meoenuo Uuouii, Loonld yokasttrfaki, Pol» nruua. Mueikuiiauhe Durliie tuugem Λ ora Crua^ AndraeJ Ooldfeder, Leopold Uipilauta. Iruna ?ru*ioka, l^o^old Kubiaet«la* Si· Yo/TUhrun* olvbk uuf auär Aoheif live au. Due Pregnuut «at» hält lluiaoreuxen, Lieder, Skicitu u*wf, Ale aintlloh aktuell· •fl·· OhiiUoa/ Aagelogenlieltea/XTTwrtalgor, autirlqober For· betaaadela, 1)1· Ami führenden si ad bekannt· Kruf^et J>1· Yortraeimpraoh« l o t polnlMoh· Per Benuoli der Thuater hat in dleuor Ho oh« - wohl uat«r A·· ßludruok A«r deprimier» tea titinnung - aehr nuobfielnaaaa. p . Inner» Leben Aen JuAdnwohnbealrka illeeniolno Stiaamuf LA·at aloh auf Aer ·1η·η Seite f e a t a t e l l e i t da·· «loh dl· JUAlaohe Bevölkerung allMAhlloh Uber Al· Xrelgnlaae Aar Raoht τοα freitag aua Boaaabea'A Aar Vorwooh· /vgl. Al· Ausführungen l a letatea voohenberloht/ beruhigt« eo aprloht aaa ondereraplte immer nooh diejenigen Oker haattaata rereonen, Al· auf der rmgabllohen,lLlB te von etwa SO ϊ·Γ·οη·η" figuriert hatten. .Ilun kommentiert Al· sralgala·· A«r Vorwoohe dorilt, Aaea Ale Betroffenen Verbindung a l t Aen geheimen pelnlaohen Orgu.nl aatlonen gehabt bau, Al· ^Uegnlea Zeitungen ua* teratatat hatten. Bei Aleaer Oelegenhelt wird gertlohtvelae davon geeproohea, ·• ael l a Qhetto «la· geheime Druokerel vorhanden, l a Aar Al· pelltlaohaa "Zeitungen" /BlUttohen/ verfertigt würden.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS CH. R. BROWNING—I. GUTMAN

IX« Inner» Tragen des Judenwohnbaelrks Pie Verhaftung dan Leiter« dee Jtldluohon Ordnungsdienste« Gtarynajci «IM riesige Sensation. Innerhalb dee Judlsohen Ordnungsdienstes Behl«« ·1· wi· «ine Borate «in und bewirkt« aunaohat aa «raten Tue· • in· groaae ltledergesohlagenhelt, insbesondere in ΚοβηαηΑο,Αα nan *loht dl« ortinde dar Verhaftung kannte.Wut apruoh davon, da«β er i a lueoaaaahnag nlt Aar Foliabgubeaktlon verhaftet worden a a l , andere tpraohe* Ten einer Beteiligung an Bevlaei)- oder Brlllantanaahiabungan, •ndlloh auoh von Verfehlungen Smerynakia in politischer Hinaioht, U.1« Oeraehte waren aiah aber dorubar «iQig, daaa ea aloh hier aioht * l n · Angelegenheit Aa· Ordnungadlanei««, Aaa JuA«nrntpa qder Aar jttdiaohen Bevölkerung handle, aondern um eine f e i n privat« AAgelegen-

M

hait Saerynskie. So wirkte die Verhaftung »war ale Sensation, Aa ea aloh na eine auf hohen Posisn i » Ghetto atohsnde Persönlichkeit hanaalt·, lest· Jedooh kein beaonderea Mitgefühl aua. llan kann aloh dea Clndruok« nioht erwehren« daaa Saerynskl nioht nur nioht b e l i e b t , aondern vielen, j a seinen engaten Mitarbeitarn varhaaat l a t . Man aprloht aegor davon, daaa viele aelner Mitarbeiter dleaea Srelgnia an Abend in den Kneipen "begossen" hatten. - In ma«ageblloh«a JUdljiohcn Kreisen wird nunnehr behauptet, die Verhaftung ipt ael deswegen e r f p l g t , wall flaerynekl «ein· Pel»« «inen Aspiranten Apr polplsohon Pollsal aua Aufbewahren tibergeben hiitte. - saerynaki wird »ur Zeit durah Aaa I n spektor nindel vertreten. Hon aprloht davqn, dass an aelne p t e l l e «in d«uta«h«r Jude traten werde, der lung*'· Zeit früher i a 8aanov«r In Tollseldlonat gastanden hübe. Perttohte qber neu« Aussiedlungen HUB wuraohou «.• Ahalloh wie in Lublln - alnd aelt einigen Tagen verbreitet und verarasehen eine riesige Panik. Wie gowohfilloh wollen Ale 0«rUohtomaoher »us "erster quelle" wiesen, daaa Ale Aautaohen Behörden Ale Abnlofet hatten, Ale Waraohauer Juden naoh den Osten auatuaiedeln. Viel« Per•onen glauben an Ale «lahrhelt dieser Oerflohta ao stark, Ansa ale gam lea* Ihr« Oesohftfte vernaohlasalgaa. >1· Bptlalaten hingegen operleren a l t dem Artikel in Aer "War4 johouer Zeitung» von 84.April 1942, In Aaa Uber Ale Arboitatlnaatiani »•r /«den Aaa Waraohauer Ghattoa g«aprpoh«n wirA. 3le vertraten Aft*

294

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTS FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO elaung, A·«· i a niabllok auf di· Tutaaoh· dar Baaohilftlgung einer ΐ-oaeea oaA laaor waiter an»teilenden Aasahl von JuAea la HwAworka· «id Inietrlebetrleben, Ala fur deutaoh« Behörden, lnabeaofidera for Ala Vehrmaoht a r b e t t e a , Ala Wuraohauer Juden n l o h t Tom S o h l o k a a l

Aar Juden la lublla betroffen warden,

,uden. dl» qua da in T.ltewnnnatudtor Oha t to nnoh Wurnohnu konunon. ^rIngen authefctleohe Itnohrlohten Hbor dla Verhflltnlaae in .dortigen Ohett Mt and erlrmben, vergleloh· r.wleohon dan dortigen und hlaolean OhattofarMltnlaaan nncuetellen. Snnnoh aol aa In LItinannatadt lnaofarn beeae. M· In Vnraohau, ale Jeder, dar nrbeltafnhlg ual, unbedingt Arbalt habe, •bar aueh arbeiten mleee. Βr fc/itto In dlaaan Talle auofe ein Kxletencalnlnun an Lebennnltteln cur Verfügung. Verhungorn brnuoha er nloht» fingegen hAtte er, uuoh wann ar nooh no viel Oeld hatte, nloht Ale Uog· Ifcehkelt, Kelt u.a. alalt In Wege dee .lohlnl abhandele eu erwerben. Klne kuefltslloh· ürotrntlon kenn· er nuoh nur In der 'vole· erhol tea, aie fcoAlrftlge Ju^en, Ale Mit Ihrer olRunen lirotrntlon uuiikoranon /«.P., full flle Tuillle aahr klnderreloh l e t / , three liroVlboraohuan br.w. Aas abge· »parte luantun au einen nuanerorrtantlloh hohen Praia /N.M eprloht TOB /IK.100.- for ein üwolkllobrot/ nbgebon. Han ntraltat Jlurtkonakl nloht ab, daae er ein cuter Or/mnbitor aal, er nal über ein au aoharfer Diktator.

y.u Strneaenbauarbelten nnch Henbwrtow bol '.Turaohnu brnuohte Ana Arbeltannt Koraohnu 2A0 frelnllllge Arbeiter. Ko Böllen «loh aber 1000 Arbeiter gemeldet haben. Zieht nun In netraoht, Auas Ale Arbeltalngar nnoH den Er.fnhrungen dor vorcnngenon Jahre gefdrohtet elnd, eo knnn mvn Aarnua die wlrtnohnftllohe Kot Aar JilAlitohaa 3eT0lkerung erkennen. J!un »ndern nohelnt aber nuoh eine ruhigere laftaeeung unter 4er *eT0lkarun£ Uber Aon Arboltaelnauta Plate gegriffen au haben, aiueul nnn nleht, Anno vlole hundert JuAen aua BeutoohlnaA Wglloh froh aur Arbelt gehen und bol Aloaer Arbeltelelatung, Ale Ihnen •la Xxiatoaanlalimia gewAhrloletet, aufrloden elnd.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

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DICTATOR OF THE LODZ GHETTO The Strange History of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski

SOLOMON F. BLOOM

Λ

F E W years ago a tremendous and extraordinary catastrophe struck the Jewish people. W e are not in any danger of forgetting it, but rather of fearing to think about it and discounting it, as it were, as the consequence of one of the many "isms" that lie ready to hand: fascism, sadism, the-last-stage-of-capitalism, militarism gone mad, and so on. For our age abhors the unexplained event. Better a dozen theories than one obstreperous fact. W e are in the way of individual whose fate contributed to the frightful total of physical and moral destruction wrought by the Nazis had a separate life and a separate story; there is no end to the stories, and yet each is unique. Here S O L O M O N F . B L O O M tells of one man who chose to make of the disaster a personal opportunity: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, Jewish "dictator" of the Lodz ghetto, who yet, perhaps, managed to deceive himself about the true nature of the role he played; and whose awful figure has much to teach us of the power of degradation the Nazi terror had, and the dreadful depravities of which our common human nature is capable. In a note asking permission to reprint this study in Les Temps Modernes, the editor, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, makes this comment: "The case of Lodz is especially important because it shows that the mechanism of Nazi power is the same even when it relies upon Jewish assistance; and that the passions which support such a power are the same, even when they grow in the mind of a Jew." Dr. Bloom, professor of history at Brooklyn College, collected much of the material for this article during a recent visit to Europe. He is the author of The World of Nations: A Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx ( 1 9 4 1 ) , and has contributed to many scholarly journals as well as to past numbers of C O M M E N T A R Y . His most recent article was "The Liberalism of Louis D. Brandeis" in our October 1948 issue. Dr. Bloom is writing an interpretative history of the larger forces that molded Europe and the United States between the American and the Russian revolutions. EACH

killing true knowledge by premature understanding. Far from being comprehended, the Jewish catastrophe, and all the other Nazi horrors, bid fair to tease us out of thought, as the poet said, alas, of beauty and eternity. These are matters of which it is important to know everything before concluding anything, not to speak of judging. A n d yet, the tragedy is unfamiliar to us in most of its crucial details. Particularly unfamiliar is the action and reaction of the Jews and their leaders on the spot. W e have heard something, and not enough, of the resistance of various ghettos, and notably of the glorious rebellion of the Jews of Warsaw. But we have learned little of other, border-line cases, where resistance was mixed with a numb despair and a hope too long drawn out. Such a case was that of the ghetto of the industrial city of Lodz, in Poland, which had the special misfortune to be ruled, from beginning to annihilation, by Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. T is easy to say, and yet both true and

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inadequate, that the meaning of Rumkowski's strange career lay in embodying the limitations of the societies it spanned, the Polish-Jewish community and the Nazi order. Otherwise an undistinguished man, he was able to do that in a drastic manner indeed. Endowed with many incongruous abilities and propelled by overflowing passions, Rumkowski came naturally into a tense commerce with the world. H e was already in his late fifties when he acted out his ambiguities in an almost adolescent pantomime. For many years he had sold insurance and managed a Jewish orphan asylum. Both occupations, pursued with conspicuous energy, merged in a continuous solicitation, whether of premiums or contributions, from the same wealthy citizens of Lodz. He practiced an all-too-familiar type of persuasion

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and salesmanship affected with a public interest Rumkowski found time also to become a character. He had made the easy discovery that many an enriched Jew—the industries of Lodz had grown phenomenally and raucously—lacked the courage of his accumulation and could be shouted out of his money. He became notorious for an impudent persistence that kept the orphanage in funds. When he did not play wrathful prophet to the rich, he paraded his love for children. The affection was as genuine as the parade: he was a widower with none of his own. He liked to surround himself with his charges, although he apparently drew the circle a bit close. It was whispered that he was guilty of familiarities with grown girls and women employed in the institution. There is even a report of a legal prosecution mysteriously dropped before it came to trial. Certain it is that Rumkowski governed his institution with an ungloved iron hand, ignoring the wishes of contributors and coworkers alike. Money-raising tells for too much in the Jewish community, whether in Poland or the United States. Righteous table-thumping is always indulged. Nevertheless, Rumkowski could not go far in such a community as Lodz. His manners were rude and his learning nil. Despite the strength of his personality, he was condemned to a negligible influence, more annoying than pernicious. The Nazis, however, tempted him with a vast opportunity. Lodz fell without a blow barely a week after the war broke out in September 1939. It was bound to be a city of special interest to Germany. With its twelve hundred enterprises and two million spindles, it had long been famous as the Manchester of the East. In a century, it had grown from a village to a city of nearly three-quarters of a million people, next to Warsaw the largest in the country. Here the Germans and the Jews repeated their traditional common role in Eastern Europe: they rather than the Poles had developed Lodz. In addition to nearly a quarter of a million Jews, the population included about ninety thousand Germans, the largest "Nordic" island in the Polish sea. In Lodz as elsewhere, the Nazis invited the Jews to perpetrate their own spoliation and even immolation. This saved time,

work, and money, and preserved "order," by reducing to a minimum the confrontation of tyrant with victim. Setting Jew against Jew created a diversion, degraded them, and confirmed the Nazis in their faith that man relishes brutality. The organized and autonomous community—complete, as everywhere in Eastern Europe, with powers of taxation, sanctions, and even political parties—was to carry out the commands of the conqueror. The community was organized democratically, but when the Nazis said community they meant the leader. How they came to think that in Lodz the leader was Rumkowski is something of a mystery. He was a Zionist member of the elected council, and not an influential one. A month after the occupation, an officer burst into the council chamber and demanded to speak to the "Aelteste der Juden," which was taken to mean the oldest member, Rumkowski, with his large head and white mane, was singled out, or he stepped forward. This account is probably folklore, and contains more Galgenhumor than information. In Hurhan Lodz, Israel Tabaksblatt, a survivor, reports the more likely version that Rumkowski intrigued behind the scenes for his elevation. ; WAS invested with a kind of Führerschaft but his powers did not reach their fullness until the Jews were shut off in a ghetto. For half a year the Nazis contented themselves with ordering them from the better streets, labeling them with the Star of David, displacing them in the better homes and businesses with Volksgenossen, whose numbers were swollen by Baltic emigrants; drafting them for forced labor, and engaging in rapine and shooting both organized and informal. This "liberal" regime came to an end in Februar)' 1940. First in Lodz and then in other cities—for the smaller towns were simply depopulated— the Germans revived the ghetto and degraded it to depths unplumbed in medieval days. The Jews were driven from all parts of the city and herded into the Balut district in the north. Like all industrial centers, from Manchester to Pittsburgh, Lodz was overcrowded and jerry-built A native writer has described it as "the most offensively ugly" of Polish cities and "most monstrously un-

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EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS hvgienic," and a native poet was reduced to this apostrophe: Let Sorrento, Ganges and Crimea Exalted to the heavens be. But give me Lodz: its very dirt And smoke are sweeter far to me. And nowhere was Lodz less lovely than in the slums of the Balut. Thousands of Jews had somehow succeeded in fleeing the city, for the Nazi system took some time to jell, and the remaining 160,000 were pressed into 25,000 to 42,000 rooms—the estimates vary—or four to six in a room. T h e Germans then complained that the Ghetto was dirty. A sensitive police chief observed that "an indescribable odor" lay over the whole of it and that the Jews were covered with filth; he used a stronger word. Another official blamed the conditions on the "niedrige Wohnkultur dieses Volkes." Characteristically, the Nazis approached the denouement of isolation only gradually, always encouraging the belief that the worst had come and gone, in order to forestall the resistance of flat despair. N o hope abandon until it is too late. For a time, Poles were allowed into the Ghetto on business and Jews could leave during the day to work in the city. Then the gates were barred; nobodv/ could come or Ο σο. T h e ten miles of wall and barbed wire which enclosed the Ghetto were patrolled night and day by soldiers. More than one Jew was killed, sometimes in sheer exuberance or jest, while merely passing along these walls. Only German guards and officials could penetrate hell and still emerge to purgatory. N THESE

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forbidden precincts the authority

of Rumkowski blossomed forth. He assumed the title of Der Aelteste der Juden in Litzmannstadt-Getto and the Polish title of Prezes. He received full power to maintain "an ordered social life." He alone was to maintain relations with German officials, and through them with the planet. He was to control the property of the Ghetto, judge and punish the inhabitants, and even execute them. Under this autocracy a shadow state arose with all the panoplv of the real. The panoply plays here the role of the precise detail in Gulliver's Travels: it persuades

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us, for a moment, that the fantasy is true. But the meaning of Swift lies elsewhere, and so does that'of Rumkowski's state. It began with a budget rather than a social contract. Rumkowski levied a kind of single tax, making ordinary rent his fisc. But it appeared that too many of his subjects, bereft of jobs and incomes, were rather in need of relief themselves. Rumkowski thereupon ordered all currency and foreign remittances converted into his own fiat money, which became the only legal tender in the Ghetto. H e decreed the sale of jewels, furs, and other valuables against the new paper. With some of the wealth—for most of it was siphoned off by the Nazis without any return—he imported food, doled out relief, bought raw materials, and organized an elaborate administrative apparatus. All the money issued by this state brought into being by the swastika was adorned with the menorah and the star of David and bore the signature of Rumkowski, florid with curlicues. After money, force. (How much simpler it is to organize a state than to improve a society!) Rumkowski recruited twelve hundred police, a corps of plain-clothesmen for investigations, confiscations, and secret arrests, and a private guard. His chief of police made himself notorious for cruelty and venality. Judges, jails, even corporal punishment, completed the scheme of coercion. T h e Aelteste reserved an "administrative" power of arrest, the right of seizure by direct oral command, and the right of grace and amnesty. His "monarchy" was not lim•ited as far as the Ghetto was concerned. One might have said "empire," for he also controlled a "colony" of Gypsies doomed by the Germans to a speedy extermination. At once more ornamental and useful was the Ghetto Post Office and its stamps. In its first year, it cleared 135,063 parcels from other parts of Poland and 14,299 from abroad, 64,049 incoming money orders worth 1,699,151 marks, 10,238 telegrams, and more than a million letters and cards. T h e mails were quite efficient, although there were occasions when the ruler had to acknowledge the receipt of whole carloads of parcels that the Germans whimsically kept for themselves. In compensation, Rumkowski let himself go philatelically. On one stamp, his white-aureoled and bespectacled

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image, softened by court artists, peers out of a star of David, imposed on a menorah. Or he surveys imperially the symbols of economic fertility: an industrial wheel against the background of smoking chimneys, a compass and carpenter's knife, and the all-important cotton bobbin. The strongest arm of power, stronger than Jewish police and German Gestapo, was the control over food and jobs. "You can look into anything you wish and give your opinion, except the offices of food administration and personnel," Rumkowski warned his appointed council. "I alone will distribute food and name officials." Rations were lower and prices higher in the Ghetto than outside, although this was not entirely his fault, since the Germans paid him little for finished goods and charged him exorbitantly for imports. The Jews were exploited several times over. As a result, starvation was common and semi-starvation quite general. Their effect, as usual, was disease even more than hunger. Tabaksblatt remarks that "if any Ghetto Jew says that he ate his fill even once in those two years [of the "autonomous" state] he is lying." Both he and Dr. Albert Mazur, another survivor, mention cases where families concealed their dead in order to collect the extra ration. I spare the reader the details. (This practice was common in concentration camps: one lived off the dead, as it were.) In a few years the Nazis could have killed all the Jews by this "cold" pogrom alone: but they were people in a hurry. A diary records that on July 5, 1942, 105 persons died and five were bom: on the 17th the figures were 1 1 3 and zero. Even as the population was being reduced by mass deportation the death rate rose sharply: 1940: 6,851; 1941: 11,437; I94 2 : 18,020. The feeding of the Ghetto, such as it was, depended largely on its productiveness. Old industries were revived and new factories set up. One of the reasons why the Nazis tolerated the existence of the Ghetto as long as they did was their need for manufactures. Eventually most of the factories worked to supply the Wehrmacht. "Unzere passport iz di arbeit," was one of Rumkowski's frequent slogans. He was proudest of his accomplishments in this field. The calendar printed in the Ghetto carefully records the anniversaries of the

establishment of the various industries. The initial difficulties were indeed considerable: on the principle of grab rather than efficiency, the Nazis had removed the machines and tools of the Balut; the Ghetto contained too many unskilled persons; orders were at first few and raw materials lacking; exchange and barter trickled through sclerotic official arteries. In the first year, only fifteen to twenty per cent of the people could find work; the rest hungered on a sketchy relief. In the factory, as in the street, the iron hand ruled. The second issue of the Getto Zeitung, the official newspaper, announced plainly that "the Ghetto does not work by the clock." It did not. What may have encouraged Rumkowski to believe, as he did, that he would be instrumental in saving a remnant of Polish Jewry was his ability to organize not only workshops but also hospitals and schools. He assembled medical personnel and supplies, although the German officials saw to it that his success here was tragically inadequate. They allowed him to improvise a whole school system. In the first spring, he gathered 7,366 bovs and girls in primary schools, and 728 in secondary. The figures were doubled in the following year. The curriculum reflected the new conditions: religious instruction was strengthο ο ened, German could not be taught to the "inferior race," and Yiddish supplanted Polish, which had generally been the language of instruction, in the primary grades. The Ghetto was Jewish in a Yiddish sort of way, if one may say so. Rumkowski indulged the children with extra rations, sweets, and holiday gifts. His old professional interest stood him in good stead. The survivors concede quite generally that his devotion was authentic. UCH were the institutions of this crepuscular state. It was not precisely a Nazi state, for Jews cannot be brought to believe in invidious natural distinctions among themselves, and cannot make a virtue of brutality. But it resembled its progenitor in autocracy, servility, and corruption. The Nazi system bred a shrewd synthesis between systematic robbery as a matter of state policy and spontaneous rapine by subordinates and menials. A common interest made easy bedfellows of those two irrecon-

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EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS cilable rivals of the manuals of political science: the individual and the state. Rumkowski appointed complaisant and selfseeking officials, and thus deprived the community of a responsible and competent public service. He showered them with opportunities for extortion and graft. Let no one think that there is no room in the shadow of death for accumulation and ostentation. Mammon long ago discovered that even Hell "wants not her hidden luster." The members of the official apparatus ate well and concealed food for speculation and private security. Not a little was spoiled through too much prevision. There was no check over distribution—Rumkowski himself did not know how much came in or went out—with imaginable results. Money hoards have been uncovered. There are reports of orgies, both alimentary and sexual. Rumkowski was wide open to the temptation of the flesh—that was an old story. Although during his "reign" he married a young woman of good family and half his age—a king must have a queen and if possible a dynasty—he was not averse to attending the inflammable festivities of his creatures. But, unlike them, he was not mercenary. He was captivated rather by the psychological and political perquisites of his strange and—he dared to think—promising role. Like all dictators he affected to despise politics, to love order, and to protect his lcyal subjects. His favorite word was nth, his goal ruh in ghetto. He was given to referring to "my children," "my workers," "my factories," and even "my Jews." He indulged the language of command. When nurses asked for a reduction of their inhuman working hours, he threatened to "crush" their "obstinacy." In decreeing shorter clothes for men to save material for patches, he announced that he "would carry out this plan of mine one hundred per cent and will not stop at anything, as is my custom." He meddled with religious rules: on calling on a bereaved man to return to his shop, he declared, with an unconscious pun, that "in these times it is permissible to sit shiva [seven mourning days] four days." In tune with his times, Rumkowski encouraged a kind of Fuehrer worship. The calendar of the Ghetto (printed incidentally on the back of advertising sheets for coffee,

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the original business of Hans Biebow, the Letter der Gettoverwaltung) recorded only one historical date apart from the inauguration of industries—the birthday of the Aelteste. Bv an ironic chance, this fell on Purim, the festival of liberation from Haman. Rumkowski's concern for the young was effectively exploited by his political machine. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 1942, he was presented with a large album, bound in hard wood and leather, containing the good wishes of the whole school system. The clear signatures of 14,587 pupils and 7 1 5 teachers, carefully numbered, may be read in the original copy now in the archives of the Yiddish Scientific Institute—Yivo— in New York. It is perhaps the most accurate roll of the martyrdom of the war. The list of each school is preceded by a prayer or verse, generally in Yiddish but occasionally in Hebrew or Polish. The parchment frontispiece hails Rumkowski as Adonenu Ha-Nasi (our lord, our prince), and praises him: Atah Nasi deag lanu (you, our prince, provide for us). I translate a few verses at random: You lay down your life for us, The end of your striving, we. Stern of visage but mild of heart, Your blood is shed for every child. From purest well, the hearts of children, Flow a thousand blessings upon your handsome head. T WAS on his own Getto Zeitung, the only publication permitted to the community, that Rumkowski relied for the most Byzantine appreciation. The eighteen issues of this newspaper which appeared between June and September 1941 (they too can be read, in tiny photostatic reproductions, in the rich archives of the Yivo) present him as the model of an able and benevolent ruler: he feels "a sense of responsibility for everything that goes on in the Ghetto"; he is the only henner of its problems; stern and just—the reporter does not envy the unfortunates who dare to lie to him—he unbends frequendy; his countenance then becomes mild and genial, from his eyes "streams love," and a smile steals upon his lips; "it is then as if a familiar and quiet dove, gently

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flapping its wings, warms and cuddles its little ones. . . Prose was not enough. In the very first issue of the Zeitung, L. Berman sang, significantly, the praise of ' T h e Strong Arm": Our President Rumkowski Is blessed by the Lord above Not alone with brains and talent But with a firm and powerful arm. Whether in offices or shops Work is thorough, exemplary·. All is bound, all related By the President's strong arm. And at Dworska Number 20 [the centred office] Toil is always going on. Whoever thinks of lying down Feels the President's strong arm. All the wilder elements Have been put against the wall. Peace and order reign in Ghetto Only thanks to his strong arm. But, again it was Rumkowski's love of children that touched most the laureate heart: The President Rides Forth Men and women, young and old, Crowds gather here and there, Everybody is pressing hard: The President rides forth. Now his fine gray-spotted horse Suddenly comes to a halt, And the mass is lighted up By his head of silver hair. All eyes and all hearts Turn to him. And the people strain and stretch With petitions in their hands. But the President is busy And he sees no one now. He has spied and stopped to chat With a tiny child of seven. Engulfed by adulation, Rumkowski took to posturing. He affected the flowing cloak, shining boots, the imperious cane. The same gray horse always drew his carriage. On the first Rosh Hashanah in the Ghetto, in 1940, he went to the synagogue in state, clad in a long white cloak, adorned by a hand-worked silver collar, similar to the

Talith Hatorah, and crowned with a blue and white hat with eight points. He was accompanied by a suite of higher officials; crowds and police lined the streets and inclined in a Gut Yom Τον, occasionally sardonic, as he passed them in review. His court artists portrayed him throwing his cloak protectingly over the children of the Ghetto, who look up adoringly to him, or brooding over the problems of the Ghetto in the dead of night. When everyone rested he alone waked, worked, endlessly planned. He felt lonely and unappreciated. "I am ever disturbed in my work," he announced plaintively. The poet's petitioners were a nuisance to his hero. Vulgar milling has "a bad effect upon a man who works hard and has little time to rest." He thundered that he would disregard such petitions even if, in a moment of weakness, he accepted them. They must be dropped in a special box at his office. "The Lord knows that I would like to please everyone but where shall I get the means? I know very well that many people abuse my affection for children—they are the only ones who never disturb me in my work— and some people smuggle petitions through them. I will put an end to that too." Now and then, the abnormality implicit here would break through with violent clarity. As the Jews were driven from Lodz to the Balut, he is said to have sat in his office contemplating the possible tides he might assume as the chief of the new Ghetto. He yielded to sudden passions. He might berate people in the streets, or apply his cane, or, again, order a beard which displeased him summarily cut. He once struck a physician, just as suddenly he might become overcheerful and ebullient and ooze goodwill. He might break out in song. Sometimes contrition seized him. He showed up at a gathering of physicians and their families, uninvited and unwelcome, and proceeded to justify his rule: They say I am a dictator; that is not true; my ambition is to save a remnant and future Jewry will be beholden to me; only history will be able to judge my work which, in perspective, will be shown to have been beneficent And so forth. HE story of Rumkowski's state is not of course the whole story of the Ghetto.

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EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS His policy, or any other, could not hope to exhaust society. Through the crevices of his obscurantist despotism, spontaneous effort burst in all its forms: reading circles, recitations, amateur theatricals, litde orchestras, lectures, literary evenings. And as the desert hath green spots, the sea Small islands scattered amid stormy waves, So that disastrous -period did not want Bright sprinklings of all human excellence. Incredible as it may seem, literary and other artistic production went on, although the results disappeared with their creators. A few pieces remain. For example, some verses of the sensitive Hasidic poet S. Shayevich, from which I quote: The Lord has showered even us with hand: A double gift— The death-decree and spring. The garden blooms, and the sun And the slaughterer slaughters. . . .

gentle

shines.

But we crave no recompense or mercy. For when you slay a man You slay his God as well. Nothing could stifle Jewish humor and ridicule. Deportation orders were "invitations to a wedding" (chasene kartlech); as the Eastern front drew near, it seemed that "help is behind your back, death in front of your nose." The story goes that once in performing a marriage, for which he bestowed an extra radon of food, Rumkowski put the usual question "Do you love her" and the swift reply came: "Meantime I am hungry. . . ." At first, Rumkowski hoped to secure the support of intellectuals. He was soon disillusioned. The more decent elements waged an unremitting warfare, necessarily muffled and in the end hopeless, against his machine. Satirical poems and songs were circulated clandestinely, and political sketches shown. In turn, as I. Spiegel, one of the few surviving writers, puts it, Rumkowski "did everything he could to break the writer's pen and the painter's palette." He censored plays and vaudeville acts, denied writers precious paper and ink, withdrew the rations of some, and spied upon others. The Ger-

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mans finished the job. When Rumkowski approved the production of a play—its name was, of all things, Es vet sein besser'.— the Germans dispersed the audience. Along with virtually everything else, they confiscated the musical instruments of the Ghetto. Occasionally the strains of an illegal violin wafted through the night and made dictators uneasy. work was more dangerous, for politics naturally meant opposition. UnPfortunately, the various parties were unable OLITICAL

to merge their energies. The Zionist factions cooperated to further cultural, athletic, and economic activity; indeed they pointed the way to Rumkowski in reconstructing life in the Ghetto. Another coalition, that of the Left, was weaker: even the Communists were divided. And litde wonder, for the inauguration of the Ghetto fell in the period of the notorious pact of friendship between die Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, when, in Molotov's words, Nazism was "a matter of taste." His taste. Moreover, Rumkowski handled the opposition with ferocity. He censored mail and controlled the printing press. He did not hesitate to ask the Germans to send troops into the Ghetto to shoot down demonstrators, for in the early days there were not wanting both strikes and public demonstrations of protest. Fishermen, butchers, and coachmen particularly distinguished themselves in challenging his police, and Rumkowski visited upon them a refinement of revenge. He thrust the "Three F's" ( f i s h e r , fleisher, fuhrmenner') into the first batch of deportees demanded by the Nazis; later, when women were deported, he argued persuasively that unattached persons be given "preference," and their widows—for the men were of course never heard of again—were thereupon shipped out. And finally, when the Nazis asked for children, the orphans of the "Three F's" were given the same "preference" on the same grounds. Such methods went far to paralyze the will to resist. But there were still other factors than the Rumkowski machine that prevented Lodz from repeating the rebellions in Warsaw, Vilna, and elsewhere. The Ghetto there was more tighdy sealed, and it proved impossible to obtain the necessary weapons. The Jews were surrounded by

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Germans as well as Poles and this rendered communication with the outside world most difficult. Two messengers sent to Warsaw for help in the winter of 1942-3 never returned. Of daring there was plenty. There were explosions of individuals who met outrage with a desperate and lonely violence. With a quieter courage, people in their thousands —distinguished and ordinary—refused to break down morally, whatever the provocation. Simply to persist in remaining human exacted the highest act of faith. There were Orthodox Jews who would not touch "unclean" food and so invited a double doom. Although it smelled of death to own a radio or repeat its reports, hundreds of people joined to spread news in concentric waves every day. The radio was the only hint that the world still existed. The Getto Zeitung carried only local news- "It was through radio reports that the Ghetto heard of the mass butchery of the Jews of Cracow, Lublin, Warsaw, and other cities; it was through radio reports that they bewailed their own deported families, which perished in Kolo, Khelmno, and other places." In 1941 twelve men were arrested, but radio reports continued to be spread. Finally, on the eve of the final liquidation of the community in 1944, a young scoundrel led the Gestapo to the secret radios. One of their owners, Nathan Widavsky, a leading Zionist who was acquainted with the underground activists, took his life by painful poisoning, lest he break under torture and reveal their identities. The informer was later beaten to death by Jews in a concentration camp, the common destination of good and bad. were but the incidental expenses of Rumkowski's brittle glory. The higher price was exacted by the Nazis. His authority was distinctly delegated, delegated on a leash. Dictator of the community, he was a slave to his masters, as they were to theirs. For police matters he was responsible to the Gestapo and its counterpart for criminal work, the equally ill-famed Kripo. For economic and general administrative matters he was responsible to Hans Biebow, who became German Leiter der Gettoverwaltung upon the establishment of the closed quarter. Biebow had been recommended highly as a Nazi of spodess faith, and found the HESE

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grinding of Jews much more lucrative than the coffee business in which he had been engaged for eighteen years. He was executed, for his myriad crimes, by an Allied court in 1947. But Rumkowski was not only a subordinate executive, he was also, inescapably, a Jew, and no Nazi was so low as to owe him deference. This was brought home to him early in his "reign." The Nazis, with that cynical adherence to legality which was their concession to German propriety, had tolu Rumkowski to secure a council to advise and assist him. Of course there was no question of election. Rumkowski simply informed the nineteen members of their appointment They were abler men and better regarded than himself. Before long, they were summoned to the Gestapo and beaten, tortured, and blackmailed. Rumkowski, who always had physical courage, rushed to protect them. Sovereignty was quickly abashed. The troopers fell upon him too, and the Polish Mayor of Lodz barely rescued his life. The council disappeared spurlos and Rumkowski appointed another, remarking significandy that "acceptance of the mandate is compulsory." On a later occasion, when he was well established and fat with power, he was invited to Biebow's house, where the German master, in his cups, beat him, apparendy for the fun of it. This incident was confirmed to me by the young physician, now in America, who treated Rumkowski's wounds after the "audience." The real tribute the Germans exacted was more tangible than dignity. It was property, men for work, and men for the death machines. Rumkowski had to help the Germans squeeze out the valuables of the community. Thousands were sent off to toil —on private as well as public enterprises, under murderous conditions—and never to return. German employers paid 0.70 Reichsmarks a day per slave to a special account of the German administration of the Ghetto. It was from this account that the henchmen were paid for snatching other Jews for extermination. Even before the Ghetto was set up the Germans made a demand for twenty-five thousand people. Lodz was shocked and Rumkowski protested that it was impossible to organize so large an evacuation. He compromised by giving up social "surplusage."

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS Some five to six thousand dependent persons were sent off. Lodz soon learned to be less sensitive and Rumkowski less independent. About a year after the Ghetto was sealed off, deportation began in earnest. The Nazis asked for ten thousand men to work, so they said, in the Fatherland. Volunteering was tried and failed. Rumkowski then discovered that there were too many dishonest people about: thousands of persons were seized for theft! (It was on this occasion that he threw in the "Three F's," for good measure.) He boasted before a meeting of factory managers that he could have "bought off many of the ten thousand. But I did not want to do it. Not at all. Let them be an example to other thieves." Then the Germans seized fiftyseven mentally ill people; in that case, they said plainly they would do away with them as "unnecessary burdens." the Jews were encouraged to believe that the worst was over. Like all civilized people, they discounted atrocity stories. Lodz evidently was to be spared—otherwise why would the Germans pour Jews into Lodz? In the fall of 1941, about eighteen thousand Jews arrived from nearby towns: twelve smaller communities were thus liquidated. At the same time, 19,980 refugees, better dressed and including many eminent men, were brought from abroad, principally from Berlin, Vienna, and Prague. But reason quailed before Nazi method. Importation, it turned out, was merely a step toward re-deportation; repeated deportations were an inexpensive form of extermination. Dumped onto an already teeming Ghetto, the refugees lived, or rather died, under incredibly difficult circumstances. For example, of the 2,651 persons brought in from nearby Vlotzlavek, only 347 eventually survived. In the following spring, the foreign Jews were ordered re-deported, with the exception of the holders of the German Iron Cross and other small categories. They were allowed to take with them bundles of 12Vi kilograms, after having brought fifty kilograms. In a matter of six months the score for these foreign Jews stood: Originally arrived 19,980

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Died in Lodz Left in Lodz Remainder, deported again

6,247 3,206 10,527

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Half of the refugees were thus disposed of. UT that was not enough. The importation of German Jews had meantime been made the excuse for the deportation of natives, for, it was carefully explained—how the Nazis liked to give reasons!—the population of the Ghetto must remain fixed. Was it not already uncomfortably crowded? They therefore demanded the surrender of an equivalent number, in batches of one thousand a day. A conference was called in the Ghetto. Some speakers argued that only the old and very young be delivered: the others stood a better chance to maintain the Ghetto. Others said that the delicate ages were unfit to support the trials which deportation portended. It was decided to send whole families, so as to promote mutual assistance. Dying people, and sometimes even dead, were thrown into the trucks, to make up the figure. "Fooled the Germans!" Then it was noticed that the Germans weren't keeping count at all! Panic seized the Ghetto. The Nazis desisted, but they had sent out almost double the number of foreign refugees. Perhaps sixty thousand people—one-third of the Ghetto—had gone. But where? One of the later refugees brought a letter from the rabbi of Grabow, which is near Lodz:

B

Grabow, 19 January, 1942 Dearest: I have received your letter of November 8. I did not wish to answer your questions about the other towns, because there were various reports about them. But, to our misfortune,' we know evervthino Y Ο now. There was an eyewitness here today, who was there himself, in Hell. The place is the village of Khelmo, near Dombie. and all the Jews are buried there in the forest called Lubow. That is what has happened to the Jews of Kovl, Dombie, Klodeve, and IsbikKoyavskv. Thousands of Gypsies from Lodz were also brought there and suffered the same fate. Since last week, thousands of Jews from Lodz are arriving there. All these people are being killed by gas poisoning and also bv shootingThe heart turns to stone, the eyes well up. Don't think this is written by a madman. It is the bitter, outrageous truth. Tear your clothes, Son of Man, throw yourself on the ground, run into the streets, and cry

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or laugh from sheer madness. Perhaps He Whose Name is Hallowed will come to our help and save the remnant. Help, Creator! Write whether you know of this. I. Sillman "And He shall save a remnant"! Did Rumkowski believe it? He was after all in the best position to suspect, if not to know, the worst Yet his ambition, to the end, seemed tied to the possibility that his realm would be preserved. The miscalculation was astronomical. The fact is that the end of the Ghetto had been determined before its birth. The very secret order of Regierungspraesident Uebelhor of Kalis, dated December io, 1939 and circulated only among twelve carefully specified German commands, characterized its establishment as a "transitional measure." "I reserve the precise time, and the means," he declared, "by which the Ghetto, and thereby the city of Lodz, will be cleared of Jews. In any case, our final aim must be to bum out this pesthole." OT the wishes of a Rumkowski alone, but even those of the local German officials were quite irrelevant. It was to their material interest to continue the Ghetto as a source of further profit. But the fate of Lodz, as of the rest of Jewry, lay all the time in the lap of the government at Berlin. And that government, apart from its quite adequate malevolence, was swayed only by the fortunes of war. And the worse the war went for Hider, the worse it was for the Jews. From 1942 on, Mars no longer smiled on his favorite. Russia was half-occupied but not at all conquered. The United States was straining its vast energies in the production of war supplies. Germany was entering her fourth year of war, and her industrial stocks were running low. It was decided to tum the Ghetto into a work camp consisting only of adults and so use its manpower more fully. Overwork and semi-starvation would eventually dispose of this labor force automatically, and the momentary aim of exploitation would converge upon the initial, and final, aim of annihilation. The two ends would meet in one. The first hint of trouble came in April ς 942 when "declassed" persons were registered for work, on pain of losing their rations. Thousands of men and women

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were driven into the shops. Then came the order that all children from five to twelve, and the aged and ailing, must also register—it could hardly be for work Only a few showed up. Rumkowski threateningly ordered speed. He promised the firemen to spare their families if they would help to round up the youngsters. It was not enough. Rumkowski never avoided responsibility: he placed himself at the head of troops of children and led them to the registration office and thence to the railroad station. They were shipped off. Since Rumkowski truly loved the young, this was the most tragic day in his life, but he was no man to be broken by tragedy, even his own. But the numbers were reckoned as too slight for the Nazi maw. A more peremptory order came that all children must be given up at once. No reason was given. Fantastic rumors gained credence: they were to be put out to pasture and their blood saved up for wounded German soldiers; they would be raised as "kosher Aryans." Everything seemed possible except only the inevitable. The Jews were badly in need of a St. Tertullian to teach them how to believe the incredible. Anticipating trouble, Rumkowski called a meeting of the parents. He and his henchmen appealed to their selfishness: many times in Jewish history it has been necessary to sacrifice a part of the people in order to save the rest; such a time had now come; unless the children were given up, everyone else would perish; children could be replaced, but adults . . .; mothers, give up your children, and we will save the Ghetto. A wail went up from a thousand hearts. Israel wept No children were given up. At last, in the fourth week of August 1944 the impatient Germans ordered everybody indoors, cordoned off block after block, and, going from house to house, chased the people into the street. They seized the young, the old, the sick, the ailing, the weak, and pushed them or threw them— frequendy literally—into carts and trucks. And off! In orphanages children huddled together crying "Mir viln nisht shtarbn" and their chorus echoed far behind the speeding trucks. Even the trained snatchers quailed before this massacre of innocents, and Biebow had to order not only special

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS pay, but also extra liquor and cigarettes in order to maintain morale. HE raids of that week netted some fifteen thousand souls, among them several thousand children. Why would anyone bother to keep a precise count? T h e population of the Ghetto dropped to about seventy thousand, all of whom were arbeitsfähig, or nearly all, for a few children were saved by falsely raising their ages and, to make the deception plausible, putting them to especially hard work. We have photographs of children handling smiths' tools which seem heavier than themselves. Soon ninety-five per cent of the people were working—the ideal of full employment. Additional factories opened. Production hummed. The remnant worked for the Wehrmacht, which was in retreat—and so was the remnant. The mask of "autonomy" was taken off. The post office with its stamps and parcels, the now superfluous schools, the emptied hospitals and orphanages and convalescent homes, were closed one by one. At the same time, a revolution from above deprived Rumkovvski of two of the greatest sources of his power. Where the opposition had failed, a clique of creatures of the Germans succeeded. The German and the Jewish head of the Ghetto had never got along well—to the credit of both. Biebow did not trust Rumkowski and Rumkowski could hardly relish the humiliations visited upon him by Biebow. The Leiter seized the occasion of the liquidation of the "superfluous" Jews to weaken the authority of the Aelteste; he could not dismiss him since the appointment of Rumkowski had been made by superior authorities. The supervision of the factories and the distribution of food— and these, apart from police, were virtually all the "government" a labor ramp needed —were turned over, the one to Aaron Jacobovich, a relatively innocuous but narrowvisioned functionary, and the other to David Gertler. Before the war, Gerder had moved on the fringes of the underworld, and then he had snuggled into the congruent graces of the Gestapo. His end was highly characteristic of the regime which had exalted him. One day he was sauntering on a street in the Ghetto, coatless and hatless: an automobile drew up, he was bundled in and whisked off. His successor was quite fitting-

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ly the man who had engineered the conspiracy against Rumkowski, one David Marek. But the Aelteste retained the titular leadership. Neither the Jewish nor the German administration · could do without him. They soon had need of all his abilities. The revolution had not improved conditions in the Ghetto and the war was going from bad to worse for the Germans. The workers were driven harder and fed more lightly than ever. On much smaller bread rations than the Polish workers just outside, in the city, they produced two-thirds more. German officials reported that many Jews "literally collapsed at their work benches from sheer exhaustion." Rive Kwiatowsky, in stark verse, summed up the life of the Ghetto as thousands of feet dragging corpses to factories. Resdessness grew. It was apparendy becoming more difficult to manage the camp. Informal "literary" circles dared to assume concrete organization. Rumkowski was moved to protest that the Germans were not accorded the customary deference. H e commanded that the workers must rise from their benches upon the appearance of a uniform or, as the Russian Jew of old used to say, a knepl, and must not sit down again until all the uniforms had filed in and a factory hand, previously designated for this purpose, had given the order "Wiederarbeitenl" In the street, Jewish police and firemen must spring to attention upon passing a German military or even a civil official, Jewish civilians must bare their heads, women bow. The "sharpest penalties" were threatened for keeping hands in pockets or cigarette in mouth while saluting. T was evidendy getting dark.

I

By the

middle of 1944 the tide of war had turned decisively. The Germans were speeding out of Russia and the Anglo-Americans were fighting on the continent. In August came the order to liquidate the remainder of the Jews and to raze the Ghetto. Intent, as always, on performing outrage quiedy and inexpensively, the Germans again called for volunteers. Rumkowski arranged a mass meeting and Biebow himself addressed it. He told the Jews that their destination was Germany, and assured them, on the word of honor of a German official, that there

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they would find work and good treatment "Pack up your things," he concluded, "and present yourselves" at the railroad station. Few responded. It was Rumkowski's turn. In repeated proclamations he insisted that it was to the interest of the Jews themselves to co-operate freely. Pressure, and force, had nevertheless to be invoked. In factory after factor)', the workers were told to show up in a body, with their families. T h e recalcitrants—and there were many, for Rumkowski had to issue order after order to the same factorieswere hunted down in their homes and the homes of friends. Those who concealed themselves and anybody who helped them were to be executed. Finally section after section of the Ghetto was blocked off and cleared. day, in the months of August and September 1944, long trains of packed and sealed freight cars pulled out of the railway station of Lodz and headed for extermination camps, mostly for Auschwitz. After a few days of dragging and shunting they arrived, by design, in the dead of night. The doors were unsealed and the J e w s leaving many dead of suffocation, starvation, and disease behind them—descended. They were immediately divided into two long files. Feeling their arms and muscles and tapping their chests, Nazi troopers hustled the weak into the line that led, in a matter of days, to gas and fire. Of the healthy, in the second line, many were also destroyed in the camps, more or less at random, but others found their way to labor camps, there to VERY

E

die more slowly from overwork and inhuman treatment. T h e rare survivors belonged largely to this more fortunate file. Back in the Ghetto, several hundred men were left to gather up, for the Germans, the few remaining valuables and then to destroy the houses. Another group of a f e w hundred .people managed to conceal themselves underground. Several weeks later an informer led the Nazis to the hideout, but it was too late. T h e order to present themselves for another "registration" was disobeyed. T h e Russian armies were approaching and German discipline collapsed. W h e n the Russians marched in, twelve hundred-odd people greeted them, the remnant of nearly a quarter-million Jews of the great industrial city of Lodz, the Manchester of the East. And Rumkowski? One day, during the final liquidation, he was standing on the station platform overseeingO the loading of cars. A German official,* O

reading from a list of deportees, summoned Rumkowski's brother to enter the train. The Jewish dictator asked that he be allowed to stay. T h e official refused curdy but invited Rumkowski to go along, if he wished. Rumkowski joined his brother on the train. That is one version of his end. Another is that the Nazi command gave him a sealed letter addressed to the chief of the camp of destination and assured him that he would of course receive special treatment When the transport arrived at the death camp, Rumkowski and his family were the first to be thrust into the gas chamber.

THIS essay is based on an examination of materials in this country—principally in the archives of the Yiddish Scientific Institute ( " V i v o ) of New York—and in Europe: the Getto Zeitung, official proclamations, school registers, photographs, stamps, coins, etc.; on German documents, notably those edited by A. Eisenbach, Dokumenty i Material}·, Vol. III, Getto Lodzkie (Warsaw, 1946); on survivors' published accounts, such as Israel Tabaksblatt, Hurban Lodz: ZecJis Yur Nazi-Gehenim (Buenos Aires, 1946), and writings of some who did not survive, for example, S. Shayevitch, Lech Lecho (Lodz, 1946); on jnterviews with survivors now in the United States, France, and Italy, some of whom worked in Rumkowski's administration; on articles in Yivo Bieter ( N e w York), Fun Letzten Hurban (Munich), Shriftn far literatur, kunst un gezelshaftliche fragn CKassel), Dos Ν aye Lehn (Lodz), Unzer Shtime (Paris), Morning Freiheit, Jewish Morning Journal, and Forward (New York), and other publications; and on L. Felde, "Lodz—le Manchester Polonais" (Bulletin de la societe Neuchateloise de geographic, Vol. XLIII).—S.F.B.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

King of the Ghetto Mordecai Haim Rumkowski, the Elder of Lodz Ghetto*

SHMUEL HUPPERT

novel1 is the Elder of the Jews in an unnamed Polish city. It is clear to the reader that the figure, here called I. C. Trumpelman, is the product of extensive historical research and an attempt to depict Mordecai Haim Rumkowski. Leslie Epstein has taken on a serious challenge in treating one of the subjects considered most controversial by historians and students of the Holocaust: the activities of the Council of the Jews — the Judenrats. Moreover he wrestles with that complex and tragic issue in relation to the activities and character, nearly fictional in themselves, of the King of the Jews in the Lodz Ghetto.2 Leslie Epstein's book has provoked, as one might expect, various reactions both in the United States and in Israel. Robert Alter and THE HERO OF LESLIE EPSTEIN'S

* This article was written following a radio report presented by Shmuel Huppert in the series. "Words Trying to Touch," broadcast by the Israeli Radio on April 19, 1982 and April 28, 1982. 1 Leslie Epstein, King of the Jews, a Novel of the Holocaust, New York, 1979. 2 The chapter dealing with Rumkowski in Leonard Tushnet, The Pavement of Hell, New York, 1972, is called "King Chaim."

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Yoram Bronowski, for example, are convinced that he succeeded (insofar as that is possible) in describing the horrible dilemma that confronted the Elders of the Jews, who collaborated of necessity with the German authorities. Irving Abrahamson and Ehud Ben-Ezer have accused him of dehumanizing the victims.3 The purpose of this article is not to examine these contradictory reactions, although it seems to me that the critics are over-reacting in the light of their personal involvement. Epstein's imagination has created a lifelike, albeit, fictional world, with an historical basis. It is a world in which "the Others," or the "Skulls," rule, under the watchful eye of Horowitz, their deranged leader. The very fact that the author does not mention the name of Lodz (although he hints at 3

Following is a sampling of criticism: Robert Alter, "A Fable of Power," The New York Times Book Review, February 2, 1979. "No work of fiction has opened up so fully the unbearable moral dilemma in which the Judenrat members found themselves, governing with a pistol at their heads, administering the processes of death, corrupted of course by their awful power, yet trying to preserve life when there was no real way to preserve it." Peter Wapniewski, "Die Realität des Unglaublichen" (The Reality of the Unbelievable), Die Zeit, December 26. 1980. "A book full of hunger and need, torture and struggle, betrayal and deception, and evidence of courage and love is scanty." Yoram Bronowski, "Ali'yato u-nefilato shel Mashiah Sheker" (The Rise and Fall of a False Messiah), Ha-Aretz, December 11, 1981. "Leslie Epstein's book is excellent, and one reads it in horror with bated breath, it is so shocking. But therein lies his sin, which is possibly that of any art confronting that unbelievable reality." Irving Abrahamson, "The Holocaust Reduced to a Slapstick Tragedy," The Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1979. "Epstein uses the easy tricks of the novelist to entertain his audience. He plants false or misleading information to supply his plot with the thrills of surprise reversals. His characters, even Trumpelman, are caricatures." Ehud Ben-Ezer, "Ha-Judenrat ve-ha-Yumra" (The Judenrat and Pretentiousness), Ma'ariv, January 5, 1982. "He rummaged about in the dreadful sufferings of the Lodz Ghetto, rummaging and rummaging. And since everything human was alien to him, a lot of garbage was left in his book about the evil and stupidity of the Jews."

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

it when he calls it The Manchester of Poland) allows him to give a surrealistic dimension to the life of the Ghetto. His Trumpelman functions within his "Kingdom" like a puppeteer manipulating marionettes, but one must bear in mind that Trumpelman himself is but obeying orders from Wohltat (modelled after Hans Biebow, the chief German administrator of the Lodz Ghetto) and consequently is nothing but a puppet-king. The complex portrait of I. C. Trumpelman draws upon many sources describing Rumkowski. Epstein provides a clear formulation of the dilemmas facing his protagonist who transformed the Ghetto into a "City of Labor" and collaborated with the Germans in its gradual liquidation. In this fashion King of the Jews serves as the point of departure for the present article. Any attempt to understand and evaluate the motivations of a man like Rumkowski, and the results of his actions, requires penetration into an impulsive and complex personality functioning in inhuman conditions. It would seem that only people who were actual citizens of Rumkowski's "kingdom" can have subjective things to say about it which also have some significance. This article is thus based upon the testimony of several people who knew Mordecai Haim Rumkowski from the 1920s until the time when he served as the Elder of the Lodz Ghetto. To some of these he spoke and revealed his outlook. The people I interviewed are pursued by nightmares and still speak as if they were in the Baluty Square, where Rumkowski had his residence. This inquiry is also based on documents from the Lodz Ghetto (diaries, newspapers, posters, etc.) which are to be found in the archives of Yad Vashem as well as in the Ghetto Fighters' House, on published research concerning the Judenrats, and on a telephone interview with Leslie Epstein, who lives in Boston. Leslie Epstein says that he grew up in a secular Jewish home in Los Angeles, and that he became aware of the subject of the Holocaust through reading and research. When he came to write

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THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST SHMUEL HUPPERT

King of the Jews he spent a year in the Yivo Institute Library in New York and read works about the Judenrats. He summarized the material and arranged it in notebooks so that when the actual writing began all the chapters were laid out in front of him. His historical research assisted his imagination in the task of organizing the fictional material. History provided the plot. The principal element which he himself brought to the novel was the tone, his relationship to the events. He is convinced that in so doing he reflected a traditional Jewish attitude, one which is expressed in memoirs written during the Holocaust period. I asked Leslie Epstein whether Trumpelman was a unique hero representing Mordecai Haim Rumkowski or whether he was a composite character representing several of the Elders of the Jews. He answered that Trumpelman was eighty percent Rumkowski, five percent Jacob Gens of Vilna, a bit of Adam Czerniakow, of Moses Merin, and some other people. But he is essentially and primarily based on Rumkowski, with "perhaps one percent of myself." That is Epstein's point of view. The following passages present testimonies of the people who knew Rumkowski in the ghetto.

The King Sarah Zyskindf Haim Rumkowski was an absolute monarch. He could banish anyone he wished from the Ghetto. He could transfer people from one place to work in another. He could send people to prison. He was all-powerful. Nevertheless, when it came to the Germans, he could do nothing. They could raise their hands or their clubs against him. beat him, kill him. But among us, he was the king. We called him by all sorts of titles:"HisExcellency the President," "The Elder of the Jews." And we called him "King." There were stamps with the picture of Rumkowski and money with his portrait. There were two carriages in the Ghetto. One belonged to the veterinarian. Dr. Leider, who took care of the horses and the dogs of the Germans, and the other one belonged to Rumkowski. We knew that if we heard the sound of

4

Sarah Pelger-Zyskind describes her experiences in the Lodz Ghetto and in the camps in her book Ha-Atara she-Avda (The Lost Diadem). Tel-Aviv, 1978.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO horses' hooves in the Ghetto that it was either Rumkowski or Dr. Leider. Usually it was Rumkowski. His driver was a brawny man, and Rumkowski sat very straight in his carriage. We could make out his silvered hair from a distance, and his great stature. B.:sNothing was done in the Ghetto without him or against him. He was the ruler. A dictator. They called him a king. Why a king? Because he created a miniature state. He did what he wanted to. If he wanted to make someone a foreman, for example, he summoned, spoke, and the appointment took place. Isaac Rus:6 Everything was under Rumkowski's authority. He was the lord over life and death. Who would live and who would die and how. He could give someone an extra ration of food without accounting to anyone. Sarah Zyskind: He was a head taller than everyone else, a six-footer. He had abundant gray hair which looked marvellous with his sun-tanned face. His face was always sun-tanned, even in the winter. He wore high, black, shiny boots, riding breeches, and a short jacket. He had a vigorous gait. He looked like a leader. Isaac Rus: Rumkowski was a very active man. irritable. He had a hoarse voice. He never waited for permission to speak. He was one of the first to open his mouth, often interrupting others. He looked like an old man. He was of medium height, perhaps somewhat taller. He walked somewhat stooped. He looked in 1944 just as I had known him in 1929; nothing had changed. I would say that in 1929 he was powerhungry. He always tried to express his own opinion. Dr. Nathan Eck:1 During the twenties and thirties Rumkowski was a businessman with many contacts. He was a General Zionist member of the Community Council (Va'ad Ha-Kehilla) and he was expelled from the Zionist Organization because he did not vote with his fellow party-members. That was typical of him. I was a teacher in the Gymnasia, and Rumkowski came to see me from time to time. In those years no one imagined that he could be the Headman, that he had that kind of talent, or that anyone would agree to it. He was the kind of man who knows how to get in everywhere, to push his way in. He was not particularly sensitive. He was not a man of few words. He liked the sound of his own voice. He took pleasure in speaking.

B., who was associated with Rumkowski and worked at his side, requested that his name not be mentioned. Isaac Rus' father, Benjamin, was the head of the Jewish Community of Lodz before the Second World War. Dr. Nathan Eck, author of Shoat ha-Am ha- Yehudi be-Europa (The Holocaust of the Jewish People in Europe). Tel Aviv, 1975 and many other research papers about the Holocaust. He passed away a short time after the recording of our interview in February, 1982.

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SHMUEL HUPPERT A rumor was spread about him. that he was molesting the orphan girls in the orphanage at Helenowek that he administered. At the time people discounted the rumor as groundless. He had a propensity for wheeling and dealing in business. Not for crime.

Mordecai Haim Rumkowski was born in 1877 in the town of Ilino in Russia,8 and he came to Lodz at the beginning of the twentieth century. "He had little formal education," writes Yani Shulman in his notebook,9 "he studied in a Heäer and in a municipal elementary school, but he never finished his studies. The only language he spoke fluently was Yiddish mixed with the German of Lodz, a Yiddish full of broad aah's." Rumkowski made his way to Lodz via Lithuania in hopes of making a living on the periphery of the thriving textile industry there, which was mostly in Jewish hands. Since he did not succeed in commerce, he turned to the insurance business. He also failed at that and declared bankruptcy. During the 1920s and 1930s Rumkowski attempted to make a place for himself in the life of the Jewish community and in the Zionist movement. Those who knew him during those years describe him as a functionary of the second or third rank, frequently prompted by opportunistic considerations. Thus, for example, he refused to join the members of his party (the General Zionists) when they left the Va'ad Ha-Kehilla, and he voted with Agudath Israel. Some say that in return for his vote, Aguda members bought insurance policies from him. As a result of his vote, his own party-members ostracized him. At that time he was also working with both enthusiasm and success on behalf of the orphanages in Lodz. Known as a childless 8

9

This information is taken from the article by Dombrowska in the Encyclopedia Judaica. It is based on the chronicles of the Lodz Ghetto, in which details of Rumkowski's life appeared on the day of his marriage. The notebook of Yani Shulman, which was written in 1941, was found after the war in the ruins of the Lodz Ghetto. Parts of the notebook have been translated and published by Zvi Shner in Yedi'ot Beit Lohamei ha-Gela'ot 20, April, 1958, pp. 69-81.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

man, he succeeded in raising funds to establish and maintain orphanages in Helenowek and other places. Isaac Rus does not agree that Rumkowski occupied himself with the orphanages for humanitarian reasons: It was a good job for him. He was not accountable. He was an extremely corrupt person. In Helenowek they discovered that he was a degenerate. A great fornicator. He committed indecent acts with the twelve and thirteen-yearold girls. All this was written up in the newspapers in Lodz. They said that the girls had threatened that if he went in once more while they were bathing, they would throw him into a boiling cauldron. Things went that far.

Alongside of the rumors concerning the seduction of the orphan girls,10 it should be emphasized that before the war and especially while Rumkowski served as Elder of the Jews, he consistently worked on behalf of children. He made sure that educational institutions continued to function, and even when hunger was rampant in the Ghetto he saw to it that the children received a bowl of soup, a slice of bread, and a portion of chopped horsemeat. Rumkowski took care of young people and did what he could to save their lives. When the Germans entered Lodz on September 9, 1939, many of the heads of the Jewish community fled to Warsaw. Their positions as administrators of community matters were taken by men of the second rank. The new head of the Va'ad Ha-Kehilla was Leiser I. Plivatski, and his vice-president was Mordecai Haim Rumkowski. The month of September. 1939 was one of bewilderment and confusion. The regime was overturned, and new edicts and procedures were instituted. In the midst of that general confusion the Germans sought out Jewish leadership which would collaborate with them in administering the life of the Jews. There are several answers to the question of how Rumkowski was chosen as the Elder of the Lodz Ghetto: 10

Tushnet (see note 2) writes that a teacher who was fired by Rumkowski from a job in the orphanage in Helenowek spread the rumor that Rumkowski was seducing orphan girls. Tushnet points out that those accusations were never investigated, and it was never decided whether Rumkowski was guilty or innocent.

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THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST SHMUEL HUPPERT Solomon Uberbaum:11 He used to come to the Kehilla building every day. When the Germans came in and asked. "Which one is the Elder here?" he made a striking impression. An elderly Jew. Gray hair. So they said: "You will be the Elder." That's what they say. and it could be the truth.

Isaac Rus tells another version of the story. According to him, the heads of the Kehilla requested a meeting with the mayor of Lodz, Commissar Leister, in order to establish procedures that would permit the Jews to live an orderly life in the occupied city. Rumkowski was a member of the delegation, standing out because of his impressive appearance. Since Jews were forbidden to enter the city hall, they asked Leister for an entry permit. Leister took their documents and wrote on them in turn: "Permit the bearer of this document to come to me." When he came to Rumkowski he said: "You don't need this. You have a better paper!" Rumkowski blanched; his companions nearly fainted. When they returned to the Kehilla building I was sitting there in my father's office. Rabbi Treistman. Dr. Schlusser. and Advocate Reichman came in. They kept no secrets from me. and they told me what had happened. Some five or six days afterwards a letter from Leister announced that Mordecai Haim Rumkowski was now the Elder of the Lodz Ghetto. The day after the appointment was made known. Stefan Gelbart, the editor of the Lodz newspaper that had attacked Rumkowski for his behavior in the orphanages in Helenowek. came to see my father. I was present at that meeting. My father told him: "Stefan, you are the first who will have to flee." And he answered: "You don't have to tell me that. I will not spend the night in Lodz. I know what Rumkowski will do to me." Also Rabbi Treistman. in whom Rumkowski saw a rival (since he knew German well — S.H.) left Lodz within two days. Whoever did not flee, for example, the journalist Kuba Wahrhaftig, was disposed of at the first opportunity. That was the fate of those who had antagonized Rumkowski when he was accused of misconduct in Helenowek.

On October 13. 1939. the status of Mordecai Haim Rumkowski changed. The frustrated and reviled community functionary had reached the pinnacle. The appointment as head of the autonomous Jewish administration of Lodz-Litzmannstadt was signed by City Commissar Leister. "Solomon Uberbaum worked for the Judenrat and was associated with Rumkowski before the war as well.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO The Elder of the Jews in the City of Lodz. Rumkowski, had been commissioned to carry out all measures concerning the members of the Jewish race lorderedl by the German Civilian Administration of the City of Lodz. He is personally responsible to me. In order to perform his duties, he is authorized 1) to move about freely in the streets at any time of day or night: 2) to have access to the agencies of the German administration; 3) to select a group of associates (Council of Elders) and meet with them; 4) to make his decisions public through wall posters: 5) to inspect the Jewish labor assembly points. Every member of the Jewish race is required to obey unconditionally all instructions given by Elder Rumkowski. Any opposition to him will be punished by me.' 2

On the following day an additional order was issued placing all the Jewish institutions of Lodz under Rumkowski's authority. He was also empowered to raise taxes. In March and April, 1940, all the Jews of Lodz were ordered to move to the Ghetto, and Rumkowski was charged with organizing life there and with maintaining regular contact with the German authorities. From May, 1940 onwards Rumkowski was the ruler of his own territory, by the grace of the Germans, with their encouragement, and under their supervision. He became "King of the Ghetto."

The Work Permit Is Our Passport to Life No one disputes the fact that Rumkowski proved to be a talented administrator. He capably organized Jewish life in the spheres of labor, education, housing, supply and others. One must not forget the conditions under which he worked: the limited area of the Ghetto in which close to a quarter of a million Jews were crammed, the meager

12

Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: the Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe, New York, 1972. A detailed picture of life in the Lodz Ghetto, is found in Trunk's Lodzher geto, New York, 1962.

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supply of food, the need to deal with violent elements in the population, and primarily, of course, the edicts promulgated daily by the German authorities: confiscation of property, conscription of labor for work outside the Ghetto, demands on factories to produce goods for the German army, and actions against the Jews. An Advisory Council, whose members held responsibility for various matters, was supposed to work with Rumkowski. The members of the first Beirat were men of some civic stature. They were arrested about a month after their appointment, and most of them were executed,by the Germans. The second council numbered 21 members. It was established on February 2, 1940 and was made up of men close to Rumkowski. He asked them to advise him and carry out tasks related to questions of economy, education, social affairs, etc. For their part, they tried their best to guess the "Old Man's" real wishes and acted upon his orders with a view to accomplishing his plans. Thus with the passage of time, as Zvi Shner points out in his article, "There was no Council of Elders in Lodz, as stipulated by the original letter of appointment, but there was only the Elder of the Jews as sole ruler." 13 Sarah Zyskind: You could say that in the beginning life in the Ghetto carried on marvellously. There were workshops. Grocery stores. Police. Life moved like clockwork. I am almost certain that it was all due to Rumkowski. He was a good organizer. There was no crime in the Ghetto. The people were so disciplined that when a food wagon passed in a street full of people literally dying of hunger, and their greatest dream was to have something to eat. they did not dare to approach the wagon, to fall upon it. That was because of Rumkowski's fist.

An echo of Sarah Zyskind's words can be found in a poem written by one of Rumkowski's sycophant poets, L. Berman. The poem is entitled "The President's Strong Arm": Our President, Mr.

" The article "Ha-Judenrat be-Lodz" (The Judenrat in Lodz) was made available to me before publication. My thanks to Zvi Shner, the Director of the Ghetto Fighters' House, for his assistance in my research.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

Rumkowski / Is blessed by the Lord Almighty / Not only with wisdom and charm / But with a strong and powerful arm.14 Of course there were other facets to Rumkowski's rule by fist, which operated with his own police force acting alongside the Ghetto police.15 Clearly order reigned in the Lodz Ghetto, and work in the factories (the "resorts") was carried out energetically, to the satisfaction of the German overlords. Riba Chirurg:16 There was almost no area which he did not touch: factories, schools, police, prisons. There were children in Lodz who studied for two years toward their high school matriculation certificate. My sister passed her matriculation examinations in the Ghetto. After school, the boys and girls went to work in the factories. Rumkowski took care of them. He took care of the orphans in the institutions that he had run before the war. He gave them key positions. They helped others. I take that into account when I read the proclamations that he published in the Ghetto. He wrote: My Jews, My Ghetto, My Factories. My Everything. Signed: Mordecai Haim Rumkowski. I distribute Hanukkah Gelt. I g i v e . . . That was his style. There was a theater in the Lodz Ghetto. Concerts were given. Dancing. There was no area he did not organize. And you have to give him credit. Solomon Uberbaum: There were orphanages, old-age homes, everything like in a state, everything organized. Β.: There were synagogues. He told me to give Torah scrolls to all the synagogues. Hundreds of Jews prayed during the holidays. He himself would go to pray. Sarah Zyskind: There were two orphanages in the Ghetto, in Marysin. We all knew that the children there received special food, and that Rumkowski visited there. He also visited us in the Gymnasia, and he promised us: "Children, you won't go hungry. You will keep studying." He would not let us take food out of the school area, because he just wanted to protect us. But I still took it out, because my father was very sick, and I went to school to get food.

M

From the Geto-Tsaytung, 1, March 7, 1941. Information about the actions of the Jewish Police, which was not directly responsible to Rumkowski, can be found in the diary of Dr. Oscar Rosenfeld, which was written in the Ghetto, and which is preserved in the Yad Vashem Archives. "The Jewish policemen themselves (David Gartler and Mark Kliger) become more and more inflated. They rob the people and afterwards throw them a bone." 16 Riba Chirurg is engaged in research on the Lodz Ghetto.

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Yani Shulman, who was associated with Rumkowski for a while and afterwards fell out of his favor, wrote in 1941: "Many were the evils he committed. Very many. The greatest of them was that he put his appetite for personal honor above all else." At the same time, in comparing the conditions of the Lodz Ghetto with those in Warsaw, Yani Shulman writes: "Everyone spoke in praise of Lodz, where the president of the community arranges things, as he puts it, a bit socialistically, a bit communistically(!), and a bit simply in the bourgeois manner."17 Astonishing testimony to the strength of his regime can be found in the hundreds of proclamations that Rumkowski promulgated, in the chronicle of life in the Ghetto written by his henchmen — a chronicle which bears witness to his sense of history — and in the albums presented to him by residents of the Ghetto, in which his "blessed" actions were documented and glorified. In those albums, which I have seen in the archives of Yad Vashem, there are hundreds of photographs of factories, educational institutions, and welfare institutions founded by Rumkowski. The albums are dedicated to the "President" and include quotations from his speeches as well as flattering blow-ups and photo-montages presenting him in the company of cheering children or groups of workers. Rumkowski's chief medium of communication was the Ghetto newspaper, of which he was patron, editor-in-chief, printer, and last but not least, hero, whose deeds and opinions were described in it. In the first issue of the Geto-Tsaytung on March 7, 1941, Rumkowski wrote that he would not countenance rumors, gossip and pandemonium in the Ghetto. Beyond that declaration, which was made in compliance with the Germans' demands, one senses the desire to prevent the circulation of rumors concerning the Germans' actions and the intention to prevent any effort at organizing against them. In that article Rumkowski detailed his principle aims: work, "Seenöte 9.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

bread, concern for the sick, protecting the children, and preserving peace in the Ghetto. Those five goals, which Rumkowski reiterated upon various occasions (also during his visit to the Warsaw Ghetto), sought both to appease the Germans and to allow for a minimal existence for the residents of the Ghetto. They are the five principles that embody Rumkowski's philosophy, his belief that "the work permit is our passport to life.'" 8 Under Rumkowski's administration the Ghetto of Lodz became a large industrial unit in which clothing, shoes, and machines were produced for the German army. In this area Rumkowski collaborated with the head of the German administration, Biebow. B.: Biebow deceived his superiors. He told them that the Reichswehr needed administrators in Lodz. That the Jews were working for the Germans, manufacturing garments and sandals. And that was only so that he and the Ghettoverwaltung would not be sent to war, to the front. Solomon Uberbaum: The game was that in the Ghetto, people were working for the Wehrmacht: clothing, shoes, metalwork, woodwork. That way Biebow covered himself, so he wouldn't go to the front. Rumkowski fully understood that game, and, one step further, the German administrators were on the receiving end of diamonds and valuables.

The workers in the workshops — the "resorts" — worked diligently, and in return they received a ration of food and some hope that by virtue of the benefit derived from them by the German army, they would remain alive. In the first issue of the Geto-Tsaytung Rumkowski also appealed to the youth, encouraging them to work. One of the articles describes the visit of the Präses (President) to the central prison of the Ghetto. Some of the prisoners petitioned him for a pardon. He pardoned eleven internees, including two women, and donated some money to buy milk for a sick child. In another issue Rumkowski responded to everyone con18

Cited from Rumkowski's article in the first issue of the

Geto-Tsaytung.

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gratulating him on his birthday. "I promise you," he wrote, "that with all the means at my disposal 1 shall continue to work for the common good, God willing." Words spoken with the stamp of royalty. He appointed people and fired them. He set food rations and distributed ghetto-marks, special coupons for additional food rations, to the needy and to those who were associated with him. He arranged for wedding ceremonies and distributed prizes to outstanding students. He became involved in everything that was done within the Ghetto. "He called, he spoke, and the thing was done,," as one of his functionaries told me. Painters depicted him taking the hungry children of the Ghetto under his protection. Poets sang his praises. On Rosh Ha-Shana, 1942, the teachers and students of the Ghetto sent greetings and presented him with an album of poems in his honor. In those days he used to race through the streets in his carriage like a powerful dignitary. Like a ruler. Like a king. Sarah Zyskind: He had two secretaries, and whoever wanted to see him had to approach a secretary. There were long lines of people seeking favors. Once I went there and the secretary gave me a week's supply of ghetto-marks for my sick father. Then, when my mother died, and my father was still very ill, and the doctor said that he had lost the ability to walk only because of hunger, 1 decided to stop Rumkowski's carriage and ask him for extra food for my father. I had heard all kinds of stories about him. They said that it was forbidden to talk to him in Polish, because he wanted Yiddish to be spoken in the Ghetto. I didn't know Yiddish that well, so I learned a few sentences: "My Lord, the President. My father is very sick." I waited along the route he always took, but I did not have the courage or strength to address him.

B. came to the Ghetto from Radigas. He weighed forty kilos. B. had known Rumkowski before the war, so he went to him to ask for aid. I got to Rumkowski's offices. I stood for half an hour in the corridor. An hour. I saw how things were. Important citizens of Lodz were standing in the corridor, and they were frightened. He was sitting with a distinguished person; a religious man. A quarter of an hour. Half an hour. Then the guard at the door

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING O F THE GHETTO said, " G o in." I didn't know how to talk to him. " M r . Rumkowski"? "Your Honor the President"? So I said "Shalom" to him. Or "Good Morning" in Yiddish. He looked up and saw me. "I heard you came," he said. "Good. What do you want?" I told him I needed an apartment. So he sent me to the director of the housing department with his guard. The director was Advocate Naftali. I told him that Rumkowski said he should give me an apartment, one of the few that were held in reserve. He told me there were none. I went back to Rumkowski and told him that I hadn't received an apartment. He dropped everything and took me in his carriage to the director of the housing department. And I got an apartment. The next day there wasn't a Jew in the Lodz Ghetto who didn't say hello to me. Only because I had ridden with Rumkowski. Because he rode with me.

Rumkowski visited the Warsaw Ghetto in September, 1940 and in May, 1941. He met with Jews there who had fled from Lodz to Warsaw, and he tried to convince them to return to Lodz to live under his autonomous regime. Dr. Nathan Eck: I was in Warsaw then, working in Ringelblum's archive. I didn't know that Rumkowski was in Warsaw, but he sent me a messenger who told me that Rumkowski wanted to see me. I went to his hotel room and said, "Why did you ask for me?" He said, "1 want you to go to Lodz with me." I said, "Why should I go?" He said, "You'll hear in a minute. I discharged the head of my Gymnasia. He isn't fit for the job." I said, "Why? I know that man." He said, " H e doesn't know how to control the students and the teachers. There are too many political movements there. Zionists, Bundists, Communists . . . Today I can't tolerate that sort of thing. Today you have to study and to work." He offered me an apartment and good terms. But I refused to go with him.

To the Lodz Jews he met in Warsaw Rumkowski described his Ghetto as a "City of Work." According to Mordecai Schwarzbaum, who worked in the Ringelblum archive,19 on May

15,

1941

Rumkowski said: "I have organized a Beirat. They talk away, and I do what I want. The authorities trust me. They know that I won't fool them or lie." Rumkowski reiterated his five principles, boasting that he had broken strikes, telling about the industrial, educational,

" Q u o t e d in Zvi Shner, note 10 in the appendix to the journal of Yani Shulman. See note 9.

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and welfare facilities in the Lodz Ghetto. His words surprised the Warsawites, who were in grave distress. Rtba Chirurg: I got a postcard from Aaron Braverman, a member of the Zionist movement in the Warsaw Ghetto. He wrote: "What is this Rumkowski in the Lodz Ghetto? From what he says I don't understand what's happening there. Here people are dying in the streets. Corpses lie in the open, and we cannot manage to bury them. But over t h e r e . . . it seems as if everything is organized."

In fact there was a great difference between the conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto and those in the Lodz Ghetto. Even Rumkowski's rivals, who accuse him of corruption, of moral degradation, of singling out a relatively small group of his own associates for special treatment, do not deny the fact that he made sure that the young, the workers, and the needy received the minimum necessary for their subsistence. Solomon Uberbaum: Remember. Rumkowski didn't create the Ghetto, the Germans did. In February, 1940. they rounded up all the Jews. They drove them out of their homes at gunpoint, and they shut them in the Ghetto. He was the Elder of the Jews. He saw to it that everyone would have his four square meters to live in. A ration card to receive the meager food. He was the one who gave them out. It's true that some people got more than others. But that's the same everywhere. But he made sure that everyone got his proper share. He organized the Labor Office and the factories, and all sorts of things. And it all lasted from 1940 until 1944. And then he told me: "Wherever a German sets his foot in Europe, there are no Jews. Except for here. There are still 78,000 Jews here. Maybe we can save some of them." That was his approach. You can agree or disagree. Isaac Rus: He made sure he was king. The king of the Jews. That wedding of his when he married a woman thirty years his junior. His behavior. In a few places in the Ghetto he had girls waiting for him at night. Sometimes he went to one of them, sometimes to another. 20 I know a girl who told me what he paid for that. Jobs and luxuries for her and her family and acquaintances. From every one of those women, those whores, he got a note with ten or twenty

20

Rumkowski's ardor for young women is also described by Hava Rosenfarb in her trilogy Etz Haim (The Tree of Life), Hebrew translation published by MoreshetSifriyat Poalim, Tel-Aviv, 1978-1980.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO names on it of people who didn't know what war was. So it's hard for me to say that you behave that way to save people. He took care of his proteges.

Sarah Zyskind met Rumkowski in the workshop where she was employed shortly after her father's death. It was still during the time of the Skiva. My sweater had the ritual rent of mourning in it. I was sitting and sewing. I didn't want to raise my head. It was bad luck that he walked up to me and asked me in Yiddish why my sweater had a tear. I rebelled. I was angry at myself for not going up to him before my father died, and I answered him in Polish, saying that my father had passed away. I knew that if you spoke to him in Polish, he would slap your face. I was waiting to receive a slap, but it didn't come. Instead he answered me in excellent Polish and asked me who else was left to me. I told him that I didn't have anyone at all. He asked: " N o mother? No sister? No brother?" I said no. Then he offered to transfer me to a job in a place where there was adequate food, in a kitchen, a grocery store, or a bakery. I didn't want to have enough to eat after my father had died of hunger. 1 refused all his offers. I felt as if I were going to break into tears, and I ran out of the room. I actually pushed him aside. I heard that afterwards he didn't approach anyone else. He was very angry, and he strode out of the factory with his whole retinue.

What Did Rumkowski Know about the Fate of the Deportees? It is impossible to grasp what the elders of the Jews must have felt when they were called upon to send a large group of children, old people, and sick people to "work," knowing, or being able to guess, what the trains' destination was. It is now known that among those torn and tortured men who were forced to make inhuman decisions under dreadful pressures, modes of reaction differed. Each man responded according to his character and conscience. Some men, like Dr. E. Elkes, the Elder of the Jews in Kovno, risked their lives and acted heroically on behalf of their brethren. Engineer Adam Czerniakow, the Elder of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, attempted to avert the evil decree. When he realized that all his efforts were in vain he shut himself up in his room and wrote: "They are demanding

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ten thousand for tomorrow, then according to seven thousand . . Czerniakow was unwilling to organize the transports, to carry out the selection — and he committed suicide. Mordecai Haim Rumkowski received similar orders from Hans Biebow, and he agreed to carry them out. Rumkowski believed that if he collaborated with the Germans he would succeed in saving at least a part of the Jews of Lodz. In 1941 the Germans concentrated thousands of Jews from the surrounding towns and villages in the Lodz Ghetto. In October and November of that year two big transports of deportees arrived in the Ghetto: about five thousand Gypsies and about twenty thousand Jews from Western Europe. The new arrivals· needed, of course, food, shelter, and employment. Rumkowski, who sustained "his own" Jews from Lodz only with difficulty and overcrowding, saw the new "citizens" of the Ghetto as a nuisance. He also suspected that the influx of Jews — many of them from Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria — which included well-educated and affluent individuals, would weaken his rule and challenge the order he had established in the Ghetto by making direct contact with the Germans. As for the Gypsies, Rumkowski was ordered to house them in a separate camp. An epidemic of typhus killed off many of them, despite the efforts of several Jewish physicians. The Gypsies who did survive were sent to their death in Chelmno. This deportation of the Gypsies in December, 1941, was a first sign of the Germans' ultimate intention. But it seems that in the Lodz Ghetto, which was isolated from the other ghettos in Poland, the hint went unattended. On December 27, the Ghetto notables celebrated the "Old Man's" marriage with Dorah Weinberger, aged thirty. Great was the joy.

21

Quoted from Yisrael Gutman, "Adam Czerniakow — the Man and his Diary," The Catastrophe of European Jewry, Yisrael Gutman and Livia Rothkirchen eds., Jerusalem, 1976.

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Barely a few days passed, and the Germans ordered Rumkowski to prepare a list of twenty thousand Jews who were destined, so they said, to be sent to "settlements" elsewhere, outside of the Ghetto. Rumkowski attempted to circumvent the evil decree. He tried to prove to Hans Biebow that the deportation would undermine the productive capacity of the Ghetto factories. But the only thing he succeeded in doing was to reduce the number of deportees to ten thousand. Once the number was set, Rumkowski turned to civic bodies and asked them to help him make up the list of deportees. The rabbis and the party representatives refused to cooperate. They did in fact try to save their comrades, but they did not agree to bear the dreadful responsibility. Thus Rumkowski was left to do battle on his own. He appointed a committee to draw up the list of deportees and set the criteria by which the people would be chosen. 22 As the Elder of the Jews Rumkowski was to supply to the Germans contingents of workers to be employed outside the Ghetto. This time, however, he had to send ten thousand people, old men, women and children and he felt, so it seems, that he was delivering the deportees to their murderers. In his speech during the very days of deportation, on January 25, 1942, he called the transports a "catastrophe" and declared that he was not permitted to reveal what he knew. 23 The ten thousand Jews who were deported to "settlements" in January, 1942, were all actually killed in Chelmno. After the "First Deportation," additional ones ensued. By the end

22

Tushnet points out that that first transport was mostly composed of people who had come to the Ghetto from the provinces, welfare cases, and "criminals" (including those who were tried in the Ghetto for stealing some sticks of wood or a few potatoes), as well as people who opposed Rumkowski (see pp. 45-48). 23 See Tushnet, p. 45. Tushnet relies mainly on 1. Wolf-Jasni, Di geshikhte Jun yidn in Lodz, I, pp. 458-469. He also quotes letters addressed to the members of the Deportation Committee begging them to delete certain people's names from the list. The First Deportation is also described in Trunk's Lodzher geto, pp. 251-256.

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of May, 1942, about fifty-five thousand people had been deported from Lodz. Included in that number were the Gypsies and most of the Jews who had come to Lodz from Western Europe. If Rumkowski still had any doubts concerning the fate of "'his citizens," the great deportation of September, 1942, drove home, in cruel fashion, the Germans' intentions. That deportation, which was accompanied by a curfew, was called the Sperre by the Jews of Lodz. The Germans asked Rumkowski to include children under ten in that deportation (except for the children of officials of the Judenrat, children of policemen, and those of the firemen), as well as elderly people above the age of sixty-five and people who were unable to work. In the light of that specific request, it could no longer be claimed that the deportees were being sent to work outside the Ghetto. At the time of the Sperre, more than fifteen thousand Jews, most of them children, were deported from the Ghetto. Six hundred of them, who attempted to flee, were shot to death on the spot. It is possible to learn something of Rumkowski's state of mind during those critical days from the testimony of men who were close to him. He was shocked when it became clear to him that among the deportees would also be some of "his" orphans. He tried to explain away the terrible order, he gave speeches, quarrelled, and shouted in the streets. He "explained" to the mothers that they had to part with their children. Most of the proclamations dealing with the deportations are not signed by Rumkowski. Can we conclude that the Elder of the Jews refused to sign them? Or is it that Biebow preferred to make the announcements himself, over a signature indicating explicitly who was responsible for the deportations? Today many details of the Final Solution of the Nazis are common knowledge: the instructions issued to Himmler, Heydrich, and Hans Frank (the Governor-General of Poland) setting out the need

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

to exterminate all the Jews of Poland; Göring's instructions to Heydrich of July 31, 1941 in which he deputizes him to carry out "The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem;" the program of genocide drawn up by Heydrich and his assistants at the Wannsee Conference of January, 1942. Rumkowski was not privy to that knowledge, but he saw what was happening in the Ghetto. There were rumors. Some information. Evidence... all of which he attempted to squelch in "his" Ghetto. Solomon Uberbaum: In 1942 all the Zionist parties in the Ghetto united. There was a central committee which used to meet in my house. A Jew came. I forget his name, but I remember that he operated a lottery bureau at 14 Piotkowska Street, and he told how they had been brought to Chelmno. He was there with his wife and their children. He told how he had seen them put Jews in a truck. They closed the doors and took them somewhere. Afterwards they came back without any Jews. How did he get away from there? He looked like a peasant. He was dressed like a peasant. So he took a bucket, to fill it with water. He started walking, and that's how he got out of Chelmno. After a few days he got back to Lodz. That was in the winter (1942). 1 think that he also brought a letter from Rabbi Silman of Gumbin. Rabbi Silman addressed the Jews of Lodz, telling them that they were taking Jews from the villages and murdering them. I don't remember if he wrote that they were using gas or something else. But exterminating them. But no one wanted to believe it. We heard, we knew, we told each other about these horrors. We even heard it on the radio. We could pick up radio broadcasts in the Ghetto. Isaac Rus: I heard him at a meeting of the directors of the workshops and factories, after the deportation. Everyone in the Ghetto knew that the Jews had been sent to Chelmno and that none of them was left alive. Rumkowski said that it simply wasn't so. He knew, from an authoritative source, that those people were living and working in better conditions than those in the Ghetto. Only without their families. Rumkowski's men circulated that information. It was nothing but lies. By then, the man who had fled from Chelmno had arrived at Lodz and had told his story. It was a secret no longer. At the time of the deportations Rumkowski used to say that they were sending people to work. And he knew that it wasn't to work at all. I remember his speech in Lutmerska Street, before the deportation of the children and old people. He said: "There is no help for it. We have to take care of the healthy people and save what we can save. Mothers, there is no alternative. I took care of the children. I administered the orphanage in Helenowek. But the situation has changed. We have to give up the children, the sick people, and the old peo-

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328

SHMUEL HUPPERT pie." Then people started shouting out against him. They rose up. But he said: "The children belong to me. The old people belong to me. You belong to me. I know what I have to give. That is the situation. And I don't want to hear anyone's opinion." I heard those very words from his lips. He never revealed that he knew. On the contrary, he said, "We will yet meet. We are separating families, but we will yet reunite them." What good did that do? If the people had known, maybe they would have rebelled. Riba Chirurg: Power turned his head. He did a lot of things he shouldn't have done. For example, when there was the deportation in 1942, and he stood in the square and gave a speech. Even if he spoke in Biebow's name. And he told the mothers to give up their children in order to save the Ghetto. He took the responsibility upon himself. That's one of the things I can't forgive him.

Both Riba Chirurg and Isaac Rus are referring here to Rumkowski's ranting speech at the time of the deportation of the children, on September 4, 1942.24 Oscar Singer, a Czech Jew and director of the Lodz Ghetto archives, heard Rumkowski's emotional speech. On September 16, 1942 he wrote: "Everybody is convinced that the Jews who are deported are taken to their destruction. " 2i Singer conveys the most horrifying details about the way the deportation of the children was carried out. In the testimonies I have consulted there are various estimates, sometimes contradictory, of the amount of information known about the Germans' intentions. Historians of the Holocaust generally distinguish between the information available to the Jews during the Holocaust and genuine cognizance, which implies a belief in the information. Reference is to an essential difference between "knowing" on the basis of rumors or even of definite documentation, on the one hand, and, on the other, concrete first-hand evidence and personal experience of the events. :4

From Documents on the Holocaust. Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, edited by Yitzak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margaliot, Jerusalem, 1981, pp. 283-284. The entire speech appears in Trunk, Lodzher geto, pp. 311-313. 25 See "Notes by a Jewish Observer in the Lodz Ghetto Following the Deportation of the Children," in Documents on the Holocaust, pp. 284-286.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

It would seem that most of the victims of the Holocaust knew, perhaps, that the Germans were murdering Jews. But their most profound human feelings told them that that dreadful knowledge of theirs belonged to the realm of the impossible, the inhuman, to unprecedented acts of horror which just could not take place in a world inhabited by human creatures. Riba Chirurg: It's hard to say the words, "We knew." There were hypotheses, and we believed that was the case. At the end of 1942 when the Sperre took place, that was proof. Why were they taking sick people and children? What would they do with them? Kill them. Destroy them. But we did not know with certainty until the very end.

Allow me a personal remark here. In December, 1942,1 was being taken, together with my mother,26 my aunt, and my grandfather, in a sealed freight car from the Ghetto of Krosno to an unknown destination. It was on the first night of Hanukkah. Shortly after the Rabbi of Krosno recited the blessings over the candle and we all sang Al haNissim ve-al ha-Niflaot (For the miracles and marvels) a woman who was standing by the little window of the freight car cried out: "This isn't the way to Auschwitz!" Her announcement lit a spark of hope in our breasts. That shows that even then (I was a child of six at the time), we knew that they were exterminating Jews in Auschwitz. Shortly after we got to the Ghetto of Rzeszow they explained to my mother in the workshop that the sweaters she was unravelling (afterwards she would knit socks and gloves for the German army with the wool) had belonged to Jews who had been deported from the Rzeszow Ghetto to Auschwitz. My mother's experienced comrades had no doubts regarding the fate of the people who had owned those sweaters. Riba Chirurg: We repressed the knowledge. We didn't want to acknowledge what we actually knew. Even at the end. after we received notes that our 24

See Hilde Huppert's recollections, Fahrt zum Acheron, edited by Arnold Zweig, Union Verlag, Berlin, 1961, Hebrew version by Shmuel (Tomi) Huppert, Tel-Aviv, 1981, pp. 46-47,52-53.

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THE VICTIMS OF THE H O L O C A U S T SHMUEL HUPPERT friends sent from the freight cars, with 'Auschwitz' written on them. We knew, and yet we didn't believe, even on August 27, 1944, when I left the bunker. I had a five-year-old girl with me whom we had adopted. We were walking in the street, and we met the editor of the paper, Rozenstein. He asked me, "Why are you so sad?" I showed him Buba. We called the girl Buba. So he said to me, "What are you talking about? They won't kill her." One of the girls who was with us said, "When they look at Buba's beautiful eyes, they won't do anything bad to her." B: Until 1942 it never occurred to me that Rumkowski could believe that they were taking Jews and killing them. The Germans managed the matter in such a way that you couldn't come to any conclusions. If the Germans came to Rumkowski and demanded thirty men for work, they instructed them to take along a pair of shoes, two shirts, three pairs of socks, a kilo of sugar and two loaves of bread, each. Who could know they were being sent to their death?! In 1942 people came to Lodz from the provinces. Jewish youth came, fit for work. Old people and children didn't come. Then the children's and oldsters' belongings started reaching the Ghetto. From the provinces. Pillows, quilts, shirts, socks, shoes. Hundreds of thousands of items. Then we thought: Where are they? Where are they?! Then the people of Lodz thought that the Germans were doing away with the Jews. In a unique d o c u m e n t Friedrich Hilscher, a G e r m a n anti-Nazi w h o visited the L o d z G h e t t o twice, writes that he revealed to the people o f the G h e t t o ( a m o n g them R u m k o w s k i and the head o f the J e w i s h police, L e o n R o s e n b l a t ) that in C h e l m n o they were killing J e w s with p o i s o n gas. 2 7 T o his surprise he f o u n d that L e o n Rosenblat k n e w about the g a s s i n g s e v e n before he w a s told by him. If Hilscher is t o be relied upon, then the heads o f the G h e t t o knew about the gassing of J e w s as early as M a y , 1942 (the date o f Hilscher's s e c o n d visit t o Lodz). T h e fact that R u m k o w s k i knew h o w fateful the decisions were w h i c h he w a s forced to m a k e is also reflected in his speech o f M a r c h 13, 1943. 2 8 R u m k o w s k i addresses the public as " M y brothers and

27

See Shaul Esh, "Germani be-Geto Lodz" (A German in the Lodz Ghetto), lyunim be-Heker ha-Shoa, (Studies in the Holocaust and Contemporary Jewry), Jerusalem, 1973, pp. 304, 307. Esh seemed surprised at such early knowledge. 21 "Die Rede des Präses Μ. Ch. Rumkowski." This document is preserved in German translation in the Archives of the Ghetto Fighters' House.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

sisters." He explains that changes have taken place in the Germans' line of thinking. In the past the Jews were only called upon to work. Whereas now . . . he explains to them that he no longer has complete autonomy. He must obey, and obey rapidly. "You know that last week I was suddenly faced with the irrefutable fact that I was to carry out a certain "Liquidation" and that the results could have been chaotic. But I, as a responsible person, had to say to myself that the matters would be much worse if someone else took control. In that hour of decision I told myself that it would be easier for the community if I took care of the matter and assumed the burden, with all the social responsibility it entails. I must do my duty, even if it is painful." Later on in his speech Rumkowski describes changes that were made in the organization of the workshops: the transfer of young people who worked in offices to productive work, and the placement of elderly and weak people in office positions. The tone of his speech is authoritative. Rumkowski demands. He gives orders. At the same time he shows a desire to explain and justify his actions, to prove to the entire community that he is forced by circumstances to act as he does. That he has no alternative. He does not explicitly state what decisions he has before him. He speaks in hints, in well-turned phrases, but one must assume that his listeners knew exactly what he was hinting. Moreover, it is clear that the speech was made in response to complaints levelled against him at the time he was required to make up lists of people to be sent to work outside of the Ghetto. "Brothers and sisters," says Rumkowski. "You must understand me. If the authorities come, they will count the people as so many numbers. But if a father (Vater in the German version) comes, then matters look entirely different. You must keep that ever before your e y e s . . . If I had to give my life to make the conditions of yours easier, I would be willing to do so."

332

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST SHMUEL HUPPERT Solomon Uberbaum: I was the director of the Tobacco Department in 19431944. Two months before the liquidation of the Ghetto I had a conversation with Rumkowski. He came to me and invited me to come to see him on Sunday in the Baluter-Ring. That's where his offices were. There wouid be no secretary, no Germans. He said he wanted to talk to me. Just to talk. I answered him: "If you want to behave as the Elder of the Jews and me to be one of your clerks, there is no reason for me to talk with you. If we are two Jews who live in the Ghetto under the Germans — I'm ready tocome."I went. I'll tell you about the conversation we had. I asked him why he provided bridal canopies and wedding ceremonies. He answered: "The Germans must not know that the rabbis are providing bridal canopies and performing weddings." (By that time there were no longer any rabbis in the Ghetto. That question referred to things he had done in the past.) I asked him why he hit people. Then he answered me that when he goes to some workshops, and sees prominent Jews there, some of whom used to contribute money to all kinds of institutions before the war, he gives them ration coupons, ghetto-marks. Then everyone falls on him and asks for ghetto-marks. He said, "I didn't have to give to all of them. From where could I take the food? I received two hundred grams of sugar for each person. So I stole a little from everyone and gave it to those Jews. For everyone, I didn't have. Then I used to hit people. Because I'm irritable." So I told him that a king should be merciful with his subjects. He has soldiers to do the hitting. The police. "Why you?" I asked. He said, "I can't control myself." Afterwards we discussed the end. What would be. What will be. He got up and said, "Look, Czerniakow committed suicide. He deserves credit for that. But what happened afterwards? They liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto. I am sitting here today (July, August, 1944). There are 78,000 Jews in the Ghetto. And the Russians are advancing! They have already reached Lublin. They're approaching Warsaw. If I save 78,000 Jews. 60,000. 50,000. I'm not afraid of anything. What will they do to me? I'm an old Jew. Sick. I have no children. My first wife is dead. I also have some cyanide." He showed me tablets. I don't know whether he really had poison. "So what will be? I think I will save some of the Jews. All my work here is to save as many as possible. Afterwards... if I survive, let them try me. Let them! I don't care." Those were the words I heard from Rumkowski himself. Riba Chirurg: In 1941, on the eve of Yom Kippur, we held prayers at my house. Haim Rumkowski also came to pray. After everyone left, he asked me, as a member of the movement: "What do you think? Would they let me into Eretz Israel?!" I told him: "If it was up to me, 1 wouldn't let you in." That was a private conversation, and it was possible to speak freely. He answered me, "You don't know. I'm playing for time. Time is our only weapon. As long as I can drag this out, I'll drag it out. Let them judge me afterwards!"

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

The Dilemma, as Depicted in Epstein's Novel In King of the Jews there is a description of a meeting of the Judenrat, which is supposed to give the Germans a list of Jews to be transferred to work in the neighboring villages, or so the Germans claim. Those present must decide whether to obey instructions, or, if they refuse to prepare the list, to take the consequences. The members of the committee bargain with Wohltat, the head of the German administration, and they succeed in bribing him to reduce the number of deportees from a hundred to fifty. They view that as an achievement. They have saved fifty Jews. But now they face the inhuman task of choosing the fiftv people to be sent, it would appear, to their death. They agonize. They seek a way out. They suggest a lottery. One of those present suggests resistance: Judenrat members, here's my advice. Let's set a fire, a big one, and order everyone to break through the walls, to swim over the river. R u n ! . . . What about women? What happens to them during this fire? What about the children who don't know how to swim? The official policy of the Judenrat is Cooperation and Production. Urinstein is taking an illegal line! He talks just like a Lipsky agent. It's defeatism!2"

Now that the voice calling for an uprising has been silenced, the members of the Judenrat look to their spiritual and religious authorities. The rabbis of the Ghetto enter the meeting room, and they attempt to offer counsel, a halakhic decision: The rabbi of the Fur Trimmers, even with his wrenched neck, started to speak. My fellow scholars have overlooked the words of the mighty Rambam: If heathens say to the Israelites, Surrender one of your number to us, that we may put him to death, otherwise we will put all of you to death, they should all suffer death rather than surrender a single Israelite to them. Thus wrote Maimonides. There was a murmur in the crowd. There were not, remarked Paradyz, Galling guns then. 30 29 30

Epstein, King of the Jews, pp. 189-190. Ibid., p. 193.

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SHMUEL HUPPERT

The halakhic discussion presented by Epstein actually took place in the Sosnowiec Ghetto and not in the Lodz Ghetto. The Elder of the Jews there who asked for a rabbinic opinion was Moses Merin. In his speech in the Judenrat courtyard, Merin made this "confession": I am in a cage, confronted by a raging, hungry lion. I stuff flesh down his throat, human flesh, my brothers' and sisters' flesh... Why? Because I am trying to keep the lion in his cage, so that he doesn't get out and trample and devour every one of us at once... No one will dissuade me from this course!... Let history judge me.31

That apostrophe of Merin's is presented in King of the Jews as a remark made by I.C. Trumpelman, who represents Mordecai Haim Rumkowski. It would seem that Leslie Epstein has placed in the mouth of his Trumpelman the response that Rumkowski would have made to his judges after the war. Moses Merin gave that answer, and he was killed by the Germans after collaborating with them with the aim of saving as many people as possible. One of the most shocking documents of Rumkowski's actions is included among the more than four hundred wall proclamations that were pasted on the walls of the Ghetto between 1940 and 1944. Those posters, most of them signed by the Elder of the Jews, contain his orders to the people of the Ghetto, which were set forth by Biebow. In one of the last of those proclamations, number 428, dated August 17, 1944, a few days before the final liquidation of the Ghetto, he still proposes to the inmates of the Ghetto to join the transports: "It is for your own good and the good of your families, to appear of your own free will. You will spare yourselves much unpleasantness." 31

Quoted from Philip Friedman, "The Messianic Complex of a Nazi Collaborator in a Ghetto: Moses Merin in Sosnowiec," Roads to Extinction, edited by Ada June Friedman, New York and Philadelphia, 1980, p. 362.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

We cannot possibly comprehend what Rumkowski was thinking and feeling when he obeyed the orders of his German superior and gave the Jews of the Ghetto that macabre instruction or advice. Sarah Zyskind: Perhaps he didn't want there to be any opposition. He knew that if the Germans demanded such and such a number of people, there was no alternative. He had to supply them. Otherwise they would come themselves and take them by force. They would take whomever they pleased. I can't say for certain that he knew that the people were being sent to their death. I also think that the fact that he himself went to Auschwitz, and the way he was honored by the Germans — a special railway car, his furniture — and all the posters telling people to take the necessary things with them, spoons, forks, bedding, as much as twelve and a half kilos of luggage. It could be that he really thought that the people were going to other work p l a c e s . . . . But he knew it wasn't good to leave the Ghetto. That he most certainly knew. Eliezer Zyskind: If the Red Army had not been delayed at the gates of Warsaw, because of the Polish rebellion, 80,000 of the Jews of Lodz would have been saved. And that is only, perhaps not 'only,' because of Mordecai Haim Rumkowski.

In the summer of 1944 the Russian cannons were in fact heard in the Lodz Ghetto. At that time there were still 80,000 Jews left there, and they felt as if salvation were near. Testimony to the expectations and hopes of the Jews of Lodz during those days can be found in a diary kept by a still anonymous young man,32 on the empty pages and in the margins of Les vrais riches by Francois Coppee, a French poet, playwright, and author [1842-1908]. In an entry 'Litzmanstadt-Ghetto 29.7.1944' he wrote: "Can anyone picture to himself the feelings of the Jews of the Ghetto when they hear of the capture of Warsaw? Full of hope, we see the fulfillment of our hopes. If only the evil ones will do us no more harm." 52

Details concerning the diary and selections from it were published under the title: "The Unknown Diarist of Ghetto Lodz," Yad Vashem News, 2. 1970, pp. 8-11. The entries begin on May 4, 1944 and end on August 3, 1944. The diary was found by Avraham Benkel among the ruins of the Lodz Ghetto and presented to Yad Vashem in 1970. Dr. Shmuel Krakowski and Mrs. Hadassah Modlinger of the Yad Vashem Archives kindly allowed me to study this document.

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It is known that the Russians halted the advance of the Red Army and thus permitted the Germans to put down the Polish uprising in Warsaw. In that period of time the Germans carried out the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto. Thus, in fact, the plans, hopes, and the great illusion that Mordecai Η aim Rumkowski had nurtured for so long, were all destroyed. Dr. Nathan Eck: During the war I already heard a great deal of criticism of Rumkowski. I cannot be party to it. In my opinion an injustice has been done to him. He was a strange man, somewhat ridiculous, but he did what was possible, under those conditions, to save Jews. He was the one who found the way to save Jews by means of work. To give the Germans labor and to purchase the lives of Jews with it. When I met him in .Warsaw he showed me the muscles of his arm and said: "That is what I am giving to the Germans." Nothing could have succeeded with the Germans. But he made an attempt. The Lodz Ghetto was the last one to be destroyed by the Germans in Poland. I think that Rumkowski's intentions were essentially good. He dreamed that after the war it would be said that Rumkowski saved a certain number of Jews from the murderers. He wanted to be remembered. Once he asked me, "Nu, what do you think, will they put my name in the Encyclopedia?" 33 Isaac Rus: About eight hundred people were left in the Lodz Ghetto. Of them, five hundred were meant to clean it up. So how many people did he save? And what would have happened to those people, including myself, if we had rebelled against the Germans? What disaster could have happened? At least a page would have been written in history that people rebelled. He was against rebellion. Five or six days before they liquidated the Ghetto I went to Rumkowski with my father. He was still sitting in the Balut Square. We heard that at Rudnicka 34 a group of a few hundred people were being deported, but they were being sent directly to a factory. They would be working there. Then my father, who never spoke to Rumkowski, came to him and said: "Rumkowski, I'm already an old man, but I have two sons who can work. Take them at Rudnicka 34." You should have heard what Rumkowski answered to my father: "What's the matter? Let them go the way everyone goes!" My father wasn't too bashful to ask, "And what about Rudnicka 34?" He said: "Will you just leave me alone." He actually pushed him out of his office bodily. So you want to tell me that that's the approach of a man who wants to save people? He saved a certain group. That was his goal. He only thought that he too 33

Rumkowski's wish has been granted. His name appears in the Encyclopedia Judaica.

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO would be among the survivors. He didn't know that Biebow would tell him: "You can't stay here. You have to go with your Jews to Auschwitz. You'll be the Elder of the Jews there." He knew he wouldn't be the Elder of the Jews there. But he had nowhere to flee. So how can anyone say he had a sanctified goal, or anything like that. I carf't accept that. Riba Chirurg: I don't know how to judge him. 1 don't know if he was positive or negative.

The evaluations I have heard and read of Rumkowski's deeds are various, multifarious, sometimes contradictory. It would seem that only a picture encompassing inconsistencies and contradictions could convey something of the tragic dilemma that confronted the heads of the Judenrats during the Holocaust pericJ. When I asked the author, Leslie Epstein, how he evaluates Rumkowski's actions, he answered: "Rumkowski, or Trumpelman, asked to be judged before the tribunal of history after the war. If I were one of the judges, I would easily find him guilty, and I would demand that he be punished. But I am not a judge. I am a writer. Writers, who live with their characters for years, tend, with time, to be merciful. "Rumkowski did not sin so much by his actions »s by the pleasure he took at the time of acting. He enjoyed the power that ought to have aroused deep misgivings in any other man. That is the sin for which he should be accused."

In a Special Wagon to Auschwitz Isaac Rus: At the time I was in Marysin, the rural part of the Lodz Ghetto. I saw the procession. Rumkowski was still riding in his carriage. The rest of his people went on foot. I saw them approach the railroad station in Marysin. I heard the rest from people who worked in the station. They told me that Biebow turned to him and told him that he had to leave the Ghetto and join his Jews. That in the labor camp he would continue to be the Elder of the Jews. He received a letter of recommendation from Biebow. They told me that Biebow gave him a special car, that they put his armchair in it, and his suitcases, and his people. Then he took his leave of Biebow with a handshake. He got in. They closed the car. After Biebow left other Germans came who were in charge of the transport.

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THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST SHMUEL HUPPERT They opened the doors of the car and shoved in as many people as it would hold. After the war I spoke with people who had gone with him in that car, and they told how crowded it was. You couldn't make your way to the water bucket The train left the Lodz Ghetto for Auschwitz. When they got to Auschwitz they all went to the selection point. Rumkowski showed the Germans his letter, and they made him stand at the side. Afterwards a car came and they took him somewhere. They say that they threw him right into the ovens, and not into the gas chamber. Riba Chirurg: It was on August 27, 1944. On that day, before we entered the car, we saw that the Rumkowski family had come. It was the "Old Man," his wife, his adopted son, his sister-in-law, and his brother. He was totally wrapped up in himself. He went in a special car. I don't know with whom. When we got to Auschwitz, they were harried like the rest of us. But then a platform truck came, and they got up on it and were driven away. They say that he was driven straight to the crematorium.

Leslie Epstein was not satisfied with those facts. He developed the macabre situation by offering several versions of the end of Rumkowski-Trumpelman. In his concluding lines he grants his Trumpelman eternal life. The Elder of the Jews becomes almost a figure of fantasy. The people of the Ghetto find it difficult to accept the fact that their cruel and tortured king was murdered like his subjects. It would seem that that tragic end reflects the reality in which the "King of the Jews" functioned. He was a king by the grace of the German rulers. He acted as their agent out of hope or self-delusion. The truth is that power turned his head. He took pleasure in a life of luxury in the Ghetto while masses of people were dying of hunger. He took upon himself the responsibility of deciding who would live and who would die. That responsibility that properly belongs to "Him Who spoke and the world came into being." Rumkowski collaborated with murderers, either consciously, or perhaps in a hope that was actually an illusion. When he shook hands with Biebow and got into the railway car

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS RUMKOWSKI — KING OF THE GHETTO

that was to take him and his family to Auschwitz, did he know that he had been deceived? "In the last transport, on August 30, 1944, Rumkowski went to Auschwitz of his own free will. That was a demonstration of personal courage, but that act, which had no communal value, is insufficient to change our image of the Elder of the Jews."34 There are necessarily other estimations. This is what I heard from a man who was associated with Rumkowski at that time of impossible decisions: 5.: The Judenrats had two alternatives. The Elder of the Jews could be either Czerniakow or Rumkowski. Czerniakow killed himself because he could not make himself deliver up people to the Germans. Rumkowski said to himself that if he ran the Ghetto. "How many will remain? A hundred thousand? A hundred and fifty thousand? What will they do to me after the war? Will there be a trial? Will they kill me? Let them kill me. But aren't there a hundred thousand?"

That was Rumkowski's hope. Heydrich, Eichmann, and their accomplices had a different plan. B., who requested me not to reveal his name, said to me: "When I talk to you, I ask myself why 1 happened to stay alive? And it makes me very sad." He also said: "People don't want to hear the truth. They want Kapos or heroes."

54

Zvi Shner, see note 13.

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340

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

THE

GHETTO

IN

LITZMANNSTADT

BY B E N D E T

(LODZ)*

HERSHKOVITCH

Originally published in Yivo Bieter, rrx, no. 1 (1947)

T H E BEGINNING OF THE GHETTO

On February 3, 1940 all the Jews of Lodz were ordered by the police to vacate their homes within five days and to occupy houses in specially designated streets in the suburb of Balut (Baluty in Polish). Several thousand Jews, fearing confinement, escaped to other cities. On May 1, 1940 the ghetto was set up; it included 160,000 souls. Before the war Lodz had about 250,000 Jews, out of a total population of 650,000. The ghetto was fenced off by barbed wire and a guard of the German Schutz-Polizei was stationed outside the ghetto about every 150 meters. The following were the boundaries of the Lodz ghetto: from 28 Nowomiejska Street through the court up to the corner of Podrzeczna and Stodolniana Streets; across the street and up to 33 Podrzeczna Street, through the court to 75 Drewnowska Street and then to 110 Lutomierska Street; Gnieznienska Street, Wrzesnienska Street, to Piwna Street; Reiter Street through the court to 96 Zgierska Street; Dolna, Nowozgierska and StefaAska Streets to 63 Lagiewnicka Street; Tokarzewska and Rymarska Streets to 120 Franciszkadska Street; across the • This work was written in Nörrköping, Sweden, in February-April 1946. It was prepared from memory and hence liable to the imperfections that a work of memory entails. It should, therefore, be compared with other works since published regarding the problem of the ghetto in general and of Lodz in particular. Cf. especially the collection of documents published by the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, edited by the former Yivo aspirant, A. Eisenbach, Getto Lodxkte, czfic I. Opracowal mgr. A. Eisenbach (Warsaw, Lodz, and Cracow 1 9 4 6 ) , Dokumenty: materialv do dziejow okupacji niemieckiej w todzi, vol. iii. See also Tabaksblat, Israel, Khurbn Lodz (Buenos Aires 1 9 4 6 ) . The time is not yet ripe for final evaluation of the problem of moral and ethical behavior in the ghetto and there may be disagreement with some of the author's judgments on this score, but the editors feel that this study is none the less a valuable factual contribution to the story of this tragic epoch in our history. All footnotes to this article, except footnote 2, are by the Editors.

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BENDET HERSHKOVITCH

fields to 100 Marysinska Street, to 11 Marysinska Street, the Jewish cemetery, GJowackiego Street, 100 Brzezmska Street, Obl?garska Street, Zrodlowa Street, Smigowa Street, Polnocna Street, Walborska Street, Staromiejska, 27 Nowomiejska Street. Two streets which were of general importance to the city, Aleksandrowska and Zgierska Streets, cut through the ghetto. They were part of the road to Warsaw and Poznan (Posen.) The sidewalks of these two streets were included within the ghetto but the roadways were barred to Jews. In order to facilitate free movement, three overpasses and three gates were constructed. The over-passes were made of wood and served as cross-overs from one sidewalk to the other; they were about one story high and were located at 2 and 24 Zgierska Street and at 15 Aleksandrowska Street. The gates were located on Zgierska Street corner Drewnowska, on the corner of Dolna Street and on Aleksandrowska Street, corner Rybna. German Schutz-Polizei guarded the gates. Mordecai Hayim Rumkowski was appointed "elder of the Jews" in the ghetto of Litzmannstadt.1 The circumstances surrounding this appointment are still obscure. Rumkowski made an agreement with the Germans whereby they were to supply provisions for the ghetto and he was to turn over to them Jewish possessions and supply them with Jewish labor. When the first transports of provisions arrived in the ghetto some of the people thought this was like 1914 and hoped to get rich. They brought sums of money to the community treasury (to Rumkowski) and were permitted to set up co-operatives in the ghetto. Out of each transport of provisions they sold a part according to the fixed prices; the rest was sold "under the counter" above the list price. Not all the Jews could afford to pay the higher prices and many began to feel the pangs of starvation. Rumkowski, realizing the possible results of such a "co-operative" economy, took the sale of supplies out of private hands and set up public stores with a staff of salaried employees. All the distributing stores were part of a central office, located at 6 Dworska Street. It was known in the ghetto as "Aprovtzatsie" (food 1 The city of Lodz together with the entire province of Warthegau was incorporated into the Reich and was named Litzmannstadt, after General Litzmann who, during the First World W a r , broke through the Russian front near Lodz. On Rumkowski see Bloom, Solomon F., "Dictator of the Lodi Ghetto," in Commentary, vol. vii ( 1 9 4 9 ) 111-22, which was based, to a large extent on materials found in the Y1VO archives.

342

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST THE GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT (LODZ)

center) but its official name was Kolonialwaren-und-Brotabteilung des Ältesten der Juden in Litzmannstadt-Ghetto. This institution played an important role in the life of the ghetto for a long time. Those who were employed there enjoyed better living conditions than the others. Naturally the provisions supplied by the Germans were not sufficient. Some of the more daring in the ghetto, who had contacts with Poles from pre-war times, began to smuggle food into the ghetto. There were instances where guards were bribed and carloads of food brought into the ghetto. It should be pointed out that the priccs charged by the smugglers were not much higher than those of the public stores, for even the latter were many times more than diose fixed by the Germans. This smuggling was soon discovered by the Germans. Many Poles were arrested and a number were shot. In the ghetto there were rumors that Rumkowski himself was instrumental in informing die authorities because he was afraid that this smuggling of food would undermine his own power. It was at this time that the Jewish police was organized. It was to guard against smuggling and also to maintain order within the ghetto. Prior to the establishment of the Aprovizatsie a housing office was set up. It had started to function before the ghetto had been closed off. As soon as it was decided where the Jews were to live the migration began.* This required regulation because of the limited allotment of only 3.75 square meters of space per person. The first location of die housing office was in the city (outside of the ghetto), at 19 Poiudniowa Street; later it was transferred inside the ghetto, at 13 Lutomierska Street, and from 1941 to the end it was at 6 Rybna Street. The housing department was kept busy constantly since the plan of the ghetto kept on changing. From time to time certain streets would be removed from ghetto limits. Houses had to be vacated to make room for the workshops. In September 1941 a large section of the ghetto was sliced off in order to set up a concentration camp for Gypsies. The housing office, therefore, had the problem of crowding more people together within a limited area. Every one had to pay rent according to pre-war rentals, but this was no harship since money had hardly any value later on and, compared with die general high cost of living, the pre-war rental did not amount to very much. " I moved into the ghetto on February 4 , 1 9 4 0 and lived there until the end at 4 6 Zgierska Street.

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BENDET HERSHKOVITCH

The story of the Gypsy concentration camp is most interesting. In September 1941 the mayor* instructed the Jewish Elder of the ghetto to have all the Jews who occupied the part of the ghetto which was located at the end of Brzez^ka Street and the adjacent smaller streets to vacate their homes within eight days. They were allowed to take along all their property. About 3,000 Jews lived in that area at the time. After the Jews had been vacated the area was surrounded by a fence. It was said that about 5,000 Gypsies would be brought there. Ten days later the unfortunates began to arrive. They were not only Gypsies but people of various origins, including Jews. They were saboteurs gathered from different countries and they were brought with their families. The German Labor Service that was assigned to guard them tortured them with all kinds of gymnastic exercises; later they were shot down one by one and had their eyes gouged out or their tongues cut off. Another group of 3,000 arrived during the same period. An epidemic of typhus broke out among them and the ghetto provided doctors, nurses and medical supplies. The Germans paid for all this after bills were submitted. There were also Jewish victims of the epidemic; a doctor named Nikolburg and a nurse were infected and died. The German leader of the concentration camp also died a victim of the epidemic. As a result of all this the camp was quickly liquidated. Hundreds were shot daily. The bodies were removed in Jewish carts to the ghetto cemetery and buried there. In many cases the victims were buried while still showing signs of life. In March 1942 the remaining Gypsies were removed and the area was again incorporated into the ghetto. N o private dwellings were allowed there; they were all converted into workshops. In the beginning the Jews were allowed to remain on the streets only until five P.M. Later, when the workshops began to operate, the curfew (called by the German term "Sperrstunden") was suspended. T H E G H E T T O POLICE

Rumkowski dreamed of having an "army," just like any other ruler. As soon as the ghetto was set up he began to organize his own police. In the beginning the police was made up mainly of people of the underworld, but later, as life became more and more difficult, people of the so-called better circles also began to enlist. •Administratively the ghetto was under the supervision of the of the city; politically, under the Gestapo and S.S.

Bärgermeister

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T H E GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT (LODZ)

The whole getto system was a sort of reflection of Hitler Germany. We had several kinds of police. First, there was the regular police, divided into five precincts, and called Ordnungsdienst (O.D.). Then there was the Ueberfall-Komando, recruited from former strong-arm men (underworld people) and merciless in behavior. There was also a Sonder-Abteilung (Special Police), a sort of S.S. Altogether the police force numbered 1,200, of whom 600 were of the SonderAbteilung. The police wore special blue hats similar to those of the French army. On their arms they had yellow-white bands with a blue Star of David and a number in the center. All wore leather boots and they carried leather sticks with which they could inflict severe pain. Many of them wore three-quarter blue coats which made them look even more like the French military. There were, of course, different ranks and some were even more arrogant than regular army officers. They lived comfortably, felt secure and received extra food-rations. Each police precinct had a jail. In addition there was also a central prison which could accommodate up to 2,000 people. The prison was located on Czarnecka Street and the mere mention of the street was enough to send a shudder through any one. The head of the prison in the beginning was Herzberg,4 later Kol. The Germans, however, did not altogether trust the Jewish police. On Koscielna Street, in a little red building which belonged to a Catholic priest, was housed a section of the German Kripo (Criminal Police). German agents would force Jews to give up dieir jewelry and other valuables; they would torture and beat them, sometimes even to death. There were cases where false teeth were removed in order to uncover hidden diamonds. The agents would lead the Jews back into the city to their former homes and force them to unearth their buried possessions. Informers supplied the German police agents with the names of Jews who had possessions and sometimes the informers were even close friends or relatives of their victims. The Kripo rewarded the informers with extra food-rations. The valuables confiscated by the Kripo (i.e. those which they could not possibly steal for themselves) were turned over to the ghetto as Jewish property (Judengut). The little red house spread terror over the whole ghetto. 4

See Tabaksblat, Israel, op. cit., p. 29, 52.

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BENDET HERSHKOVITCH T H E BANK AND G H E T T O M O N E Y

Rumkowski undertook to wrest all their valuables from the Jews. H e issued an appeal to the population of the ghetto, urging them to sell to him, voluntarily, all their jewelry, furs and merchandise. The only ones who responded to this appeal were the ghetto officials, who were afraid to lose their jobs, and the poor, who were forced to exchange their last belongings for bread. The stubborn Jews were handled by the Special Police. They searched the homes of the Jews, beat them and imprisoned them and the Jews used to say that they knew their business even better than the Gestapo. T h e valuables which were confiscated served as the first reserves for ghetto currency. Those who voluntarily delivered their property were paid—but with what? The German Reichsmarks had to be turned in to the Germans. The government, therefore, allowed the Jews to issue their own currency. 3 The currency was printed outside the ghetto. There were notes of 1 , 2 , 5, 10, 20 and 50 mark denominations. German small change was used at first but later the Jews in the ghetto made their own pfennig pieces. Naturally, the ghetto money was of no value outside the ghetto. The valuables and the money were stored in an institution that was called a bank. It was located at first at 71 Marynarska Street, later at 6 Ciesielska Street. The bank administrators were Israelevitch, Pinye Gershovsky and Shifter. In the very first months of the ghetto, Rumkowski also began to create departments of health, relief, economics, public kitchens, etc. These carried on the functions of a sort of ghetto ministry. There were 23 such departments altogether. T H E DEPARTMENT OF THE G H E T T O

ADMINISTRATION

The Central Office. The ghetto administration was really a branch of the municipal administration. Its official title was Der Oberbürgermeister Gbettoverwaltung in Litzmannstadt. The actual head of the ghetto ( A m t s l e i t e r ) "From a letter from the Lodz ghetto administration of February 23, 1942: "Das Ghettogeld . . . stellt nichts weiteres dar als eine Quittung über die von den Juden dagegen eingetauschte Reichsmark oder Devisen . . . Sollte das Ghetto einmal aufgelöst werden, was allerdings nicht anzunehmen ist, dann kann kein Besitzer von Ghettogeld Rechtsansprüche gegen das Deutsche Reich stellen, da der Schein nichts weiteres ist als eine Quittung." See Blumental, N., Slowa nieit inne (Warsaw 1947) vol. i, p. 230-31.

346

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST T H E G H E T T O IN LITZMANNSTADT

(LODZ)

was Hans Biebow, of Bremen, the son of a large industrialist. Biebow has since been sentenced to death and hanged. Biebow and Rumkowski had their private quarrels between themselves but they both were interested in die same thing: to continue the ghetto as long as possible. In order to accomplish this Biebow constantly bribed German officials and commissions. All the officials in the ghetto administration of the occupying power were German civilians from the Reich. Biebows deputy was Ribbe; the official in charge of textiles was Straube (not a member of the Nazi party); of leather, Schaumburg (he was removed from his post a year before the liquidation of the ghetto bccause he flirted with one of his Jewish employees and was replaced by a Jew, Podolski); of iron and furs, Tscharnilow and Herbst (the latter a Nazi party member, of the first ten thousand, a hooligan and illiterate); of lumber, Keiler; household goods, Schwind (he was cruel and at the same time traded with the Jews, buying gold and diamonds from them). The central headquarters of the ghetto administration was located at 156 Ceglana Street (changed by the Germans to Moltkestrasse). Branches were located in the Balut market place and at 11 Marysmska Street ( R a d o g o s z c z ) T h e two branch offices were the neutral places where the Germans traded with the Jews. The Balut market place was near Zgierska Street, which ran through die ghetto but whose roadway belonged to the non-Jewish part of the city. At the entrance to the market from Zgierska Street and at the exit into the ghetto there were German guards. Entrance to the market place was permitted only to those Germans who worked there, to Jews who were employed as officials or laborers, or to those who had official business. Germans were not allowed to enter the ghetto without a spccial permit from the Gestapo. Jews who did not live or work near the border streets never saw any "Aryans." Whenever a Jewish mechanic was sent to the city or smaller groups of Jews were sent to work outside of the ghetto they were forced to take a bath and their clothes were disinfected in a special establishment located in the Balut market place. This market place was the center of the ghetto. A number of barracks were built there to house the bureaus and stores. Jews were employed in the German offices to assist die officials. Here, too, were the offices of Rumkowski's central secretariat and central labor departments. The chief secretary in Rumkowski's office was Dora Fuchs, of * The Germans changed this name to Radcgast.

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BENDET HERSHKOVITCH

Hannover, a very gifted woman who played the role of a diplomat and carried out her duties ably and honestly. The Balut market place later proved to be too small for incoming and outgoing merchandise and in 1941 a railroad station was built in Marysin and a trolley line extended to it through Marysmska Street. The institutions and workshops were labeled according to the commodity or activity. Each department had a supervisor (Leiter); they were known in the ghetto under the name kerovnikes. W e shall now describe the activities of the departments in the order in which they were established.

Provisioning The supervisor was Szczesliwy, a former merchant and friend of Rumkowski. Due to his poor management a great many products often spoiled and this of course affected our stomachs. The provisions were delivered to the ghetto at the two neutral places. In the beginning the goods were re-loaded on Jewish carts in the Balut market place. Later this was simplified: when the truck arrived from the city the Polish driver turned it over to a Jewish driver and the latter drove it into the ghetto, unloaded it and returned the truck to the "Aryan." The provisioning department had various sub-divisions. Vegetables were supervised by Mosieznik. Potatoes and vegetables were distributed at special places in the ghetto. Milk was supervised by Gertler, a cousin of David Gertler.7 Very little milk came into the ghetto, not even enough for the babies. There was no butter at all but there was margarine and sometimes pot-cheese and cheese rennet. The dairy products were distributed at milk stations, known as Milch-Laden. Bread was supervised by Mordecai Leyzerovich and Gutman. During the first months of the ghetto, baked bread was delivered; later the bread was baked inside the ghetto and special bakeries were established. Meat was supervised by Rosenson. Most of the meat was horse meat; there was also a small amount of hog and lamb meat, but only the specially privileged got these. Sausage was prepared inside the ghetto. Groceries was another sub-division ( I do not remember the name of the supervisor). There were also special stores for the distribution of flour, groats, sugar, etc. The food was distributed by ration-cards and called "rations" or "allotments." * 7

Cf. Tabaksblat, op. cit., p. 164-68.

•Ibid.,

p. 5 6 - 6 8 .

348

THE VICTIMS OF THE H O L O C A U S T

T H E GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT ( L O D Z )

Health This department was managed on a very high level. Its supervisors were Levitin (for a short time, something was not in order), Josef Rumkowski (the President's brother, he was called "director") and at the end, Tsodek Czarnobroda. In the beginning, three hospitals were set up: at 75 Drewnowska Street, for contagious diseases; on Wesola Street, for tubercular diseases; and at 36 Lagiewnicka Street, for internal diseases. In 1942, after all the sick had been deported for > 1 ι ".!> n y o o u V y

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A BATH-HOUSE CERTIFICATE IN THE LODZ GHETTO The text ii Yiddish on one side and German on the back.—From the Archives of the Lodz Ghetto in the YIVO,

349

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

BENDET HERSHKOVITCH

extermination, the hospitals were liquidated and workshops set up in their stead. T w o other hospitals were then established—at 7 Mickiewicza Street, for internal diseases and at 72-74 Dworska Street for tuberculars. Major operations were performed at these hospitals. There were also several ambulatory stations. There were two firstaid stations, one dental clinic, seven drug-stores, one depot for medical supplies (my wife was employed there) and a laboratory, named

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APPEAL T O THE CHILDREN IN THE L O D Z GHETTO The appeal is dated May 4, 1941.—From the Archives of the Lodz Ghetto in the Y i v o .

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

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T H E GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT (LODZ)

"A Drop of Milk," where milk was prepared for babies. About one hundred physicians and several assistants were on active service. The hospitals were always overcrowded. A tubercular patient who entered the hospital never came out. There were cases when the patient died after a week's stay in the hospital. Medical supplies were scarce and there was great demand for injections of calcium, strychnin and glucose. The sick and feeble gave their last bit of bread in order to be able to buy at least enough for one injection or for a little bottle of Vigantol which was smuggled into the ghetto. Attempts were made to develop glucose cultures in the ghetto but they were of little value. Alcohol distilling also was carried on illegally in the ghetto (Biebow knew about it). It was supposedly intended for medical purposes but most of it was appropriated by the Jewish administrators as liquor. The ghetto had a fixed allotment for medical supplies but Biebow always selected the less important articles, as for example remedies for favus or large quantities of over-dated and useless vaccines. About 75 percent of the ghetto population were tubercular. This was the result of inadequate food and lack of fats. I recall an article published in the Stürmer in 1940, in which it was predicted that the Jews in the Lodz ghetto would die of tuberculosis as a result of the nourishment they received there." Social Welfare. Immediately after the ghetto was created and before the establishment of workshops many of the people had no money and could not buy the rations. The first thing that was done was to establish a relief oflice with Zazojcr as supervisor. It gave 9 marks per month to every poor person (when the deportations began, these poor were the first to go). Later, when employment opportunities were developed, this institution curtailed its activities and limited itself to the relief of unemployables and orphans. In the latter group Rumkowski also included all those adults who had worked for him in his pre-war institutions. The best jobs were given to these persons. The supervisor of this office was Miss Volk, another of Rumkowski's favorites (she died in a concentration camp). There was also a home for the aged and one for children. In 1942 all the children and the aged were deported to Cheimno near Kolo. 0

For the health division see Tabaksblat, op. cit., p. 72-76.

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BENDET HERSHKOVITCH

Post Office and Telephone. The Post Office, located at 6 Koscielna Street, functioned up to June 1942. All the outgoing mail from the ghetto was censored by Rumkowski's officials. Food parcels sent by relatives from abroad and from other Polish cities also came into the ghetto. N o one was allowed to write openly that there was not enough to eat; this had to be indicated in a disguised way. As long as conditions in the other cities were more favorable the Jews in the General Gouvernement of Poland, learning of the deplorable conditions in the Lodz ghetto, sent us large quantities of food. The German Post Office did not interfere. Bread and potatoes arrived in large quantities and often the packages also contained some of the much-needed drugs and fats. Here again, as in the case of the smugglers, Rumkowski disliked the fact that Jews in the ghetto were doing something on their own initiative instead of depending on his rations. One day he confiscated everything. Each one now wrote to his relatives outside to discontinue the sending of packages. A delegation of two Jewish elders, Dr. Lemberg of ZdunskaWola 1 0 and Merin from Sosnowiec, came to intercede that the order be rescinded but the President stubbornly declined to comply with their request. Financial aid also was received from America but no one derived any benefit from it. Rumkowski paid it out in the useless ghetto currency. During the last year of the ghetto packages began to arrive from Prague for relatives who had been deported to the Lodz ghetto. The packages came through the Gestapo and were turned over to the Jewish Special Police. In most cases the addressees were either dead or deported and only the Special Police benefited from them. Each department had a telephone. The central office was located at 4 Koscielny Place. Household Maintenance. This department was located at 6 Rybna Street and its supervisor was Saibert. The functions of this department consisted in supervising the house-watchmen, the latrine squads and the garden plots. The head of the house-watchmen was Fishman, a member of die General Jewish Workers Union (Bund). He carried out his duties conscientiously and "On Dr. Lemberg see Tabaksblat, op. cit., p. 130-49.

352

THE VICTIMS O F THE H O L O C A U S T THE GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT (LODZ)

faithfully. He was called "the father of the house-watchmen," and died during the first years of the ghetto. The greatest heroes of the ghetto were the members of the latrine squads. They cleaned the toilets and pulled the huge barrel-wagons by hand to the end of Franciszkariska Street. It was heart-breaking to watch father, mother and children pulling the heavy wagon and inhaling the terrible stench. The work was done voluntarily by those who wanted to get an additional daily portion of soup and a bit of better food. The garden plots were bits of vacant land cultivated by ghetto inhabitants. Jews began to cultivate the soil to eke out a few beets and thus help to quiet their hunger. They tore the stones out of the ground in the courts and, after a hard day's work on labor duty, they would work their bit of soil. There were also larger vacant lots in the ghetto but these were utilized by the more privileged. In the last year of the ghetto Rumkowski decided to distribute these lots (die German word is Parzelle, the Jews most of the time called it "dzialka") equally among the population. Fifteen square meters were alloted per person; actually, however, they received not more than 6 to 7 square meters and many, nothing at all. On the other hand the "kerovnikes" and all other officials close to the administration received 500 and even 1,000 square meters of ground. Finance. This department was located at 4 Koscielna Street and was supervised by Pomerants. Its activities were limited to collecting the rents. The houses in the ghetto were charged to the ghetto-President. The German owners, who had vacated their houses in the ghetto, were compensated with Jewish houses outside the ghetto. The ghetto treasury was a branch of this department and was supervised by Ser. All the internal revenues of the ghetto, in ghetto currency, came into this office. Burial. The burial department was located at 7 Zgierska Street, corner 4 Koscielny Place. The supervisor was Bialer. This office was very active. There were times when the corpses lay unburied for a week because the grave-diggers could not catch up with their work. This was during the winter of 1941-42, when mortality in the ghetto

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

353

BENDET HERSHROVITCH reached a high of 150 persons per day. (Prior to the war, when Lodz counted 250,000 Jews, the average daily mortality was only 10 persons ). People died of starvation, cold and exhaustion from hard labor. In most cases the dead were buried without the attendance of family or friends for this meant the loss of a day's work and the daily soup ration which went with it. For the same reasons, too, individuals refused to admit being sick. Tiiey would often come to work with a temperature of over 102. Those who were confined to bed and could not get to work would die within a few days. The doctors remarked that they could not understand how the people managed to keep alive. Living corpses moved through the streets. Such persons were called klepsidres (from the Polish klepsydra, which means a death announcement) , n Not only Jews were buried in the Jewish cemetery. Almost all the inmates of the Gypsy concentration camp were also buried there. Besides, the Gestapo would bring Germans from the city and shoot them there. During the last year of the ghetto such executions took place every day. Those were said to be political criminals; among them were some in uniform. They were buried in mass graves in the Jewish cemetery. At the very beginning the Germans ordered all the trees in the cemetery to be cut down. Schools. The school department was located at 27 Franciszkanska Street and in charge of Eliyohu Tabaksblat. At the very beginning of the ghetto the Jews organized several elementary schools and one gymnasium which issued diplomas. There were also kibt/tsivi and hakhaharot which were located in Marysin. In 1942 they were all liquidated. The buildings were needed for the workshops and the children also were forced to go to work. People sent their 8-year-old children to work in order to earn an additional soup ration and also in order for them to escape deportation as unproductive elements.18 Transportation. This office was located at 9 Dworska Street and was supervised by Kleinman. For the transportation of goods the ghetto had its own horses and wagons and it also hired others in the city. The Polish 11

Cf. Briks, Y., in Zukunft (July-August, 1 9 4 7 ) 403. " O n the school division see also Tabaksblat, op. cit., p. 68-72.

354

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

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356

THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST T H E GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT ( L O D Z )

drivers who delivered the wagons in the morning would remain at the Balut market place until evening and then return with their wagons to the city. Inside the ghetto a few streets with trolley tracks remained, such as Brzezmska, Lagiewnicka and Franciszkanska Street to Marysin up to the railway station. The commodities were transported in small freight-cars. Workers who lived in the center of the ghetto and worked in Marysin received free trolley service. Some officials of the various institutions had droshkies at their disposal. The President traveled in a coach. During the last year the ghetto bought several tractors. Construction.

This office was located at 4 Dworska Street and the supervisor was Leyser Nayman, a former manufacturer and a close friend of Rumkowski. There was nothing with which to heat the houses during the winter. The limited quantity of coal, wood and briquets which was distributed was barely enough for the cooking of meals. Mothers would keep their small children in bed during the winter. People used their furniture and wooden fences for fire-wood. It often happened that in the morning one would get up and discover that his neighbors had taken the privy apart during the night in order to use it as fire-wood or to trade it for a piece of bread. There were a few gas-kitchens, where for a few pennies one could cook his meal. These were always overcrowded and it was also very inconvenient to have to carry one's pots to a different street. Fuel.

This office was located at 15 Ceglana Street and the supervisor was the engineer Gutman. It also had a sub-division for "scrap" which was located at 11 Lutomierska Street. The supervisor here was the engineer Shper. The functions of this office consisted of carrying out repairs and the maintenance of the workshops. No new houses were built. On the contrary, many houses were razed. After the mass liquidation of Jews in 1942 the area from 83 Brzezmska Street to 15 Franciszkanska Street was excluded from the ghetto territory. There were large residential units there but they were all razed upon the order of the Germans. The work was carried out by Jews. All the materials of those houses, according to the German order, were to belong to the ghetto. The wood was used for fuel and part of it was turned over to the building department. The bricks were sent to the city and the ghetto

EAST EUROPEAN GHETTOS

357

BENDET HERSHKOVITCH

was paid for them at the rate of 15 marks per thousand for unpolished ones, and 25 marks per thousand for polished. During the demolition work buried fortunes were sometimes discovered. Statistics.

The office of the statistical department was located at 4 Koscielny Place. The first supervisor was Neftalin; he was succeeded by Erlich. This office registered births, marriages and deaths, and also took care of the registration of the residents. Despite the desperate situation, children were born in the ghetto. Many mothers perished because they refused to part with their children. In the early period there were cases where parents benefited from the children, since the latter received the same rations as adults and a child could not eat all the bread or potatoes alloted to it. It used to be said that some parents "produce" children because of egotistic reasons. Most of the newly-born children did not live long. They were born weak to begin with and the mother's milk was poison for them. There were very many weddings in the ghetto. The main reason for this was the large number of men and women left lonely by the deportations. Moreover, each couple received as a wedding gift from Rumkowski four kilograms of bread, a small outfit and living quarters. The wedding ceremony was performed by Rumkowski himself. The German authorities did not recognize these weddings; the woman did not adopt her husband's name but retained her maiden name. For many these marriages were equivalent to suicide, as most of them had become infected by tuberculosis and they were weak and entirely unfit for sexual life. Ration-Cards.

This office was located at 79 Marynarska Street and in charge of Schwarz. In the summer of 1940 the various products were distributed by the house-committees. On January 1, 1941 a census was taken and ration-cards were distributed to each person. Every district distribution center had a registry where each individual was entered on a separate page. Each ration was recorded in the book and one point clipped from the ration-card. If Rumkowski, for some reason, wished to deprive an individual of his rations the ration-card office notified the distributing centers. The cemetery officials would not accept a death notice unless all the ration-cards of the deceased had been turned in. The

358

T H E VICTIMS O F THE H O L O C A U S T

THE GHETTO IN LITZMANNSTADT (LODZ)

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