Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had run a Jewish orphanage before the war, was appointed 'Elder of the Jews' by the Nazis in 1939. He turned the ghetto into a hive of industry in the vain hope of securing the survival of most of its inhabitants by making them economically too valuable to the German war effort to be murdered. To achieve this aim, he agreed to the introduction and enforcement of a ruthless system of labour exploitation, a permanent state of hunger for most of his workers, and the creation of an utterly degraded class of Jewish collaborators and slave drivers. Having been responsible for the deportation of thousands of ghetto inmates to their deaths- which earned him the label 'collaborator'- Rumkowski, himself, was deported with his family to Auschwitz on 30 August 1944, where they were all murdered.
Microfilm
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Use R:\Document collections\MF54\Working Images\27\Wiener Docs frames 275-315
c42 frames
Readers need to reserve a reading room terminal to access a digital version of this archive. This microfilm collection of facsimile documentation from the Lodz ghetto comprises at least two separate deposits and sheds light on the controversial role of the chairman of the Judenrat, Mordechai Rumkowski. One of the documents in this collection is a fragment of a calendar covering part of the year 1942<a href"#_ftn" name"_ftnref">. The front bears an image of Rumkowski with the ghetto in the background and the month of January opens with the slogans 'work', 'bread', 'care of the sick', protection for the children', 'peace in the ghetto.' There are also a number of sayings at the bottom of most pages. The collection also includes a number of printed public announcements in Yiddish and German dealing with such subjects as food rationing, forged ghetto money, saluting Germans, sanitary conditions, the use of electric cookers, and arrangement for the 're-settlement' of ghetto inmates. There is also a plan entitled 'plan of Litzmannstadt showing Jewish populated areas', nd, c1940. Documentation from Lodz Ghetto including: Printed ghetto announcements, German and Yiddish, 1941-1944, frames 10-20 Calendar, frames 21-23 Plan of the ghetto, c1940, frames27-28 Various school reports from former pupils of the Humanistischen Lyzeum, Lodz, frames 30-34
Lodz ghetto: various documents