Lodz Ghetto - Establishment
Events Leading to the establishment of the Lodz Ghetto
In order to better understand Bryks’s frame of mind while writing in the Lodz ghetto, knowledge of the background of the ghetto, the events that took place within its fences, is important. Herewith is a short chronology of the Lodz Ghetto.
In 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe.
The largest Jewish population in pre-war Eastern Europe in the 1930’s was in Poland, totaling about 3,300,000 Jews, which was ten percent of its general population.
The Jewish communities had flourished in Poland since the Middle Ages. Lodz, located in central Poland was a center of commerce and industry; there were about 230,000 Jews living there in the 1930’s (one third of the Lodz residents), second only to Warsaw. On September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany, invaded Poland.
On November 16, 1939, Jews were forced to wear yellow armbands to distinguish them from non-Jews. This was the precursor to the yellow Star of David badge which became law on December 12, 1939. Hitler wanted to find a solution to the “Jewish problem”.
It was decided to concentrate the Jews in ghettoes until a solution was found, whether it be emigration or genocide. In addition, enclosing the Jews made it easier to extract the “hidden treasures” the Nazis believed the Jews were hiding.
It was decided by Governor Friedrich Uebelhor, governor of the Kalisz-Lodz district, that the ghetto be located in the northern section of Lodz where many Jews were already living.
This was the poorest neighborhood of pre-war Lodz, the Baluty and Old Town (Stare Miasto), where basic accommodations were generally lacking and sanitary conditions were dismal. The original area of the ghetto was planned for 4.3 square kilometers. To keep non-Jews out of this area before the ghetto could be established, a warning was issued on January 17, 1940 proclaiming the area planned for the ghetto to be rampant with infectious diseases.
Lodz Ghetto
On February 8, 1940, the order to establish the Lodz ghetto was announced. The original plan was to set up the ghetto in one day, but in actuality, it took weeks. Jews from throughout the city were ordered to move into the sectioned off area, bringing with them only what they could hurriedly pack within just a few minutes.
The Jews were packed tightly within the confines of the ghetto with an average of 3.5 people per room. In April 1940, a fence went up surrounding the ghetto residents. Most of the ghetto inhabitants lost all or most of their property when they left their city homes in panic. The economy was nonexistent.
On April 11, 1940, the city name was officially changed from Lodz to Litzmannstadt in memory of a German general Karl von Litzmann, a hero of the First World War, who commanded the German army during the battle of Lodz in 1914. A double swastika on a blue background became the emblem of the city. Both names of the ghetto functioned: Litzmannstadt Getto and Lodz ghetto. On April 30, 1940, the ghetto was ordered closed and on May 1, 1940, eight months after the German invasion, the Lodz ghetto was completely sealed off and strictly isolated from the rest of the city. This is contrary to the ghettoes of Warsaw and Vilna which were not sealed hermetically. Wire entanglements and sentry boxes were placed around the ghetto in two concentric circles along Zgierska and Limanowskiego streets, which were excluded from the ghetto area. Two wooden bridges were erected over Zgierska Street to connect the separated parts of the ghetto.
A census was carried out in the ghetto on June 12, 1940, according to which the total number of ghetto inhabitants was 160,320, including over 6,500 from the Warta land. The Nazis wanted Jews to pay for their own food, security, sewage removal, and all other expenses incurred by their continuing incarceration. A Judenrat was the solution. They appointed an “Elder of the Jews” (Judenalteste) to be responsible for the entire Jewish population: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (1877-1944).
Mordechai Rumkowski
The entire internal ghetto regime with its division into different groups and segments was linked with Rumkowski and with the Nazi policy that he realized in the ghetto.
His personal defects and qualities, his convictions and ideas, and his character and temperament had a decisive influence on the formation of the inner conditions in the ghetto.
Even today, Rumkowski is shrouded in controversy: whether he helped the Nazis murder his people or did he save Jews. Many survivors and researchers of this period, view Rumkowski as a collaborator with the German authorities, and a traitor who suppressed the Jews in the ghetto, not enabling protest groups to exist, and who excelled in his obedience in carrying out the German demands. Other historians believe he made a serious, yet flawed, attempt to rescue as many Jews as possible.
The historian Isaiah Trunk does not consider Rumkowski a traitor. He believes because such a colossal industrial empire was created by Rumkowski, the largest in Eastern Europe, this is what kept the Lodz ghetto the last ghetto in existence until August 1944.
Bryks wrote extensively about Rumkowski after the war in his books “Der Keyser In Geto” and “Di Papirene Kroyn”, but curiously Rumkowski was seldom mentioned in Bryks’s ghetto writings.
The system of food rationing (except for bread) was introduced in the ghetto on June 2, 1940 and from this day ration cards (“talonen”) regulated life in the ghetto. From 1940, the population tried to resist. Hunger demonstrations and disturbances marked the first year of the ghetto. Demonstrators took to the streets on August 10 and 11, 1940 and again during the first week of October. The last known disturbance occurred on January 11 and 12, 1941. They were put down by the Jewish Ordungsdienst and German police.
On November 17, 1940, the Ghetto Archive was established at Plac Koscielny on the order of Rumkowski. It collected documents concerning ghetto life. "The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto"; a source of knowledge about the ghetto, was also compiled there. Rachmil Bryks is mentioned in the “The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto” in very special circumstances concerning the fate of the Yiddish writers in the Lodz ghetto.
His name appears in a list of Yiddish writers whose names were added to the deportation list, and because of intervention, his name and the names of the other Yiddish writers were removed from the deportation list.
With 230,000 people confined to such a small area, cut off from the rest of the city and of the world, with no farmland, food became a severe problem. Bryks describes how being a baker became a prestigious craft. In his ghetto manuscripts, Bryks has a few poems and a narrative describing the status of being a baker.
Rumkowski believed that if the ghetto became an extremely useful workforce, then the Jews would be needed by the Nazis and thus, the Nazis would make sure that the ghetto received food. On April 5, 1940, he submitted to the Oberbürgmeister a plan to organize industries in the ghetto that would serve the economic needs of the Nazis. Later he would allude in his speeches to this plan as giving the Nazis a virtual “gold mine” – meaning thousands of cheap Jewish laborers. The first tailoring workshop with 300 workers opened on April 20, 1940 and on May 13, 1940, Rumkowski reported to the Oberbürgmeister that 14,850 tailors and seamstresses registered for work, and he asked for production orders. Bryks describes in a narrative that all sewing machines were confiscated and private tailoring was forbidden.
From this beginning, an industrial complex developed in the ghetto with 117 enterprises and 73,782 workers by the end of 1943.
The value of the manufactured goods produced in the Lodz Ghetto was high. In a 1941 report, it is stated that the Ghetto administration received Gettoverwaltung from the Germans amounting to the sum of 12,881,300 Reichsmark for the merchandise provided to them by the ghetto residents. In addition, Rumkowski received 3,312,500 Reichsmark for workers’ salaries, giving a total of 16,193,800 Reischsmark for the year 1941. A year later, in 1942, Rumkowski received from the Germans 27,681,400 Reichsmark.
Meanwhile, a ruthless campaign to confiscate work tools and raw materials was conducted in order to open other workshops and force people to work in ghetto industries rather than on their own. In time, private enterprise in the ghetto was completely eradicated, and Rumkowski became the sole employer for the entire ghetto population.
Rumkowski established 3 hospitals, 2 clinics, an old-age home, an Emergency room, 3 hostels for homeless persons, a school for deaf and mute persons, kitchens for the poor, 5 orphanages, and a home for crippled children. Rumkowski also erected an educational system: 47 schools where 63% of school age children in the ghetto attended. No other ghetto had such a sophisticated educational system.
On October 1, 1940, the Central Office of Labour Departments was established. It dealt with the organization of production in the ghetto. Work for the German army was conducted in factories and workshops, which were called by the Germans: Arbeitsressorte. The name “szop” was also in use. There were over 100 of them, each being assigned a number. Bryks worked as a watchman in Resort number 76 (Chemical Waste Conversion). Bryks’s job was to inspect each worker at the end of the workday and ensure that no worker smuggled out any food source, i.e. potato peels. He risked his life every single day by overlooking food that workers were smuggling out of the resort to feed their children.
The amount of food given to each individual depended upon his work status. Certain factory jobs got a bit more bread than others, however office workers received the most. An average factory worker received one bowl of soup (mostly water; if you were fortunate you would have a couple of barley beans floating in it), the usual rations of one loaf of bread for five days (later the same amount was supposed to last seven days), a small amount of vegetables (sometimes “preserved” beets that were mostly ice), and brown water that was supposed to be coffee.
This amount of food starved people. The Jews hungered and mourned, becoming thinner and emaciated. Bryks describes the long lines of people standing for hours to approach the window for their daily bowl of soup.
On December 30, 1940, food coupons (talonen) were introduced.
At the end of 1940, over 155,000 people were confined inside the ghetto. The death rate increased dramatically due to starvation.
In 1940 and in 1941, the ghetto communal, cultural and social institutions and organizations were still active.
The school system was fully operative, childcare was provided by a network of children’s homes, orphanages, summer camps and a free meals program, religion and religious institutions enjoyed a temporary reprieve from Nazi persecutions. There were important social programs for ghetto youth such as haksharas and kibbutzim in Marysin. Bryks describes a recitation in Kibbutz Borokhov with emphasis on socialist and proletarian writing. Theater performances, literary and musical events were arranged in the Culture House and in halls and kitchens maintained by various political groups.
Despite all these restrictions and the lack of weapons to physically oppose and fight against the Nazis, there was a spiritual resistance in the ghetto. There was an underground group of 6-7 Yiddish writers that were lucky to receive a ration of 40-50 bowls of soup a day.
Bryks was not accepted to this group and he remained hungry.
