German troops occupied Lodz one week after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. In early 1940, the Germans established a ghetto in the northeast section of the city.
The city of Łódź had the second largest Jewish population in prewar Poland, after Warsaw. German troops occupied Łódź in September 1939. In early February 1940, the Germans established a ghetto in Łódź and crowded about 160,000 Jews into an area of about one and a half square miles. In late 1941-1942, tens of thousands of Jews and about 5,000 Roma (derogatorily called "Gypsies") were transferred to the Łódź ghetto. Tens of thousands of people died in the ghetto, mostly due to disease and starvation.
Between January and September 1942, over 75,000 ghetto residents were deported from Łódź to the Chełmno killing center. By the spring of 1944, the Łódź ghetto was the last remaining ghetto in German-occupied Poland. During that summer, the Germans deported the remaining Jews, most of them to Auschwitz.
Item View![Poland 1933, Lodz indicated [LCID: lod79060]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/087ef9a3-0dd7-42fb-82a9-fd4ce4345579.gif "Poland 1933, Lodz indicated [LCID: lod79060]")
![Lodz ghetto environs, 1940 [LCID: lod44020]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/1ecca53e-6923-4300-9e70-1b7923f42d76.gif "Lodz ghetto environs, 1940 [LCID: lod44020]")
![Lodz ghetto, 1940-1944 [LCID: lod54013]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/88e6cbd3-8d53-435e-acaf-890c7c2f58e0.gif "Lodz ghetto, 1940-1944 [LCID: lod54013]")
![Deportations to Lodz ghetto, 1941-1942 [LCID: lod78070]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/36709ba3-d55c-49cd-9861-bcdc06fe1b94.gif "Deportations to Lodz ghetto, 1941-1942 [LCID: lod78070]")
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