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. More than 20 percent of the ghetto's population died as a direct result of its harsh living conditions.
Paula Garfinkel
Paula was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family in Lodz, an industrial city with a large Jewish population. As a child, Paula attended public schools and was tutored at home in Jewish studies three times a week. Her father owned a furniture store.
1933-39: Paula, her brothers, and sisters spent a lot of time at the clubhouse of their Zionist group, Gordonia. Their group believed in humanistic values, Jewish self-labor, and in building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Paula liked to work with her hands and did a lot of knitting, crocheting, and sewing. In September 1939, when she was in secondary school, her studies were cut short when Germany invaded Poland and seized Lodz on September 8th.
1940-44: In early 1940 Paula's family was forcibly relocated to the Lodz ghetto, where they were assigned one room for all six of them. Food was the main problem. At the women's clothing factory where Paula worked, she at least got some soup for lunch. But her family desperately needed to find more food for her younger brother, who was very sick and bleeding internally. From the window at her factory she looked out at a potato field. Knowing that if she was caught, she'd be shot, she crept out one night to the field, dug up as many potatoes as she could, and ran home.
In 1944 Paula was deported to Bremen, Germany, as a forced laborer. She was freed in the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1945. After the war, she immigrated to the United States.
Item ViewBeno Helmer describes conditions in the Lodz ghetto
As a young man, Beno used his foreign language skills to land small movie roles. He and his family were deported to the Lodz ghetto, where they struggled daily to find food. In the underground, Beno became an expert at derailing trains. The family was sent to Auschwitz and was separated. All but Beno and one sister, whom he found after the war, died. Beno survived a series of camps and later helped to track war criminals.
Item ViewHela Szabszevicz
Hela was born in the industrial city of Lodz. She grew up speaking Polish and Yiddish, and learned German and Russian at secondary school. After completing school she married, and moved with her husband to a house on her father-in-law's large estate in the nearby town of Ozorkow. Hela was active in planning events for Jewish organizations. She and her husband, Israel, had two daughters.
1933-39: After German troops occupied Ozorkow in 1939, Hela and her family were forced out of their home and moved in with relatives. On the way home from exchanging her fur coat for a few pounds of flour, Hela was searched by a German soldier. He found the hidden flour and took Hela to have her head shaved as punishment. Hela felt humiliated, but when she returned home, she put on a scarf and said, "It's nothing; my hair will grow back."
1940-42: By 1940 the Germans established a Jewish ghetto in the poorest part of Ozorkow. One day Hela and her youngest daughter, Dosia, were taken and locked in a school building along with 1,000 other Jews. The crowd became hysterical. Hela realized that their lives were in danger, so when the Germans asked for a translator, Hela volunteered, saying, "But I have a little girl and I'm not going alone." Later that day Hela, Dosia and a few others returned to the ghetto. Those remaining were loaded onto trucks and taken away.
Hela and her daughters were transferred to the Lodz ghetto in 1942. There Hela contracted typhus and died on April 4, 1943.
Item ViewYakob Braun
Yakob's town of Wloclawek was located on the Vistula River. He and his brother Abraham studied Hebrew and German in addition to Polish. Yakob met his bride Machla through a Jewish matchmaker, and after marrying they lived in Lodz. Yakob ran the family textile business until 1938, when he invested in real estate. He became landlord of an apartment building, where he and his family also lived.
1933-39: When the Nazis expelled the Polish Jews from Germany in 1938, Yakob established a relief organization in Lodz to arrange subsidized medical care for the new refugees. After the Germans occupied Lodz in 1939, Gestapo agents checked on him frequently. One day they took Yakob for interrogation at their office in a confiscated Jewish school building. His terrified family was overjoyed when he was allowed to return home.
1940-44: Yakob hid in a small room with his wife and children as Germans brought Jews to the outskirts of Lodz and killed them to make an "example" of them. Somehow they managed not to get caught, but eventually they were deported to a ghetto in the nearby town of Piotrkow Trybunalski. When the men and women were separated for labor details, he lost track of his wife and three daughters.
Yakob was deported in the fall of 1944 to the Buchenwald concentration camp and later died at the Bergen-Belsen camp.
Item ViewMachla Spicehandler Braun
Raised in Lowicz, Poland, in a religious Jewish family, Machla moved to Lodz when she married Jacob Braun. Her husband worked as a businessman and real estate investor. He became the landlord for an apartment building where he and his family also lived. Machla, a housewife, cared for their five children, who ranged in age from 5 to 15.
1933-39: Machla worked as a volunteer for the Zionist cause. The Brauns were a close family, and Machla's daughters Lena and Eva held their weddings in the Braun's large apartment: they were catered, elaborate affairs with the rooms decorated with flowers. Machla's fourth child married in 1939. Soon afterwards, the Gestapo began coming daily to the Braun's apartment, demanding information about their building's tenants.
1940-45: The Nazis deported the Brauns to a ghetto in the town of Piotrkow Trybunalski, where Machla and her four daughters were separated from the men in the family. In November 1944 Machla and her daughters were sent to the Ravensbrueck camp for women. At her age, Machla could not handle the back-breaking labor, so Lena did much of her work. Machla and the girls were later transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where Machla was so weakened by starvation and disease that she lay dying on the floor of her filthy barrack.
Two days after the British liberated the camp in April 1945, Machla died at Bergen-Belsen.
Item ViewBenjamin Bornstein
Benjamin and his younger brother Zigmush were born to Jewish parents in the industrial city of Lodz. Lodz was Poland's second biggest city before the war, and one-third of its inhabitants were Jewish. Benjamin's father, Moshe, owned a candle factory, and his mother, Brona, was a nurse.
1933-39: In 1939, as Benjamin began the third grade, the Germans occupied Lodz. Jews were forbidden to ride buses, and were ordered to wear yellow stars. Because the Germans sometimes grabbed Jews off the streets for forced labor, his father wouldn't leave the house. Benjamin became his family's "messenger," running errands along with their housekeeper's son. He and Benjamin had lived in different worlds before the war--now they were together every day.
1940-44: When the Lodz ghetto was sealed in April 1940, Benjamin managed to smuggle all he could from their old house into their new quarters in the ghetto. Then in 1944, when Benjamin was 14, his family was rounded up and loaded onto cattle cars on one of the last transports from the ghetto. One of the first in his car, Benjamin saw a message scrawled in blood on the wall: "We have arrived in Auschwitz and here they finish us off!" The message was hidden when the car filled up, but now Benjamin no longer had any doubts about their destination.
Benjamin was deported to Auschwitz, and later to a forced-labor camp in Hanover, Germany. After the war, at age 16, he immigrated to Palestine with a group of orphans.
Item ViewShlomo Reich
Shlomo was one of seven children born in Lodz to the Reich family. The Reichs were a religious Jewish family, and Shlomo's Hasidic father wore earlocks and a traditional fur hat. After public school every day, Shlomo attended the Ostrovtze Yeshiva, a rabbinical academy where he studied Jewish holy texts. Shlomo's father owned a shoelace factory.
1933-39: The Germans invaded Lodz in September 1939 and began to institute anti-Jewish measures. Jews were not allowed to use public transportation, to leave the city without special permission, or own cars or radios. Eventually, Jewish apartments were confiscated.
1940-44: In the early winter of 1940, the Germans set up a ghetto in Lodz, and the city's Jews were concentrated there. The Reich family was also moved into the ghetto, where they all lived in one small room. Shlomo found work at a clothing factory in the ghetto, where he received thin soup at lunchtime. After four years in the ghetto, Shlomo was deported in the late summer of 1944 for slave labor at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
Shlomo was liberated in the spring of 1945. After the war, he learned that four of his six brothers and sisters had also survived. He immigrated to the United States in 1946.
Item ViewBlanka Rothschild describes deportations from the Lodz ghetto
Blanka was an only child in a close-knit family in Lodz, Poland. Her father died in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Blanka and her mother remained in Lodz with Blanka's grandmother, who was unable to travel. Along with other relatives, they were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940. There, Blanka worked in a bakery. She and her mother later worked in a hospital in the Lodz ghetto, where they remained until late 1944 when they were deported to the Ravensbrück camp in Germany. From Ravensbrueck, Blanka and her mother were sent to a subcamp of Sachsenhausen. Blanka was forced to work in an airplane factory (Arado-Werke). Her mother was sent to another camp. Soviet forces liberated Blanka in spring 1945. Blanka, living in abandoned houses, made her way back to Lodz. She discovered that none of her relatives, including her mother, had survived. Blanka then moved westward to Berlin, eventually to a displaced persons camp. She immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Item ViewBlanka Rothschild describes the role of sharing and friendship in surviving the Lodz ghetto
Blanka was an only child in a close-knit family in Lodz, Poland. Her father died in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Blanka and her mother remained in Lodz with Blanka's grandmother, who was unable to travel. Along with other relatives, they were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940. There, Blanka worked in a bakery. She and her mother later worked in a hospital in the Lodz ghetto, where they remained until late 1944 when they were deported to the Ravensbrueck camp in Germany. From Ravensbrueck, Blanka and her mother were sent to a subcamp of Sachsenhausen. Blanka was forced to work in an airplane factory (Arado-Werke). Her mother was sent to another camp. Soviet forces liberated Blanka in spring 1945. Blanka, living in abandoned houses, made her way back to Lodz. She discovered that none of her relatives, including her mother, had survived. Blanka then moved westward to Berlin, eventually to a displaced persons camp. She immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Item ViewYosel Coller
One of six children, Yosel was raised in a religious Jewish family in Lodz, an industrial city in western Poland. His father was a businessman. At the age of 6, Yosel began attending a Jewish day school. His two older sisters attended public school in the morning and religious school in the afternoon. Yosel spent much of his free time playing soccer with his brothers.
1933-39: Yosel's family lived in a modest house in the northern section of Lodz. He went to a Jewish day school and had many friends there. September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland. Seven days later, he was kicking his soccer ball around the backyard when he suddenly saw German soldiers marching through the streets, some of them riding horses. Later, he heard a single gunshot. The Germans occupied Lodz, and annexed it to the Reich on November 9, 1939.
1940-44: Yosel and his sister waited in line all night at the bakery for bread, only to be kicked out in the morning when a Pole recognized them, shouting "Jews!" On the way to another bakery, they saw three Jews who had been hung in the street. They ran home. In late 1943 Yosel was deported from the ghetto to the Fuerstengrube labor camp in Poland. He worked in the mines, gathering loose coal and putting it into wagons. He did well because he was short and could fit in the small tunnels. He was fed only bread in the morning and soup at night.
In January 1945 Yosel was one of many prisoners force-marched towards northern Germany. Liberated by the British on May 5, he eventually immigrated to America in 1947.
Item ViewLeo Schneiderman describes conditions in the Lodz ghetto
The Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Leo and his family were confined to a ghetto in Lodz. Leo was forced to work as a tailor in a uniform factory. The Lodz ghetto was liquidated in 1944, and Leo was deported to Auschwitz. He was then sent to the Gross-Rosen camp system for forced labor. As the Soviet army advanced, the prisoners were transferred to the Ebensee camp in Austria. The Ebensee camp was liberated in 1945.
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