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Choiceless Choices

Learn about the harsh conditions and exploitation of residents in the Lodz Ghetto during the Holocaust, as well as the devastating deportations to Chelmno death camp. Explore the role of Chaim Rumkowski, the leader of the Jewish Council, and the tragic evacuation of the sick and elderly from the ghetto.

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Choiceless Choices

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  1. Choiceless Choices Gordon J. Horwitz

  2. Lodz Ghetto Map: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

  3. Lodz Ghetto • Lodz Ghetto located in part of Poland partitioned into German “Reich” • Completely segregated from ethnic German population and Poles • Sealed ghetto; no smuggling or trading with outside world Image: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

  4. Slave Labor in Lodz Ghetto • Exploited the ghetto’s residents for forced labor • By August 1942, there were almost 100 factories within the ghetto. • The major factories produced textiles, especially uniforms, for the German army.

  5. Hunger and Deportations • Ghetto inhabitants forced to depend on German allocations • Hunger, starvation more widespread in Lodz than in any of other major ghettos • January 1942 – deportations to Chelmno begin Jews from the Lodz ghetto board deportation trains for the Chelmno death camp. Image: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

  6. ChelmnoKilling Center • Those unable to work at greatest risk for deportation • Located 35 miles from Lodz • First stationary facility where poison gas was used for mass murder of Jews • Death by carbon monoxide poisioning in gas vans Map: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

  7. “Work Protects Us From Annihilation” • Chaim Rumkowski - leader of the Jewish Council in the  Łódź ghetto

  8. Residents of the Lodz ghetto wait outside the kitchen #452 to receive their food rations, 1940-1944

  9. Children working in a wood workshop in the Lodz ghetto, 1941-1942. USHMM A Jewish man and child at forced labor in a factory in the Lodz ghetto. Lodz, Poland, date uncertain. USHMM

  10. Children at work in a printing workshop in the Lodz ghetto, 1941-1942. USHMM Jewish children working in a locksmith's workshop in the Lodz ghetto, 1940-1944. USHMM

  11. Teenagers work in the Lodz ghetto metal workshop, 1940-1944. USHMM.

  12. Beginning of Wholesale Deportations September 1942 • September 1, German military trucks pulled up to the ghetto’s hospitals, and SS troops emerged to seize the patients. • Panic swept the ghetto. • September 2, the Germans ordered the Jewish ghetto authorities to prepare 20,000 people for deportation: the sick, the elderly, and the children. • In addition, projected daily quota would be 3,000.

  13. “Give Me Your Children…” “A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They are asking us to give up the best we possess—the children and the elderly. I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg. Brothers and sisters: Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers: Give me your children! . . .” —Chaim Rumkowski, September 4, 1942

  14. “No one believes in miracles anymore…twenty thousand Jews must be deported from the ghetto. Surely there has never been a sunset like today’s…” • “Night vanished. A new day began. By seven o’clock on the morning of Saturday, September 5, the streets were filled.”

  15. "Evacuation of the sick" (and aged, by horse-drawn cart), 1942; The Lodz Ghetto Photos of Henryk Ross

  16. Deportation of Jewish children from the Lodz ghetto in German-occupied Poland during the "Gehsperre" Aktion, September 1942. USHMM

  17. Children being deported to the Chelmno death camp, 1942; The Lodz Ghetto Photos of Henryk Ross

  18. Jewish policemen are catching deportees trying to escape from the hospital at 36 Lagiewnicka Street, which was an assembly point for deportees. The photograph was taken on September 10, 1942, during the "Gehsperre" [German: "curfew"] Aktion in the ghetto.

  19. Discussion • “…exemptions were to be made for the families of ghetto police and firemen, and workshop managers and other officials…it was clear that the circle of potential victims would have to widen even further…” • “As always, those who lacked rank and connections would be the most exposed.” • “In order to avoid a repetition in their streets of what was happening in Warsaw, there could be no other choice but to cooperate and carry out the evacuation by their own hands…’We have decided to do it ourselves.’” • “Guided not by the thought ‘How many will perish’ but ‘How many can be saved.’”

  20. Women Slave Laborers FelicjaKaray

  21. FelicjaKaray

  22. Occupied Poland, 1939-1944 • General Government divided into 4 districts: Warsaw, Cracow, Lublin, Radom • Skarzysko-Kamienna labor camp located in Radom district (14 total) • Largest slave-labor camp complex in Radom district

  23. The Skarzysko-Kamienna camp belonged to the German Hasag concern. (Hugo Schneider AG). Nazi arms-manufacturing conglomerate with dozens of factories across German-occupied Europe. Third largest user of forced laborers in Germany. Skarzysko-Kamienna labor camp etablished in August 1942 and was liquidated on August 1, 1944.

  24. On October 15, 1942, the camp had 4,361 inmates, including 1,771 women. High proportion of women unusual in armament factories Reason?

  25. The camp was divided into three separate factory camps, known as Werke A, B, and C. • Werke A: manufactured light ammunition for infantry • Werke B: anti-aircraft ammunition • Werke C: underwater mines were packed with picric acid powder; “death department” View of the HASAG -- Pelcery labor camp (Poland). USHMM

  26. A barbed wire fence and barracks in the HASAG labor camp in Czestochowa. Camps were located next to the factories where the prisoners worked, and were guarded by the Ukrainian factory police.

  27. Where do we place Jewish labor within wider context of Holocaust? (Christopher Browning) • Conditions for Jewish labor (Himmler) • Had to be dedicated exclusively for war effort; armaments • Industrialists who wanted Jewish labor had to construct their own camps to isolate Jews from rest of population; guarded by factory security force (not SS) • Industrialists had to rent Jews by contract from SS; rented for set price by day SS chief Heinrich Himmler (front row, left) and Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis (second from left) inspect inspect the Wiener Graben quarry during an official tour of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Austria, April 27, 1941.

  28. Skarzysko-Kamienna • Lack of sanitation; high disease rates • Typhus epidemics • April 1943- no new pool of Jewish labor; scarcity of Jewish labor; improved food and sanitary conditions • Economic interests of industrialists diverged from those of SS • By spring 1944, production of ammunition in Radom district provided one-third of the needs of German infantry.

  29. Keys to Survival in Camp • German personnel; knowing which German was which -Dangerous Germans -Corruptible Germans - Decent Germans • Buy, sell, bribe, smuggle, “organization”; participate in economic life of camp

  30. Issues for Female Slave Laborers

  31. Lined hand knit pouch given to Cesia Kaiser in one of the camps she was imprisoned in from 1942-1944, either Skarzysko-Kamienna slave labor camp or the Hasag slave labor camp in Czestochowa  Engraved heart shaped ring crafted from munitions parts and made in secret in a slave labor camp; Skarzysko-Kamienna (Poland)

  32. Discussion • “Explains why in this particular case the Jewish strategy of survival through labor was not entirely illusory” (Browning) • Economic divisions; segmented hierarchy among prisoners • Bribery, favors, better jobs; “everything was for sale”

  33. Leaving a Record Sam Kassow

  34. Who Will Write Our History?By Sam Kassow

  35. Emanuel Ringelblum Before WWII • Took an active role in Jewish public life • High school teacher • Employee of the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Poland • Formed a historical society with a group of other Polish-Jewish historians • By 1939, he had published 126 scholarly articles on his own. Emanuel Ringelblum with his son Uri. YadVashem

  36. Outbreak of WWII and Creation of the Archive Became a major leader of the Jewish mutual aid organization in Warsaw, the Aleynhilf (self-help). Helped coordinate aid to refugees and soup kitchens Helped organize an extensive network of House Committees Most important initiative was the creation of the OynegShabes underground archive—the secret archive of the Warsaw ghetto Emanuel Ringelblum. Jewish Historical Institute

  37. 1940 Warsaw Ghetto Sealed • Archive grew into an organized, underground activity with sealing of ghetto in Nov 1940. • Approximately 50-60 people (including copies, transcribers) involved with archive. • OynegShabes was the largest secret archive in Nazi-occupied Poland, but not the only one. Street scene in the Warsaw ghetto showing a section of the wall blocking a major thoroughfare, 1940. USHMM

  38. OynegShabbes Archive • Brought together men and women from a wide spectrum of pre-war Poland. • Comprised of small inner circle – executive committee. • Anyone whom the staff considered a valuable worker and able to keep secrets was eligible for membership. Student´s schedule of classes in a school using Hebrew as the language of instruction Ringelblum Archive, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw Poland.

  39. OynegShabes Archive Initial focus was to study Jewish life under the Nazi occupation and to collect documentation.

  40. By spring 1942, workers of the archive began to realize that, instead, they might be writing the last chapter of the 800-year history of Polish Jewry. Warsaw Ghetto. Line outside Ghetto soup kitchen.

  41. Great Deportation, July 1942 Summons to report for resettlement July 29,1942. Ringelblum Archive, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland.

  42. Warsaw Ghetto; Jews collected at the Umschlagplatz prior to deportation, under the supervision of SS . YadVashem.

  43. Burial of the Archive • Isolated from everyone except Ringelblum and his closest secretaries, were Israel Lichtenstein, and his 2 teenaged helpers, David Graber and Nahum Grzywacz. • Had physical custody of the materials (at a hideout in a school) and waited on a signal to bury them.

  44. Burial of Archive • First cache of the archive buried on night of August 2-3, 1942; tin boxes • Sometime in February 1943, Ringelblum ordered the bural of a second cache – the milk cans • Fate of Emanuel Ringelblum and archive

  45. Archive Discovered in 2 Different Caches • First in Sept 1946: covered beginning of the war until Aug 3, 1942 when they were buried; buried in tin boxes. • Second cache discovered in Dec 1950: had been packed in aluminum milk cans that protected contents from water. • A third cache which would have documented March-April 1943, when the ghetto was preparing for armed resistance, was never found.

  46. The milk can and casting of the Warsaw ghetto wall are displayed on the third floor of the permanent exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

  47. David Graber Last will and testament of David Graber age 19, August 3, 1942

  48. On the hot night of 3 August 1942, 19-year-old David Graber signed his name on a piece of paper and put it inside a metal box at 68 Nowolipki Street, in the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto. • "I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world," he wrote. "May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened… in the 20th Century… May history be our witness."

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