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The Lodz Ghetto
Just prior to World War II, around 231,000 Jews live in Łódź, the majority of whom perished in the Holocaust.
The Łódź Ghetto (aka the Litzmannstadt Ghetto) was created in the early part of December 1939 in the Bałuty and Stare Miasto (the Old Town) neighborhoods. The ghetto was closed and sealed in April of 1940. During the initial period, the Jewish population was the victim of legal persecution and physical terror; they were also stripped of their property, especially during the forced migration to the ghetto. Synagogues were destroyed, including four large ones that were blown up between October 10-14, 1939. The Germans also started to round up Jewish intellectuals and political leaders. During the summers of 1941 and 1942 Roma from Austria and Jews from Western Europe and ghetto that had been closed in Reichsgau Wartheland (i.e. Ozorków, Pabianice, Włocławek, Głowno, Łask, Stryków, Sieradz, Zduńska Wola) were deported to Łódź�s Litzmannstadt Ghetto. In all, some 200,000 Jews passed through the Łódź Ghetto, of which around 12-15,000 survived.
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The "politics of work" was the only means of surviving. The Łódź Ghetto was transformed into a large labor camp with factories that ran around the clock. In 1943, 93 departments employed 70,000 people, or roughly 85% of those who lived in the ghetto. This camp produced enormous profits for the Reich, generating roughly 27 million Reich marks a month by the end of 1943. The Jewish population was stricken by hunger and disease, exploited as slave laborers, tortured, uprooted and resettled, such as during the Gehsperre, carried out between September 3-12, 1942, and the deportations to the death camp in Chełmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The ghetto was administered by the Ghetto Department, which was run by Hans Biegów until its final liquidation. The ghetto�s internal administration was run by the so-called "Local Jewish Council," which was headed by the Jewish Elder of the Łódź Ghetto - Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski. He appointed the Council of Elders to serve as an advisory body. The Łódź Ghetto was liquidated in August of 1944. The last transport from Radegast Station to Auschwitz left on August 29, 1944.
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