Lodz to mark 65 years since ghetto’s destruction

LODZ, Poland — This city in the geographic heartland of Poland, once home to a vibrant Jewish community, plans to mark the 65th anniversary of the destruction of the former Nazi ghetto from Aug. 27 to Aug. 29.

Jaroslav Nowak stands next to a monument in Lodz that honours Polish Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust [Sheldon Kirshner photo]

There will be a Jewish cultural festival and a conference on Polish-Jewish relations during the Nazi occupation, among other events.

The hosts will be the mayor of Lodz, Jerzy Kropiwnicki, and the president of the city’s small Jewish community, Symcha Keller.

Jaroslav Nowak, the mayor’s adviser on Jewish affairs and a business consultant who visits Israel frequently, said that the main events marking the liquidation of the ghetto will take place at Survivors’ Park, which was opened in August 2004 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ghetto’s liquidation.

The park, set on 8-1/2 hectares adjacent to a river valley, was a garbage dump that has been transformed into a wooded retreat planted with trees to  honour victims of the Holocaust.

At one of the events, Nowak said, a monument designed by Czeslaw Bielecki will be unveiled.

Consisting of a stylized Star of David  and a hovering Polish eagle, it pays tribute to the more than 6,000 Poles who helped Jews during the war and have been honoured as Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem.

According to the mayor, the monument will serve as “a symbol of humanity in the hell of the German occupation, both for Jews and Poles.”

The Lodz ghetto was established in the spring of 1940, about seven months after German forces captured the city and renamed it Litzmannstadt. It was the last ghetto to be destroyed by the Nazis.

Stretching over much of the north central part of Lodz and administered by Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Judenrat, the ghetto was packed with some 166,000 inhabitants, including Roma. The ghetto’s population was later augmented by 40,000 deported Jews from nearby Polish towns and villages and from Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and what was then Czechoslovakia.

The ghetto managed to survive until August 1944 because its workshops produced an array of goods for Germany.

The last remaining Jews, including Rumkowski and his family, were deported to Auschwitz.

Before then, however, thousands of Jews in the ghetto were sent to German death camps throughout Poland, while  a large number of Jews succumbed to starvation and disease.

Of the more than 200,000 Jews who lived in the ghetto, only about 10,000 survived.

Forty thousand Jews who had found refuge in the Soviet Union settled in Lodz after the war, but due to a pogrom in Kielce in 1946, the majority left Poland. Today, there are officially 300 Jews in Lodz.

Meanwhile, in connection with the 65th anniversary of the destruction of the ghetto, an exhibition on Chassidism in Poland has begun.

The venue, the City of Lodz History Museum, was formerly the palace of Izrael Poznansky (1833-1900), one of Poland’s wealthiest Jews in the 19th century. Running until Oct. 20, the exhibition mainly consists of photographs.

The curator, Anna Walaszczyk, writes in the official catalogue: “We prepared this exhibition to enable visitors to get acquainted with this colourful world… We are portraying a world which no longer exists, but was so much present in Poland until 1939.”

In another development, construction of a Centre of Dialogue is scheduled to start in September. Designed to promote co-operation between Jews and Poles, it is set to be finished in 2010, Nowak said.

Costs will be borne by the municipality and Mordechai Zisser, an Israeli businessman originally from Lodz who has commercial interests in the city.

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An updated program of the ceremonies marking the destruction of the  Lodz ghetto is available at www.ghetto.lodz.pl. Those interested in participating should an e-mail [email protected].