Łódź Ghetto, 1940-1949 | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

The arrangement scheme for the record group was imposed during processing in the absence of an original order. Materials are arranged by subject/creator, then by identifier, as assigned by the processor.

Record group is comprised of six collections: 1. Ed Victor papers; 2. Collection on the German occupation of Poland; 3. Łódź Ghetto photographs and artifacts; 4. Dawid Gertler papers; 5. Arthur Garfunkel collection of photographs; 6. Jerzy Tomaszewski collection of photographs.

The history of Łódź Ghetto exemplifies the implementation of the "final solution to the Jewish question," particularly in terms of Nazi planning, modifications, ongoing exterminations, the role of the local commanders, and the role of the decisions take in Berlin. Łódź Ghetto also represents the other side of the Nazi-orchestrated Final Solution, notably the role, place, and activity of the Jewish ghetto administration, or the Judenrat. In Łódź, the history of Judenrat is symbolized by the highly controversial but charismatic figure of Łódź Ghetto Chairman, Mordecai Ḥayim Rumkowski. The role and actions of the Jewish police in the ghetto , as well as the Jewish education institutions that functioned there, are histories in their own right.

Łódź was one of the few working ghettos and the functioning educational institutions induced hope, despite of the continuous deportation. No other ghettos in Poland, perhaps, except Łódź and Warsaw, saw the extreme polarization of the Jewish population--from hunger-stricken paupers to the almighty Jewish executives spending leisure time at restaurants and the cabaret. In Łódź, like in Warsaw, the relations between German and Jewish administrations played a crucial role that directly influenced the fates of thousands of ordinary ghetto inhabitants. Not surprisingly, the question of Jewish-German collaboration on the part of the Judenrat had been raised and investigated by the Legal Department of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone of Occupation in Germany after the war.