The Deportations
Beginning on January 6, 1942, those who had received the summons for deportations (nicknamed "wedding invitations") were required for transport. Approximately one thousand people per day left on the trains. These people were taken to the Chelmno death camp and gassed by carbon monoxide in trucks. By January 19, 1942, 10,003 people had been deported.
After only a couple of weeks, the Nazis requested more deportees. To make it easier on the Nazis, they slowed the delivery of food into the ghetto. Then the Nazis promised people going on the transports a meal. From February 22 to April 2, 1942, 34,073 people were transported to Chelmno. Almost immediately, another request for deportees came. This time specifically for the newcomers that had been sent to Lodz from other parts of the Reich. All the newcomers were to be deported except anyone with German or Austrian military honors. The officials in charge of creating the list of deportees also excluded officials of the ghetto.
In September 1942, another deportation request. This time, everyone unable to work was to be deported. This included the sick, the old, and the children. Many parents refused to send their children to the transport area so the Gestapo entered the ghetto and viciously searched and removed the deportees.
Two More Years
After the September 1942 deportation, Nazi requests nearly halted. The German armaments division was desperate for munitions, thus for workers and the Lodz ghetto now consisted purely of workers. For nearly two years, the residents of the Lodz ghetto worked, hungered, and mourned.
The End: June 1944
On June 10, 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto. The Nazis told Rumkowski and Rumkowski told the residents that workers were needed in Germany to repair the damages caused by air raids. The first transport left on June 23, with many others following until July 15. On July 15, 1944 the transports halted. The decision had been made to liquidate Chelmno because Soviet troops were getting close. Unfortunately, this only created a two week hiatus, for the remaining transports would be sent to Auschwitz.
By August 1944, the Lodz ghetto had been liquidated. Though a few remaining workers were retained by the Nazis to finish confiscating materials and valuables out of the ghetto, everyone else had been deported. Even Rumkowski and his family were included in these last transports to Auschwitz.
Liberation
Five months later, on January 19, 1945, the Soviets liberated the Lodz ghetto. Of the 230,000 Lodz Jews plus the 25,000 people transported in, only 877 remained.
* Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, "Speech on October 14, 1941," in Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege (New York, 1989), pg. 173.
Bibliography
Adelson, Alan and Robert Lapides (ed.). Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege. New York, 1989.
Sierakowiak, Dawid. The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto. Alan Adelson (ed.). New York, 1996.
Web, Marek (ed.). The Documents of the Lodz Ghetto: An Inventory of the Nachman Zonabend Collection. New York, 1988.
Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry. New York, 1991.
