Page 109 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. "Fragmenty pamięci".

Wielka Szpera 5-12 września 1942 The Great Szpera, 5-12 September 1942

sacrifice to me so that others will be saved, so that the community of 100,000 Jews will survive. This
is what I have been promised – if we make the sacrifice of our own accord, they’ll leave us be… [at
that point, voices from the crowd can be heard: ‘We’ll all go, don’t let them take the only children, they
should take children from parents who have a few…’]

These are empty words! I cannot debate this with you anymore. If someone from the authorities
comes here, none of you will say a single word… I know how it feels when they dismember you alive.
Yesterday, I was begging on my knees, but to no avail. From small towns, which numbered 7 or 8
thousand Jews, only a thousand arrived here. So which option is better? What is it that you want? The
survival of 80-90 thousand Jews, or the annihilation, God forbid, of all of them?

Think whatever you please. My duty is to protect those Jews. I am not addressing your hot heads
– I am appealing to your reason and your conscience. I have done, and I will keep doing, everything
to prevent shots from being fired in the streets and the bloodshed… I could not avert this tragedy,
I could only make it somewhat less terrible. It takes a heart of stone to demand what I demand from
you. But imagine for a second that you’re in my shoes and think logically. Then, you’re bound to con-
clude that I have no other choice, because the number of those to be saved far exceeds the number
of those who have to be sacrificed.

The speech given on September 4, 1942
by Chaim Rumkowski to the Jews imprisoned in the Łódź Ghetto
translation from Yiddish: Monika Polit
translation: Maciej Grabski

Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski (1877–1944)
In October 1939, he was appointed by the Germans to the position of Chief of the Jewish Elders and
served in this position until the ghetto was liquidated. To this day, his persona continues to cause
much controversy. Some call him a collaborator and traitor, others – a saviour. He is the main charac-
ter of several documentaries and books. Hannah Arendt, among others, wrote about him in her essay
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Primo Levi also mentioned him in his book
The Drowned and the Saved. Rumkowski’s speech of 4 September 1942 went down in Holocaust history
under the title Give me your children. The speech is worth knowing in its entirety.

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