Page 82 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Zofia Lubińska-Rosset - "Okruchy Pamięci".

Work

The motto promoted by the Chairman of the Council of El-
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ders, the Eldest of the Elders of Jews, Ch. Rumkowski , “Our only
way is work” , clearly indicated the course of action the ghetto
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management would take in order to try to save as many people as
possible. Rumkowski assumed that only those who turned out to
be useful for the Third Reich economy as free workforce had
a chance of survival. Therefore, everyone tried to find a job in the
ghetto.
During the first years, my Dad performed the duties of the
administrator of houses located at Urzednicza St. The Yad Vashem
archives in Jerusalem hold the original of the letter sent by my Dad
on April 8th, 1941 to the Eldest of the Elders of Jews in the Lodz
Ghetto, with the request to take care of seven orphans of Michal
Wejland who died on March 24th, 1941. Then for some time
(about one year) he worked at the fire brigade located at 11
Lutomierska St. (Hamburgerstrasse) and during the period of the
greatest hunger, when he was at the end of his physical endurance,
he was employed for a few weeks in a bakery, which was treated as
a special privilege. It seems to me that it was located at Limanows-
kiego St. (Alexanderstrasse). I used to go there in the evenings to
get a slice of bread from my Dad. He handed it to me through

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Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski – born in 1877, a pre-war industrialist, Zionist activist
and member of the board of the Jewish Community in Lodz. Established by the Nazi
authorities as the Eldest of the Elders of the Jews (German: Der Ältester der Juden), com-
monly titled “President”. He exercised undivided power in the ghetto until its liquidation
(August 29th, 1944). On that day, he was taken to Auschwitz, where he died in unclear
circumstances.
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German: Unser einziger Weg ist Arbeit; Rumkowski's idea was to transform the ghetto
into a huge manufacturing plant constituting an important element of the Reich's econ-
omy. This project did not include unproductive people, the elderly, the disabled, the
chronically ill or children. They were to fill the daily extermination contingent set by the
Nazis.

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