The Mayor of Łódź, Hanna Zdanowska, and the Jewish Community of Łódź
are hereby extending their invitation to join them in Łódź on 29 August 2025
for the main commemorations
the 81th anniversary of the liquidation of the Litzmannstadt Getto
You are invited to the 81th Anniversary of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Liquidation.
The 29th of August is a symbolic date – in August 1944, the last residents of the restricted district were deported from the Łódź Ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau by the German occupiers. After that, the ghetto was gradually liquidated.
Every year, the city of Łódź holds ceremonies commemorating these events and honouring the victims. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. While remembering the victims of Nazi crimes, we also want to talk about those who survived the Holocaust. The survivors have been with us for years. They will also be here this year and will actively participate in the events. The testimonies of Holocaust survivors, but also the lessons learned from these meetings, are an important part of remembrance. For the last days of August, in cooperation with many partners, including representatives of the second and third generations, we have prepared a series of meetings, concerts, film screenings and exhibitions open to the residents of Łódź, as well as guests from Poland and abroad.
Łódź remembers its citizens, as well as the thousands of Jews from nearby towns and many cities across Europe who perished here or were deported from here to extermination camps. In total, over 200,000 Jews passed through the Łódź ghetto. Only a few, at most a dozen or so thousand people survived the war. The few Survivors who remain today live in various parts of Poland and the world.
29 August (Friday) | Main commemoration
10.00 AM Opening of the permanent exhibition Kulmhof ‘No trace remains...’ [PL/ENG]
Curated by: Irmina Gadowska, Jerzy Maciej Koba
Organised by: Jewish Religious Community in Łódź
Content supervision: Martyrdom Museum in Żabikowo, Museum of the former German extermination camp Kulmhof in Chełmno on the Ner River – Branch of the Martyrdom Museum in Żabikowo.
Free admission
Venue: Funeral Home, Jewish Cemetery | 40 Bracka St.
Opening of a permanent photographic exhibition featuring historical photographs documenting camp prisoners, collages with texts written by them, and contemporary photographs of memorial sites.
Kulmhof (Chełmno on the Ner River) was the first German mass extermination camp in occupied Poland. It was created in December 1941 and functioned until April 1943. The camp's operations were resumed in March 1944 due to the planned liquidation of the Łódź Ghetto. On the night of the camp's liquidation, from 17 to 18 January 1945, eighty years ago, the last 45 craftsmen prisoners were murdered. During the camp's existence, over 200,000 people were murdered there. It was the main place of extermination of the Jewish population from the Wartheland and the Łódź Ghetto.
11.00 AM Religious ceremonies and symbolic lighting of candles at the monument commemorating Łódź Jews at the Jewish Cemetery in Łódź [PL/ENG, translation into Polish Sign Language]
Venue: Jewish Cemetery | 40 Bracka St.
The ceremony will be streamed live on Facebook – fb.com/centrumdialogulodz and youtube.com/centrumdialoguwlodzi
11.50 AM Memorial march from the Jewish Cemetery to the Radegast Station
Route: Zmienna St. - Inflancka St. - Pamięci Ofiar Litzmannstadt Getto Av.
12.30 PM Official commemoration at the Radegast Station (lighting candles) [PL/ENG, translation into Polish Sign Language]
Venue: Muzeum Tradycji Niepodległościowych (Museum of Independence Traditions) in Łódź – Radegast Station Branch | 12 Pamięci Ofiar Litzmannstadt Getto Av.
The ceremony will be streamed live on Facebook – fb.com/centrumdialogulodz and youtube.com/centrumdialoguwlodzi
After the Survivor's speech, ceremony participants will pay tribute to the victims of the ghetto by placing candles.
The celebrations will be accompanied by a procession with a banner dedicated to the heroine, Hinda/Barbara Beatus, led by the researcher and artist Zuzanna Hertzberg. The event commemorates Hinda/Barbara Beatus – a Łódź resident, activist, co-founder and one of the leaders of the Anti-Fascist Organisation “Lewica Związkowa” (Union Left) in the Łódź Ghetto. The heroine who led the resistance movement and made the difficult decision not to participate in the uprising in the ghetto.
3.30 PM ‘I don't need to be loved, I need to be understood.’* – artistic work by Zuzanna Herzberg in the exhibition space The Fashion System [PL/ENG]
Tickets: standard 38 PLN | reduced 28 PLN
Tickets can be purchased at the Museum ticket office and online at bilety.cmwl.pl.
Venue: Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź | 282 Piotrkowska Street
‘Erased, misunderstood, inconvenient’ – about the founders of the Anti-Fascist Organisation “Lewica Związkowa” (Union Left): Ruchla, Lea, “Ziula” Pacanowska, Hinda/Barbara Beatus and Genia Szlak.
Jewish women, Marxists and anti-fascists are a tapestry of identities whose edges cannot be clearly defined. Nor can they be treated separately. By failing to understand or omitting any one of them, one distorts entire herstories and their message.
In her speech, Zuzanna Herzberg will share snippets from the biographies of Ruchla, Lea, “Ziula” Pacanowska and Hinda / Barbara Beatus. This will be an attempt to recover the stories of female Jewish Marxists and anti-fascists, to piece together their biographies into a patchwork, and to confront the contemporary appropriation of Jewish herstories. The artist will present her message in the broader context of debates on the need for the decolonisation of knowledge, and she will examine the actions of the female activists from the perspective of intersectional feminism.
Herzberg will discuss the attitude of internalised anti-communism and the related phenomenon of unconscious anti-Semitism. She will attempt to demonstrate that misunderstanding of the minority perspective does not apply solely to the period between the two world wars, but permeates many descriptions of other periods in Polish history and is still noticeable today.
Why, after so many decades, is it still so uncomfortable to confront the actions of Jewish women who terminated their subtenant contracts? Is it possible to give them their rightful place in history? Or simply restore it?
*Barbara Beatus, Journals
** Elżbieta Janicka and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Subtenancy as a category of Polish culture
5.00 PM Sounds of yearning – a concert of nigunim [PL]
Performed by: Raphael Rogiński
Venue: Park Ocalałych (Survivors’ Park) | 83 Wojska Polskiego St.
Raphael Rogiński (Cukunft, Alte Zachen, Shofar) will perform mystical Hasidic songs (nigunim) arranged for electric guitar during a solo concert. Thanks to their unique melodies and rich influences from local folklore, nigunim are an invaluable source of information about the soundscape of 18th- and 19th-century Poland. These are mystical songs, most often without words, which were composed in Poland and Ukraine before World War II. The new interpretations of nigunim will be based on the musician's characteristic performance and arrangement techniques.
The celebrations will be accompanied by a procession with a banner dedicated to the heroine, Hinda/Barbara Beatus, led by the researcher and artist Zuzanna Hertzberg. The event commemorates Hinda/Barbara Beatus – a Łódź resident, activist, co-founder and one of the leaders of the Anti-Fascist Organisation “Lewica Związkowa” (Union Left) in the Łódź Ghetto. The heroine who led the resistance movement and made the difficult decision not to participate in the uprising in the ghetto.
Accompanying events will be held from the 24th-31st of August 2025
Meetings with survivors, exhibitions, walks, concerts, film screenings
For more information, please mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
or visit: www.centrumdialogu.com
Hosts of the Commemorations:
Organizer of the Commemorations:
Co-organizer:
Co-financed:
