the large-scale migration during the September 1939 Polish-German war,
was frequent. Supplying raw materials to Jewish craftsmen was banned. On
18 October, the Łódź area administration (including Warsaw and the area that
later became the Warsaw District) issued a regulation on the prohibition of
trading textile and leather articles by Jews, undercutting the Jewish textile
and leather industry in Łódź destroying the livelihood of many small traders
and craftsmen.⁵
Administrative divisions and authorities
in the General Government
Part of the German-occupied Polish territory was annexed directly by the
Third Reich: the voivodships of Pomerania, Poznań, and Silesia, northern and
western part of Warsaw voivodship, and the western parts of Białystok
and Łódź voivodships, forming four administrative units: the province of East
Prussia, Gdańsk–West Prussia, the Wartheland, and the province of Silesia.
A 26 October 1939 decree from Adolf Hitler stated that the remaining lands of
central Poland formed the newly established General Government. It was now
divided into four districts. The Kraków District included the pre-war Kraków
voivodship, excluding the counties of Chrzanów and Wadowice and without
the regions of Spisz and Orawa. The Lublin District corresponded territorially
to the voivodship of Lublin, excluding the Siedlce county, but including
the counties of the Lwów voivodship not occupied by the USSR. The Radom
District consisted of the Kielce voivodship and part of the Łódź voivodship.
The Warsaw District was made up of the Warsaw voivodship with the counties
of Łowicz and Skierniewice (formerly in the Łódź voivodship) and Siedlce
county (formerly in the Białystok voivodship). The final form of the GG boundaries
was established after 8 November 1939, when Soviet troops withdrew
from the Lublin voivodship.⁶
5 See Tatiana Brustin-Berenstein, Hitlerowskie dyskryminacje gospodarcze wobec Żydów w Warszawie przed utworzeniem getta, BŻIH, 2(4) (1952): 162–165; Czesław Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce (Warszawa, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 51–53, 60–63.
6 C. Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy..., pp. 64–72.
