Preface to the English Edition
The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw is honored to present to the English speaking public the 7th volume of documents from the Ringelblum Archive (The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto), devoted to accounts and documents relating to the fate of the Jewish population in the Lódź region and other parts of Poland incorporated directly into the German Third Reich.
The new situation affected inhabitants of that territory (as well as Jews deported from western Europe, and local Roma and Sinti). The first and most obvious consequence was isolation from the General Government territory separated by the formal state border.
In November 1941 a Nazi killing center was established in Chełmno on the River Ner, or Kulmhof as it was called then. The initiative came from Arthur Greiser, the governor of Warthegau, with the full support of Hitler and Himmler. The Nazi party leaders were quite determined and expressed their intentions to higher echelons of the state authorities to make their provinces “Judenrein” — “free from the Jews”. The Kulmhof camp preceded the death camps established in the General Government: Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibór and Bełżec.
One of the well-known personalities discussed in this volume is Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski — the leader of Litzmannstadt Ghetto. The documents discuss his rule in the ghetto and the concept of “productivity” that enabled the ghetto to exist until 1944. The remnants of the Lódź ghetto population were sent to the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau in August 1944.
