The Second World War - Criminals - Jewish getto - Lodz - Poland
Jewish collaborators
Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski (1877-1944) was the chairman of the Jewish Council - JudenratJudenrat (Jewish Council or Jewish Council of Elders) - organizations established by Nazi German authorities during World War II with the task of administering Jewish communities and implementing German orders issued against them. In addition to collaborating with the occupier, most Judenrat also engaged in corruption and were aimed at the destruction of the Jewish population. Only a few of them undertook cooperation with partisans. - in the Łódź ghetto, established by Nazi Germany during the occupation of Poland.
This is what [Primo Levi] wrote about him in his memoirs The Drowned and the Saved (I sommersi e i salvati):
(...) an erstwhile failed small industrialist, after many travels and mixed fortunes he had moved to Łódź in 1917. In 1940 he was almost sixty [he was 63] and was a childless widower; he enjoyed a certain esteem, and was known as a director of Jewish charities and as an energetic, uncultured, authoritarian man. The rank of Chairman (or Elder) of a ghetto was intrinsically appalling, but it was a rank nonetheless, it constituted a social acknowledgement, it raised a man one step higher and it granted rights and privileges, which is to say, authority: now, Rumkowski loved authority passionately. How he reached his position, it isn’t known: perhaps it was a practical joke in the sinister Nazi style (Rumkowski was, or appeared to be, a presentable imbecile, ie. an ideal laughing stock); perhaps he schemed in order to be picked, so strong the lust for power plausibly was in him. It is proven that the four years of his chairmanship, or rather his dictatorship, were a surprising tangle of megalomaniacal daydreaming, barbarous vitality and real diplomatic and managerial abilities.
Rumkowski w otoczeniu Niemców i samego Himmlera podczas jego wizyty w Litzmannstadt Ghetto.
He soon came to see himself as an absolute but enlightened monarch, and he certainly was egged on by his German masters, who toyed with him, but did also appreciate his talents as a good administrator and order-keeper. From them he got the authorization to mint money, both in coins (like the one I found) and in bills, printed on filigreed paper that was officially provided to him. In this currency the ghetto’s sleepless workers would be payed; they could spend it in outlets in order to buy their daily rations, usually averaging around 800 calories (I should mention that 2000 at least are required to survive in a state of absolute rest).
From these hungry subjects of his, Rumkowski loved to cash in not just obedience and respect, but also love: in this do modern dictatorships differ from the ancient ones. As he could rely on an army of excellent artists and artisans, ready to get to work at his signal and in exchange for a quarter loaf of bread, he had postmarks with his effigy drawn and printed, his candid hair shining with the light of Hope and Faith. He had a carriage drawn by a skeletal nag, and on it he would crisscross his minuscule kingdom’s roads, lined with beggars and pleaders.
He had a royal mantle, and surrounded himself with a court of flatterers and henchmen; he had his courtesan-poets compose hymns celebrating his “firm and mighty hand”, and the peace and orderliness that, thanks to him, reigned supreme in the ghetto; he ordered that children in the squalid schools, daily plagued by epidemics, denutrition, and German raids, write assignments praising “our beloved, providing Chairman”.
A painting by Łódź ghetto painter Izrael Lejzerowicz, commissioned by Rumkowski.
Like all autocrats, he hastened to organize an efficient police force, nominally to keep the peace, in fact tasked with protecting his person and imposing his will: it was made up of six hundred men armed with truncheons and an unknown number of spies.
He made many speeches, some of which have survived down to us, and their style is unmistakable: he had adopted the rhetorical technique of Mussolini and Hitler, based on inspired performance, on pseudo-conversation with the mob, on consent-building through manipulation and acclamation. Perhaps this imitation on his part was deliberate; […] but it is more likely that his behavior had sprung out of his condition of being a petty tyrant, upwardly impotent and downwardly omnipotent. Who has a throne and a scepter, and doesn’t fear being contradicted or mocked, speaks like that.
The very harshness with which he hurried to repress any instance of insubordination by his subjects (in Łódź as in other ghettos there were nuclei of daring political resistance, of Zionist, Bundist or Communist origin) wasn’t born out of servility towards the Germans, as much as “lèse majésté”, indignation at the outrage being committed against his royal person.
In September 1944, since the Russian front was growing closer and closer, the Nazis started liquidating the Łódź ghetto. Tens of thousands of men and women were deported to Auschwitz (...). Roughly a thousand men remained in the ghetto, left there to pack up the factories’ equipment and to undo any signs of the massacre: they were freed by the Red Army shortly afterwards, and they are the source of the story here relayed.
Chaim Rumkowski and Hans Biebow, head of the German Nazi administration of the Łódź ghetto in occupied Poland.
(...) Biebow, gave Rumkowski a letter for the commander of the Lager he was destined to, and guaranteed that that would save him and ensure him a preferential treatment. Rumkowski reportedly asked Biebow, and was indulged, to travel to Auschwitz with the decorum expected of his rank, ie. in a special railway car, joined to the tail of a freight car convoy full of unprivileged deportees: but Jews’ fate in German hands was one and the same, be they villains or heroes, humble or bigheaded. Neither the letter nor the railway car managed to save Chaim Rumkowski, king of the Israelites, from the gas.
Rumkowski rose to power turning the ghetto into an industrial base that produced war supplies for the Wehrmacht under the mistaken belief that productivity was key to Jewish survival after the Holocaust. However, the Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944. All the surviving prisoners were sent to extermination camps after the disasters on the eastern front.
He was the absolute ruler of the ghetto, in which special "chaimka" and "rumek" money and postage stamps with his image were used. In return for the Germans' consent to his tyranny over the ghetto inhabitants, he diligently followed all German orders and sent most of his subjects to extermination camps.
Chaim Rumkowski tastes soup during the time of Lodz ghetto.
Rumkowski was ruthless, using his position as head of the Judenrat to confiscate property and businesses that were still run in the ghetto by their rightful Jewish owners. On the orders of the Germans, Rumkowski gave the infamous speech on September 4, 1942, in which he appealed to the Jews in the ghetto to give up children aged 10 and over over 65, so that others might survive. The anonymous transcriber of Rumkowski’s speech noted that horrible, terrified wailing among the assembled crowd” could be heard;
A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They [the Germans] are asking us to give up the best we possess – the children and the elderly. I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I've lived and breathed with children. I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters! Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers: Give me your children! Yesterday afternoon they gave me an order to send more than 20,000 Jews out of the ghetto and if not, "We will do it." The question that arose was should we take it upon ourselves, do it ourselves, or leave it to others to do? " So we - that is, I and my closest associates thought first not about how many will disappear, but how many can be saved. And we came to the conclusion that if it was not difficult for us, we should put this order into practice with our own hands. I have to prepare this difficult and bloody operation, I have to cut off the branches to save the trunk. I have to take the children because if I don't, others may also be taken. (…) I managed to save those [children] who are ten or older. Let this be a consolation in your misfortune. The demand was for 24,000 victims, but I managed to bargain the figure to 20,000, maybe less, provided that all children under ten went. Since there are only 13,000 old people and children, we have to top up the quota by spending sick people. What do you prefer: that 80-90 thousand people survive? Jews, should they all be annihilated?
— Rumkowski's speech of 4 September 1942, which, due to its central overtones, became known as "Give me your children!".Chaim Rumkowski speaks to the locals. In the background, the then headquarters of departments of the ghetto Jewish administration.
Rumkowski took an active part in the deportations of Jews. Many historians and writers describe him as a traitor and a Nazi collaborator. Rumkowski always sought to meet the demands of the Nazis, with the help of his own Orpo Security Police if necessary. His rule, unlike the leaders of other ghettos, was characterized by the abuse of his own people and the physical liquidation of political opponents. He and his council had convenient rations and their own stores. He was known to get rid of those he personally disliked by sending them to camps.
He set up a harem in one of the villas and brought new, beautiful women. He sexually abused vulnerable girls whom he "cared for". Not being dependent on him meant the death of the captive. Holocaust survivor Lucille EichengreenLucille Eichengreen was a survivor of the Łódź Ghetto and the Nazi German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. She published From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. She frequently lectured on the Holocaust at libraries, schools and universities in the U.S. and Germany., who claimed to have been molested by him for months as a young woman working in his office, wrote:
I felt disgusted and I felt angry, I ah, but if I would have run away he would have had me deported, I mean that was very clear.
Chaim Rumkowski with three women in the Culture House of the Lodz ghetto.
Historian Michal Unger in his book Reassment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski , wrote:
... on the one hand, an aggressive, domineering person, thirsty for honor and power, raucous, vulgar and ignorant, impatient (and) intolerant, impulsive and lustful. On the other hand, he is portrayed as a man of exceptional organizational prowess, quick, very energetic, and true to tasks that he set for himself.
In his memoirs, Jehuda Lejb Gerst described Rumkowski as a complex person:
This man had sickly leanings that clashed. Toward his fellow Jews, he was an incomparable tyrant who behaved just like a Führer and cast deathly terror to anyone who dared to oppose his lowly ways. Toward the perpetrators, however, he was as tender as a lamb and there was no limit to his base submission to all their demands, even if their purpose was to wipe us out totally. Either way, he did not properly understand his situation and position and their limits.
Marek Edelman said about Rumkowski's activities:
It was thanks to Rumkowski that Hans Biebow did not have to mobilize soldiers, because he had everything on a plate. It is nonsense that so many Łódź Jews survived, because Rumkowski organized the ghetto as a labor camp for the Germans. In Warsaw, sheds [enterprises and workshops - editor's note] also produced thousands of uniforms for the German army, and at some point the Germans said stop.
After Rumkowski's visit to the Warsaw ghetto in May 1941, Emanuel Ringelblum in his Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto, September 1939 - January 1943, wrote:
He is an old man about seventy, a man of extraordinary ambitions and a bit crazy. He told miracles about the Łódź ghetto. There is a Jewish state with 400 policemen, with three prisons (...) He considers himself God's anointed.
Adam Czerniaków, president of the Warsaw Judenrat, with whom Rumkowski met in person during this visit, wrote about him in his diary:
He is a braggart. Cocky and stupid. Harmful because it tells the authorities that it is fine with him.
There are conflicting accounts of Rumkowski's last moments. According to one of the contemporary sources, he was murdered after his arrival in Auschwitz(German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers and crematories; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of extermination of Poles and the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question. by the Jews of Łódź, who recognized him there and burned him alive in a furnace. However, this version of events has been questioned by historians. Another report, submitted by a member of the SonderkommandoSonderkommando - units created to perform special tasks, for example police and military units performing extermination tasks in relation to the jewish community, to service gas chambers and crematoria, created on the initiative of the Germans or the jewish administrations themselves in ghettos, which dealt with transporting their brothers to their extermination destinations, in return i.a. for protecting their loved ones and were especially hated by other Jews. from Hungary, Dov Paisiković, states that the Jews of Łódź secretly approached the Jews of the Sonderkommando and asked them to kill Rumkowski for the crimes he committed in the Łódź ghetto. They beat him to death in front of the gate to crematorium 2 and disposed of his body there.
SOURCES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Rumkowski
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Rumkowski
Primo Levi - I sommersi e i salvati
Take a loot at other pictures related to Jewish collaborators
Meeting of the Board of the Judenrat in the Lodz Ghetto
Baking Matzah in a bakery in Lodz ghetto
Jewish Police in the Warsaw Ghetto
Emanuel Ringelblum - Polish-Jewish historian, educator and social activist, creator of the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, murdered by the Germans.
Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst - Jewish Order Service in Warsaw, commonly known as the Jewish police
Jewish police direct people to the assembly area in the Kovno ghetto during a deportation action to Estonia. Circa 1943 October 26.
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Judenrat (Jewish Council or Jewish Council of Elders) - organizations established by Nazi German authorities during World War II with the task of administering Jewish communities and implementing German orders issued against them. In addition to collaborating with the occupier, most Judenrat also engaged in corruption and were aimed at the destruction of the Jewish population. Only a few of them undertook cooperation with partisans. - in the Łódź ghetto, established by Nazi Germany during the occupation of Poland. 
(German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers and crematories; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of extermination of Poles and the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question. by the Jews of Łódź, who recognized him there and burned him alive in a furnace. However, this version of events has been questioned by historians. Another report, submitted by a member of the Sonderkommando
Sonderkommando - units created to perform special tasks, for example police and military units performing extermination tasks in relation to the jewish community, to service gas chambers and crematoria, created on the initiative of the Germans or the jewish administrations themselves in ghettos, which dealt with transporting their brothers to their extermination destinations, in return i.a. for protecting their loved ones and were especially hated by other Jews. from Hungary, Dov Paisiković, states that the Jews of Łódź secretly approached the Jews of the Sonderkommando and asked them to kill Rumkowski for the crimes he committed in the Łódź ghetto. They beat him to death in front of the gate to crematorium 2 and disposed of his body there.
