84: Children

84 years ago today (September 4, 1942) in the Lodz Ghetto (renamed Litzmannstadt  by the Germans) in German-Occupied Lodz, Poland the Head of the Judenrat or Jewish Council (a Group formed by the Germans to carry out the running of the Ghetto) Chaim Rumkowski gave a public speech to the Inhabitants of the Ghetto in which he asked them to give up their Children, the Disabled, the Sick and the Elderly to the Germans for certain death.

The Lodz Ghetto was created by the Germans on April 30, 1940 and initially housed 163,777 People, but the Closure of smaller Ghettos across German-Occupied Poland and the Deportation of Jews from Germany and Austria brought the number 210,000 Men, Women and Children held in the Lodz Ghetto.

The Deportations to the Death Camps from the Lodz Ghetto began in December 1941 and initially everyone (except the Germans) thought the Residents were being sent to Slave Labor Camps.

By August 1942 everyone in the Lodz Ghetto knew that Deportation from the Ghetto meant certain death as 55,000 Men, Women and Children from the Ghetto had already been Deported and the trains came back with their blood-stained clothes (which the Inhabitants of the Ghetto had to clean to be sent to Germany.)

Chaim Rumkowski initially used the Deportations to get rid of anyone in the Ghetto he did not like, but the Germans kept demanding more and more People and so Rumkowski came up a deal to give the Germans the 13,000 Children and the 11,000 Elderly People left in the Lodz Ghetto with the hope to save the other, “Productive” Adults.

On September 4, 1942 Chaim Rumkowski said:

“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!”

The next Morning every single Man, Woman and Child in the Ghetto was forbidden to leave their homes as the Germans and Jewish Ghetto Police went door-to-door and took every Child under 10 years old, all the Sick and all the Elderly.

500 People were shot during the Round-Up inside the Ghetto.

24,000 People (13,000 Children and 11,000 Elderly) were Deported from the Lodz Ghetto that day and sent to the Chelmno Death Camp 37 miles away where they were stripped naked, forced to walk through confusing Hallways until they reached a door and entered a room.

That room was really a Gas Van (Vans that drove around while the People inside were suffocated to death by the toxic gas fumes being pumped inside.)

After 20 minutes everyone inside the Vans was dead. Their Bodies were then burned.

Chaim Rumkowski was deported to the Auschwitz Death Camp on August 28, 1944 where the Jewish Sonderkommando (Jewish Prisoners forced by the Germans to work during the Selection and in the Gas Chambers) beat him to death (at the door of Crematorium 2) for his role in murdering the Jews.

The Lodz Ghetto was liquidated by the Germans in August 1944.

A handful of People were left in the Ghetto to clean it up.

When the Soviet Red Army entered Lodz on January 19, 1945, only 877 Jews were still alive, 12 of whom were Children (who had been hidden inside the Ghetto.)

Of the 223,000 Jews in Lodz before the German Invasion, only 10,000 survived the Holocaust in other places.

Picture: Children rounded up for Deportation to the Chelmno Death Camp where they were gassed to death in September 1942.