Chaim Rumkowski

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Rumkowski in the ghetto

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (born February 27, 1877 , † August 28, 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) was chairman of the Jewish Council in the ghetto during the German occupation after the attack on Poland from October 13, 1939 until his murder in August 1944 Łódź / Litzmannstadt .

Rumkowski as chairman of the Judenrat

Before the beginning of the Second World War Rumkowski was a textile entrepreneur, insurance agent and director of the Jewish orphanage "Helenówek" in Łódź. On October 13, 1939, the National Socialists appointed him "Jewish Elder" and commissioned him to found a Jewish Council . The members of this first Judenrat were arrested, deported and, for the most part, murdered on November 11, 1939 . Rumkowski himself was severely mistreated and forced to continue working together and to form a new Judenrat, in order to draw up a list of around 50,000 people who were to be deported to the Generalgouvernement .

Rumkowski as a speaker in the ghetto

As the head of the alleged “Jewish self-government”, he then tried to make the ghetto indispensable for the Nazi rulers in order to prevent imminent deportation. On April 5, 1940, he proposed to the administrative authorities that important war-related production facilities should be located in the ghetto, that existing textile factories should be expanded and that the workers should be fed and paid. In the ghetto he issued the slogan “Our only way is work”. However, this was reversed. The ghetto became a forced labor camp , in which a large part of the equipment for the Wehrmacht was manufactured. The workers did heavy labor and were poorly fed.

After the population of the ghetto had grown to around 158,000 in April 1940, he was ordered to select some of them for deportation to labor camps. As a result, the ghetto's population had shrunk to around 144,000 in the summer of 1941. In November 1941, however, another 20,000 Jews and around 5,000 Sinti and Roma were deported to the still overcrowded ghetto.

Despite the forced collaboration with the National Socialists, Rumkowski tried to make the life of his fellow sufferers easier and to maintain the appearance of normality. Together with Leon Rozenblatt , the head of the Jewish security service , and other employees, he was responsible for the organization of everyday life in the ghetto, including the allocation of food rations. He set up schools and hospitals, a police force and a postal service .

Rumkowski reported directly to the German administration of the ghetto , which had been under Hans Biebow since May 1, 1940 . In July 1940 Rumkowski announced self-censorship. After protests about the lack of food allocation, he declared a state of emergency on March 10, 1941 and sent around 1,000 people to "field work".

During a visit to the ghetto by Himmler on June 5, 1941, a propaganda photo was taken showing Rumkowski as a representative of the Jews (with a Jewish star ) together with German officers who had stood up to greet them.

In the period from January to September 1942, Rumkowski was forced to compile deportation lists (for transport to the Chełmno extermination camp ). First, he and his staff selected the residents of the “ gypsy camp ” as well as the old and the sick. When the National Socialist rulers demanded further deportations, he gave an audio document in September that parents should sacrifice their younger children so that at least the older children and family members could survive: “ I came to you like a robber to give you this to take what is most important to you. “At around the same time, a brutal raid by the Gestapo, ordered by Biebow, took place . Then the deportations stopped for the time being. Only about 89,500 people lived in the ghetto.

By order of Himmler, the ghetto was to be finally " dissolved ", ie liquidated, from May 1944 . After the Red Army had already advanced as far as the Vistula during Operation Bagration , Rumkowski announced on August 2 that the ghetto was to be "relocated", which meant nothing more than transport to the Auschwitz extermination camp. On August 28, 1944, Rumkowski was one of the last remaining Jews to be deported to Auschwitz, where he was most likely murdered on the same day.

Critical rating

Replacement money with Rumkowski's signature

Rumkowski remains a controversial person to this day. As the Jewish elder and head of the Judenrat, he was the recipient of orders and forced to collaborate. In the ghetto he appeared authoritarian with dictatorial features. The orders he issued on behalf of the German occupiers show traces of arrogance, with formulations such as “This is my last warning!” Or “I command ...”. The replacement bills ( ghetto money ) bore his signature and the postage stamps his portrait.

After the war, ghetto survivors reported that Rumkowski had abused his position in the ghetto for a variety of sexual abuse of young girls, women and boys.

Ghetto survivor Yehuada Leib Gerst describes him as follows in his memoir:

“He was an incomparable tyrant towards his fellow Jews, who behaved like a leader and spread terrible fear in anyone who dared to contradict his base motives. He was gentle as a lamb towards the perpetrators and there were no limits to his obedience to all of their commands, even if their aim was to wipe us all out. "

On the other hand, he tried to prevent the worst, but ultimately failed. Wolf Oschlies wrote the following rating after reviewing the documents:

“The Jew Rumkowski undoubtedly wanted to protect the Jews in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. In his opinion, he could do this best if he accommodated the Germans in three ways - with hard work by Jews for German economic interests, with hard discipline among the Jews so as not to give Germans an occasion for assault, and with hard personal conduct for the Germans thanks to their "Führer principle" was quite familiar. "

The Swedish journalist and writer Steve Sem-Sandberg writes in the afterword to his mostly document-based novel The Wretched of Łódź , which has been translated into numerous languages:

"If Lodz had been liberated by the German occupiers a few months earlier, Rumkowski would be celebrated today as the savior of his imprisoned compatriots and not condemned as the submissive henchman of the Nazi executioners."

Rumkowski was derisively dubbed Chaim I by the Jews in Lodz, according to Der Spiegel in the report on the Eichmann trial of 1961:

"Rumkowski's tactics were based primarily on the idea that the Germans would only pause with the complete liquidation of the Jews if the ghetto inhabitants destined for Chelmno, Auschwitz and Treblinka knew how to make themselves indispensable to the mass murderers - a plan, the Jewish king Chaim realized with the help of the business-savvy German ghetto administrator Hans Biebow from Bremen. "

The British historian Gerald Reitlinger is also ambivalent about Rumkowski:

“So in September 1942 he marched to the train station with the children requested by the Gestapo ... Even in August 1944, after almost one hundred thousand Lodz Jews had been 'resettled', he supported the devious (resettlement) call of the ( German) ghetto administrator Hans Biebow. On the other hand, Rumkowski's tactics were not entirely absurd: They made the ghetto so important for the German economics ministries that it lasted at least a year longer than Warsaw and Bialystok. ""

literature

Movie

  • Director: Peter Chohen , Bo Kuritzen : The Story of Chaim Rumkowski and the Jews of Lodz . Sweden, 1982, b / w, 55 min., English.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Materials for the special exhibition 1999–2000, subpage “Timeline Ghetto Lódź l” ( Memento from January 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Wolf Oschlies: The German "Ghetto Litzmannstadt" in the Polish city of Łód. In: Zukunft-bendet-erinnerung.de , September 18, 2005. Accessed August 22, 2018.
  3. ↑ Materials on the special exhibition, subpage "The Lódź Ghetto 1940–1944" (numbers)
  4. ^ Illustration by Wolf Oschlies: The German "Ghetto Litzmannstadt" in Łód, Poland. In: Zukunft-bendet-erinnerung.de , September 18, 2005. Accessed August 22, 2018.
  5. ↑ Materials for the special exhibition, "Ghetto Lódź Timeline"
  6. ↑ Materials for the special exhibition "The Lódź Ghetto 1940–1944"
  7. ^ BBC film documentary "Auschwitz: the nazis and the final solution", 2005.
  8. ↑ Lucille Eichengreen: Rumkowski, the Jewish elder from Lodz. Autobiographical report (Hamburg 2000)
  9. ↑ Michal Unger: Reassessment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski . Wallstein Verlag, 2004, p. 8.
  10. ↑ Steve Sem-Sandberg: The misery of Łódź. Novel. Stuttgart, 2011, p. 635.
  11. ↑ a b JUSTICE / EICHMANN: The trial . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1961 ( online ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rumkowski, Chaim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rumkowski, Mordechai Chaim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish Jew, from October 1939 chairman of the Judenrat in the Litzmannstadt ghetto
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1877
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp