Mordechai chaim rumkowski biography of abraham

  • Another positive factor in assessing Rumkowski's conduct was that the Lodz ghetto, the second largest in Poland, remained in existence longer than any other.
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    Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski

    Lodz Ghetto - Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski with driver- (USHMM)

    Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski was born on March 27, , in the by of Illino, Byelorussia. He received only a minimal formal education. He was a partner in a large velvet factory in Lodz before the First World War, but this venture was a failure, as was a subsequent business venture. However, he found that communal work, particularly in the field of child welfare, more successfully channeled his great energy and boundless ambition.

    He organised the well-known orphanage in Helenowek, near Lodz and served as its Director until From , onwards, he served on the Lodz kehillah, the Jewish Community Council, leading its Zionist faction. After the German occupation of Lodz, in , the kehillah was replaced bygd a Council of Elders, and Rumkowski was appointed its chairman, the Eldest of the Jews, on October 13, With the establishment of the  Lodz Ghetto, he became its virtual ruler. Rumkowski w

  • mordechai chaim rumkowski biography of abraham

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    &#;The President of the Judenrat's veins stood out in his throat, and on his forehead&#; `I know that sometimes you have to cut off a gangrened arm to save the rest of the body. Look at me. My whole life has been devoted to the welfare of children. But even I have to let a newborn baby die in order to save the mother's life. Now we have to give them fifty people, so that our dear Jewish children, our hope, our future, can live. Be brave! When a great boat is sinking, like the Titanic, not everybody can get into the lifeboats. Some have to stay behind.'

    `But the captain of the Titanic went down with his ship.'

    `Who said that? Who dared?'&#;

    The words are fictitious, a passage from the novel &#;King of the Jews&#; by Leslie Epstein, but the source is apparent. The protagonist of the book, I. C. Trumpelman, is obviously based upon the character of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, and the unnamed town's ghetto which he rules is equally clearly rooted in that of Lodz. The e

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    The Agony of the Lodz Ghetto,

    by Abraham J. Peck

    Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed. The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1xviii, pages.

    I

    Lodz was the last of the great Polish cities to be founded and the first since the age of Jewish emancipation to create, under Nazi rule, a self-contained ghetto for its Jews.

    But in the years between its beginnings and the end of its active existence as an autonomous Polish city, Lodz stood apart from the other great metropolitan centers of Poland. When the city received its official charter in , Jews had already been a part of its development for over a quarter of a century. By , nearly a quarter of a million Jews ran the city's newspapers, its commercial businesses, and its free professions. But in this "city of nationalities' " another group besides the Jews played a vital role in its social and economic life. These were ethnic Germans, who had come to Lodz as early as to develop its manufacturing, and by they nu