Address by Rumkowski to the Officials of the Judenrat
in Lodz
(February 1, 1941)
Bulletin No. 22
...Most of the propertied class left before the ghetto
was closed. Those who remained were: the middle class, the poor, and
the workers, who are to a large extent the element known as "the
people from Baluti."* This element in particular causes great difficulties
for the Community authorities, because it is i'll-disciplined and tends
to create chaos in the life of the ghetto. It forms a majority percentage
of the criminal population in the ghetto.
I have made it my aim to regulate life in the ghetto
at all costs. This aim can be achieved, first of all, by employment
for all. Therefore, my main slogan has been to give work to the greatest
possible number of people. It was not a simple matter to set up the
workshops. Great difficulty was caused by the fact that there were scarcely
any Jewish factories within the area of the ghetto. Despite that I succeeded
in establishing a series of work-places, factories, carpentry workshops,
a leather tannery, tailoring workshops, shoe-making workshops, establishments
for the production of the most varied goods... My workshops are now
already employing up to 10,000 workers. About 1,000 unskilled laborers
are employed on public projects. About 1,600 persons have already been
sent to work outside the ghetto; they use part of their wages to support
the families who have remained here and whom I pay a regular wage....
* Baluti – a poor quarter of Lodz inhabited mainly
by Jews. It was included in the area of the ghetto.
Sources: D. Dabrowska and L. Dobroszycki, eds., Kronika
getta lodzkiego ("Lodz Ghetto Chronicle"), I, Lodz, 1965,
p. 48. ; Yad Vashem |