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Bulletin
No. 22
February
1, 1941
...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 ill-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....
D.
Dabrowska and L. Dobroszycki, eds., Kronika getta lodzkiego
("Lodz Ghetto Chronicle"), I, Lodz, 1965, p. 48.
*
Baluti - a poor quarter of Lodz inhabited mainly by Jews. It
was included in the area of the ghetto. |
