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Top
secret!
Establishment
of a Ghetto in the City of Lodz
In
Greater Lodz there are today 320,000 Jews* according to my
estimate. Their immediate evacuation is not possible. Thorough
investigations by all offices concerned indicate that it is
possible to collect all the Jews in a closed ghetto. The
Jewish question in the city of Lodz must be solved in the
following manner for the time being:
1.
The Jews living north of the line formed by Listopada
Street... will be collected in a closed ghetto. Firstly, an
area around the Freiheitsplatz, required for the
establishment of a German power center, will be cleansed of
Jews; and, secondly, the northern part of the city, which is
inhabited almost exclusively by Jews, will be included in the
ghetto.
2.
Jews fit for work living in other parts of the city of Lodz
will be collected for labor battalions, housed in barracks and
guarded.
Preparations
and execution of this plan will be carried out by a staff
which will include representatives of the following
authorities and offices:
1.
N.S.D.A.P. (Nazi Party)
2.
The [branch] office in Lodz of the Local Governor in Kalisch.
3.
The City Administration of Lodz (Departments of Housing,
Building, Health, Nutrition, etc.)
4.
Order Police
5.
Security Police
6.
Deaths Head Unit (Totenkopfverband) [of the SS]
7.
Chamber of Trade and Industry
8.
Finance Department
I
shall serve as Chairman of the Staff for this operation....
The
first task of the Staff will be to decide on borders of the
ghetto that is to be established, and the settling of problems
that will arise, such as the re-aligning of thoroughfares,
tramway lines, etc. Further, it is to be ascertained
immediately how many Germans and Poles still live in the area
of the future ghetto, and will have to be resettled. At the
same time, new apartments must be found for this group of
persons and made available in order to ensure that the
resettlement can be carried out without friction. As far as
the Germans are concerned, this will be done by the Party and
the City Administration; as regards the Poles, it will be done
by the City Administration alone....
After
the preparations have been completed and sufficient guard
personnel has been made available, the establishment of the
ghetto will be carried out all at once, on a date to be
decided by myself; this means that at a certain hour the
intended border line of the ghetto will be manned by the
guards provided for this purpose, and the streets closed by
means of barbed-wire barriers and other measures. At the same
time a start will be made on the blocking-up and sealing of
the fronts of houses at the edge of the ghetto by Jewish labor
to be taken from the ghetto. A Jewish autonomous
administration will be set up immediately in the ghetto,
consisting of the Jewish Elder (Judenaeltester) and a
much enlarged Community Council. This Council of the ghetto
must carry out the following tasks:
1.
Department of Nutrition...
2.
Department of Health...
3.
Department of Finance...
4.
Department of Security...
5.
Department of Housing...
6.
Department of Registration...
The
Nutrition Department of the city of Lodz will deliver the
required foodstuffs and fuel at locations in the ghetto still
to be decided, and hand these over to the representative of
the Jewish administration for distribution. The principle must
be that foodstuffs and fuel can be paid for only by means of
an exchange of materials, such as textiles, etc. In this way
we should succeed in getting from the Jews all their hoarded
and hidden items of value....
At
the same time, i.e., shortly after the establishment of the
ghetto, Jews living outside the ghetto who are unfit for work
are to be moved off into the ghetto (Security Police, Order
Police, City Administration). The apartments vacated in other
parts of the city as a result of the removal of the Jews must
be guarded against illegitimate interference. The strongest
measures are to be taken against Jews who carry out malicious
damage when they are forcibly moved from their apartments....
The
creation of the ghetto is, of course, only a temporary
measure. I reserve to myself the decision concerning the times
and the means by which the ghetto and with it the city of Lodz
will be cleansed of Jews. The final aim (Endziel) must
in any case bring about the total cauterization of this plague
spot.
signed
Uebelhoer
Eksterminacja,
pp. 77-81.
*
The City of Lodz, which housed the second-largest Jewish
population in Poland, was included in the areas annexed to the
Reich. According to the Record of Pinkas ha-Kehillot Polin,
I, Lodz ve-ha-Galil ("Encyclopaedia of Jewish
Communities, Poland, I, The Communities of Lodz and its
Region"), Jerusalem, 1976, p. 24, the estimated number of
Jews in Lodz in 1939 was 219,866. |
