Soviets Liberate Lodz: Only 900 of 200,000 Jews Survive
Soviet troops entered the Lodz ghetto on January 19, 1945, and found a ghost city. Of the 204,000 Jews who had been confined there at its peak, fewer than 900 remained alive, most hidden in bunkers or working in the final liquidation crews. The Nazis had run Lodz differently from other ghettos. Under the controversial leadership of Chaim Rumkowski, the 'Eldest of the Jews,' the ghetto became a massive industrial workshop producing uniforms and equipment for the Wehrmacht. Rumkowski believed that making the ghetto economically useful would save its inhabitants. It delayed the deportations but did not prevent them. Between 1942 and 1944, the SS transported over 70,000 residents to the Chelmno extermination camp and another 65,000 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rumkowski himself was sent to Auschwitz in August 1944 and murdered on arrival.
January 19, 1945
81 years ago
Key Figures & Places
Nazism
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Red Army
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Łódź ghetto
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Łódź ghetto
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Red Army
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Łódź Ghetto
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Nazism
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Klaus Barbie
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Gestapo
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Lyon
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War crime
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Bolivia
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World War II
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Łódź
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Ocupação japonesa da Birmânia
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