Chaim rumkowski death penalty

The Second World War - Criminals - Jewish getto - Lodz - Poland

Jewish collaborators

Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski (1877-1944) was the chairman of the Jewish Council - JudenratJudenrat (Jewish Council or Jewish Council of Elders) - organizations established by Nazi German authorities during World War II with the task of administering Jewish communities and implementing German orders issued against them. In addition to collaborating with the occupier, most Judenrat also engaged in corruption and were aimed at the destruction of the Jewish population. Only a few of them undertook cooperation with partisans. - in the Łódź ghetto, established by Nazi Germany during the occupation of Poland.

This is what [Primo Levi] wrote about him in his memoirs The Drowned and the Saved (I sommersi e i salvati):

Rumkowski rose to power turning the ghetto into an industrial base that produced war supplies for the Wehrmacht under the mistaken belief that productivity was key to Jewish survival after the Holocaust. However, the Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944. All the surviving prisoners were sent to extermination camps after the disasters on the eastern front.

He was the absolute ruler of the ghetto, in which special "chaimka" and "rumek" money and postage stamps with his image were used. In return for the Germans' consent to his tyranny over the ghetto inhabitants, he diligently followed all German orders and sent most of his subjects to extermination camps.

Rumkowski was ruthless, using his position as head of the Judenrat to confiscate property and businesses that were still run in the ghetto by their rightful Jewish owners. On the orders of the Germans, Rumkowski gave the infamous speech on September 4, 1942, in which he appealed to the Jews in the ghetto to give up children aged 10 and over over 65, so that others might survive. The anonymous transcriber of Rumkowski’s speech noted that ;

Rumkowski took an active part in the deportations of Jews. Many historians and writers describe him as a traitor and a Nazi collaborator. Rumkowski always sought to meet the demands of the Nazis, with the help of his own Orpo Security Police if necessary. His rule, unlike the leaders of other ghettos, was characterized by the abuse of his own people and the physical liquidation of political opponents. He and his council had convenient rations and their own stores. He was known to get rid of those he personally disliked by sending them to camps.

He set up a harem in one of the villas and brought new, beautiful women. He sexually abused vulnerable girls whom he "cared for". Not being dependent on him meant the death of the captive. Holocaust survivor Lucille EichengreenLucille Eichengreen was a survivor of the Łódź Ghetto and the Nazi German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. She published From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. She frequently lectured on the Holocaust at libraries, schools and universities in the U.S. and Germany., who claimed to have been molested by him for months as a young woman working in his office, wrote:

Historian Michal Unger in his book Reassment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski , wrote:

In his memoirs, Jehuda Lejb Gerst described Rumkowski as a complex person:

Marek Edelman said about Rumkowski's activities:

After Rumkowski's visit to the Warsaw ghetto in May 1941, Emanuel Ringelblum in his Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto, September 1939 - January 1943, wrote:

Adam Czerniaków, president of the Warsaw Judenrat, with whom Rumkowski met in person during this visit, wrote about him in his diary:

There are conflicting accounts of Rumkowski's last moments. According to one of the contemporary sources, he was murdered after his arrival in Auschwitz(German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers and crematories; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of extermination of Poles and the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question. by the Jews of Łódź, who recognized him there and burned him alive in a furnace. However, this version of events has been questioned by historians. Another report, submitted by a member of the SonderkommandoSonderkommando - units created to perform special tasks, for example police and military units performing extermination tasks in relation to the jewish community, to service gas chambers and crematoria, created on the initiative of the Germans or the jewish administrations themselves in ghettos, which dealt with transporting their brothers to their extermination destinations, in return i.a. for protecting their loved ones and were especially hated by other Jews. from Hungary, Dov Paisiković, states that the Jews of Łódź secretly approached the Jews of the Sonderkommando and asked them to kill Rumkowski for the crimes he committed in the Łódź ghetto. They beat him to death in front of the gate to crematorium 2 and disposed of his body there.