Radegast Station – Łódź Ghetto Holocaust Memorial

Stacja Radegast – Pomnik Zagłady Litzmannstadt Getto

Between January 1942 and August 1944, the German authorities deported Jews and Sinti and Roma from the Łódź Ghetto to the Kulmhof and Auschwitz death camps – all of the transports departed from Radegast Station. Today, a memorial honours the victims of the ghetto and the deportations.

History

In the 19th Century, Łódź became the centre of the Polish textile industry and the city was home to a large Jewish community. On September 8, 1939, a few days after its attack on Poland, the German Wehrmacht invaded Łódź. The city was incorporated into the German Reich as part of the »Reichsgau Wartheland«. The Polish and Jewish inhabitants of the »Warthegau« were terrorised by the authorities, who planned to expel them from the region and replace them with »Volksdeutsche« – German nationals from Eastern Europe. In October 1939, Jews were no longer permitted to work in the textile trade; in November all of the city's synagogues were burned down. In February 1940, the authorities ordered the resettlement of all Jews to the poor quarter of Bałuty. A ghetto was established, and the Jewish population was to live there until its planned expulsion to the »Generalgouvernement«, the German-occupied, but not annexed part of Poland. The buildings in Bałuty were dilapidated, the quarter didn't have a sewage system or running water. On April 30, 1940, the ghetto was sealed off from the rest of the city. The isolated district was completely overcrowded – since 1940, Jews from western and central Europe had been deported to Litzmannstadt, as Łódź was called after April 1940. The ghetto was transformed into a »labour ghetto«. The Jews were forced to work for the German arms industry and for private companies both within the ghetto and outside of it. A »Judenrat« was installed by the German authorities, which coordinated forced labour deployment and the administration of the ghetto.
1941 marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Europe. Beginning January 1942, the SS deported Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to the Kulmhof (Polish: Chełmno) extermination camp where they were murdered in »gas vans«. Later, deportation trains from the Łódź Ghetto also went to Auschwitz.

Łódź, 2006, Deportation train next to the station buidling, Stiftung Denkmal, Uta Fröhlich

Łódź, 2006, Exhibition in the tunnel, Stiftung Denkmal, Uta Fröhlich

Victims

The living conditions in the sealed-off Łódź Ghetto gradually worsened. The inmates were hungry and they grew weaker and weaker, suffering of rapidly spreading diseases. The situation became even more acute when the SS brought a further 20,000 Jews from Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Cologne, Vienna, Prague and Luxembourg to the already crowded ghetto. In addition, about 5,000 Roma from the Austrian province of Burgenland were accommodated in a »Gypsy camp« within the ghetto.
The chairman of the »Judenrat«, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, organised the deportations by orders of the German authorities. He chose who would be deported and instructed the Jewish ghetto police to forcibly bring them to Radegast Station. Between January 1942 and July 1944, there were several waves of deportations to the Kulmhof extermination camp. At the beginning of September 1942, 16,000 ill and elderly people over 65 and children under ten were deported to Kulmhof. In all, the SS murdered about 80,000 people from the Łódź Ghetto in Kulmhof.
Later, the deportation trains from Łódź also went to Auschwitz. Until August 30, 1944, 61,000 people were deported there. Some 43,500 people died in the ghetto alone. They starved or died of illnesses. In the spring of 1944, the German authorities decided to dismantle the ghetto. Some few Jews remained there as part of a »clearance commando«. Only about 870 of the once 200,000 Jews of the city survived in hiding until the liberation by the Red Army on January 17, 1945.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

In 2005, the memorial was completed thanks to the Foundation Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense (Polish: Fundacja Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense) and donations from Poland and abroad. It commemorates not only the deportations but also calls into memory the conditions in the ghetto. Today, the former wood railway station building houses a museum which contains books with lists of names of those who were deported from Radegast Station to Kulmhof and Auschwitz. An original train of the German Reichsbahn with three cars as well as part of the former track system are on display next to the museum building. The monument shaped like a chimney bearing the inscription »Thou shalt not kill« was designed by Czesław Bielecki. A 140 metre long »Tunnel of the Deportees« presents transport lists of the deported Jews. The history of the ghetto is also presented in an exhibition. Furthermore, six symbolic gravestones bearing the names of German concentration and extermination camps also commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

Łódź, 2006, Entrance to the exhibition, Stiftung Denkmal, Uta Fröhlich

Łódź, 1940, Resettlement of Jews to the poor quarter of Bałuty, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, temporary exhibitions, guided tours, commemorative ceremonies

Open

Monday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Closed on Fridays

Contact

http://www.muzeumtradycji.pl

sekretariat@muzeumtradycji.pl

+48 (0)42 620 0590

al. Pamięci Ofiar Litzmannstadt Getto 12
91-859 Łódź

Łódź, undated, Memorial and Museum Radegast, Stiftung Denkmal

Łódź, undated, »Tunnel of the Deportees«, Stiftung Denkmal

Łódź, 1944, People being crowded into railway cars, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny

Łódź, undated, Partial view of the memorial site, Stiftung Denkmal

Łódź, undated, Symbolic gravestones bearing names of German concentration camps, Stiftung Denkmal

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