"Give me your children"

4th September 1942: The SS demand that the Jews in the Lodz Ghetto co-operate in sending their children to the killing centre at Chelmno, where they will be gassed

Children in the Lodz ghetto, hunger was a very serious problem and many died from malnutrition and starvation. From a series of images documenting the Lodz ghetto, secretly taken by Henryk Ross and buried for safe keeping until after the war.

Young children playing on the streets of the Lodz ghetto.

One of the cruelest aspects of the Holocaust was the way the Nazis manipulated their victims into co-operating in their own demise. In every ghetto they appointed a Jewish council - a Judenrat - to administer civil affairs on their behalf. The Jews themselves became responsible for implementing the demands of the Nazis. At first this amounted to registering people, organising work, organising the distribution of food.

Then as the deportations to the death camps began the Judenrat were expected to select the individuals who would be 'resettled in the East'. At first the thin fiction that people were genuinely going to be 'resettled’ was maintained. But as the deportations continued more and more people left the ghetto on cattle trucks, never to be heard from again. Few now clung to the illusion that deportation was anything other than a death sentence

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski and other officials pose for a group portrait in the Jewish Council's headquarters, Lodz Ghetto, January 1941.

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In the Lodz ghetto, the Chairman of the Judenrat was Chaim Rumkowski, a man who firmly believed that by dealing with the Nazis he could mitigate the worst of their persecutions. He established the Lodz ghetto as a centre of numerous workshops that produced goods for the German war effort - believing that by making themselves useful they would be spared.

Yet his belief that he could deal with the Nazis was being undermined. On the 2nd September the Nazis had demanded that the sick from the hospitals be deported. Now they demanded most of the children under ten.

The crowd gathered in the Lodz ghetto¹ noticed that Chaim Rumkowski had physically changed, becoming white haired and haggard over the course of a few days. As he stood to address them in the late afternoon of the 4th September 1942, it became apparent why:

A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They are asking us to give up the best we possess ... the children and the elderly.

I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I’ve lived and breathed with children.

I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters, hand them over to me!

Fathers and mothers, give me your children! [Transciber's note - Horrible, terrifying wailing among the assembled crowd.]

‘I must perform this difficult and bloody operation - I must cut off limbs in order to save the body itself - I must take children because, if not, others may be taken as well, God forbid.’

I had a suspicion something was about to befall us. I anticipated “something” and was always like a watchman on guard to prevent it. But I was unsuccessful because I did not know what was threatening us.

I did not know the nature of the danger. The taking of the sick from the hospitals caught me completely by surprise. And I give you the best proof there is of this: I had my own nearest and dearest among them, and I could do nothing for them.
I thought that that would be the end of it, that after that they’d leave us in peace, the peace for which I long so much, for which I’ve always worked, which has been my goal. But something else, it turned out, was destined for us.

Such is the fate of the Jews: always more suffering and always worse suffering, especially in times of war.

Yesterday afternoon, they gave me the order to send more than 20,000 Jews out of the ghetto, and if not - “We will do itl” So, the question became: “Should we take it upon ourselves, do it ourselves, or leave it for others to do?"

Well, we - that is, I and my closest associates - thought first not about “How many will perish?” but “How many is it possible to save?" And we reached the conclusion that, however hard it would be for us, we should take the implementation of this order into our own hands.

I must perform this difficult and bloody operation - I must cut off limbs in order to save the body itself - I must take children because, if not, others may be taken as well, God forbid.

[Horrible wailing.]

Children are collected to be taken to the cattle wagons for their final journey.

Despite Rumkowski’s appeal co-operation amongst the ghetto residents was far from complete. Many sought to hide their children.

Over the next five days the SS came into the ghetto and sealed it off block by block as they searched for anyone hidden. Anyone resisting in any way was shot. Over 500 people were killed during these searches.

Then, having collected thousands of children under ten along with the sick and infirm, they were put on the cattle wagons to Chelmo. Some 37 miles away the killing centre was very well organised. After removing their clothes the detainees were asked to get into the back of vans that would ‘take them to the showers’, prior to their onward journey for resettlement.

When the vans were packed with children the lorries started up. The diesel engine’s exhaust pipe was already directed into the back of the van. After an agonising struggle with poisoning and asphyxia, lasting up to fifteen minutes, all were dead.

Children talking through the fence of the central prison on Czarneck Street prior to deportation. (Henryk Ross)

Between September 5 and 12, a general curfew was imposed in Lodz (called an Allegemeine Gehsperre or simply Sperre in German). During this period, the Gestapo and the police carried out selections and deportations with the help of the security service and the Sonderkommando. Jews who attempted to escape or offered resistance (often mothers wanting to save their children) were shot on the spot. According to Gestapo figures and the Lodz ghetto chronicle, 15,700 inhabitants of the Lodz ghetto were deported to Chelmno between September 1 and 12, 1942.

1. Chronicle of Lodz Ghetto, 1941-44.

For more on the life of children in the Lodz ghetto see USHMM