Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski was born in 1877 in Russia. His family relocated to Poland where he maintained an unsuccessful career as the director of an orphanage.

On October 13, 1939, the Nazi occupation authorities appointed him Judenrat Chairman in Łódź. In this position he reported directly to the Nazi ghetto administration headed by Hans Biebow and had direct responsibility for providing heat, work, food, housing, and health and welfare services to the ghetto population.

With 230,000 people confined to a very small area that had no farmland, food quickly became a problem. Since the Nazis insisted on having the ghetto pay for its own upkeep, money was needed. But how could Jews who were locked away from the rest of society and who had been stripped of all valuables make enough money for food and housing? Rumkowski believed that if the ghetto was transformed into an extremely useful workforce, then the Jews would be needed by the Nazis. Rumkowski believed that this usefulness would ensure that the Nazis would supply the ghetto with food.

   Read more at the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team website.