Chaim Rumkowski

I suspect that the name Chaim Rumkowski will mean little to readers of The Rust but, in his own controversial way, he epitomised many of the historical difficulties of World War Two. A Jew, he made his name in Poland as an orphanage administrator before World War Two.

After the invasion of Poland which led to the declaration of War, under orders from Hitler, the Nazi Governor of Poland Hans Frank set up ghettos to isolate and exterminate the Jews.

To administer them puppet civic authorities called Judenrate were formed and the leader of the Łódź Judenrate  was ’King’ Chaim Rumkowksi.

It was the first and last ghetto and efficiently – under the authority of Rumkowski – provided a productive labour force for the Nazis so it lasted.

Rumkowski and his defenders claimed that he saved many Jewish lives but his detractors argue that he was self-serving, having his own food supply whilst the ghetto inhabitants starved.

His defenders refer to the leader of the Judenrate of Warsaw who – in overtly helping the ghetto Jews – was taken off to the camps.

This type of duplicity, of which Rumkowski is accused, occurred quite a bit in Nazi occupied Mainland Europe.

In France a mayor could change loyalty 5 times in a game of “ring and roses” and judged as a collaborator – or alternatively a Free French – depending on his timing.

Rumkowski did not make it to the end of the war, killed by a lynch mob on his arrival at Auschwitz.

I must disclose a personal element here as my late mother was born in Łódź.

Her mother escorted her to safety in 1941 but her mother, younger brother Romek aged 11, and her father did not survive.

I had thought the slaughter of Jews because of their religion would never happen again, but it did on October 7th 2024, perpetrated by Hamas.