Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982

Conditions in Łódż Ghetto

When we came in there, that was a whole Jewish independent government. The Germans never came into that ghetto. They had their headquarters in a pla...in a plaza with barracks and they never came in there. They depended on all for the Jewish police and the, the Judenrat that they run the whole. And they had factories organized to work all for, for their army, like uniforms and shoes and all kinda things for the army. And every ten days people got a ration, which was part only enough for two days to eat for a person under normal, under normal conditions. And whoever could survive could survive. There was people, and whoever died, died. People died there just for nothing. People went to bed--young people--they didn't wake up in the morning. So they put us to work, everybody to his trade. And I met there some of my mother's family. And I--they took me in for a few days. Then I met a man who, he was a lot older than me and he knew my family from home and he--they took away his wife and all his family. He said, "Why should you stay with strange people?" So we moved together. And I stayed with him for, for, as long as I was in that, in that ghetto. That was a very depressing time, a very--you were already separate, you didn't have already nobody. The whole family, you didn't have nobody. Just, just by yourself. Always hungry. You have to go to work, you have to come home. It was just a very purposeful life, with no purpose whatsoever...

Where...

...all kind of stupid rumors were spreading....

Stupid rumors?

Yeah, you people didn't know nothing. No newspaper, no radio, no--they didn't know even if the Russians--if a strange army would be thirty miles away, it was so isolated, it's un...undescribable how it was isolated. So I lived under those conditions from Aug...from August 1942 'til, 'til February or March 194...44 which is about a year and a half or so.


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