The first known Jewish settlers of Łódź, a baker and a tailor, arrived in the Polish village in the late 1700s. Within the next decade, the region was annexed to the Prussian (German) Empire. The Jewish community grew and built its first synagogue in 1809, followed by the first Jewish cemetery in 1811. In 1815 the region became part of the Russian Empire and would be subject to Russian administration for the next hundred years.

Over the following decades Łódź became more and more industrialized, earning the nickname “Polish Manchester” for its many textile factories. Economic opportunities attracted immigrants from across Europe, adding to the diverse population of ethnic Poles, Germans and Jews. By the end of the 1800s, the Jewish population reached more than 98,000—nearly a third of the city’s total residents.

Within the Jewish community, some maintained traditional Orthodox beliefs while others followed Reform Judaism. Adherents of Reform Judaism were more likely to belong to the middle and upper classes.  Jews owned about 60 percent of the textile shops and warehouses in the city. By contrast, many Jewish factory laborers lived in the impoverished suburb of Bałuty where they worked in sweatshops.

By the early 1900s the diverse Jewish population of Łódź enjoyed a thriving culture which included multiple libraries, theaters and two Yiddish-language newspapers. Many organizations promoted the use of the Yiddish and Hebrew languages, especially in support of the active Zionist movement that sought to establish an independent Jewish state.

Survivors Henri Cramarz and David Konstat were born in Łódź in the early 1900s, a time when the city still belonged to the Russian Empire. Konstat’s father served in World War I (1914-1918) as a soldier in the Russian army. In 1915, Łódź was occupied by German troops and many of its factories were plundered for equipment.

After the war, Łódź was incorporated into the new Polish Republic. Survivor Frank Gorme remembered growing up in “a fantastic city” where his family lived in a primarily Yiddish-speaking neighborhood. Other Jewish families, including the family of Survivor Helen Colin, lived in non-Jewish neighborhoods and spoke Polish at home.

Regardless of language, many survivors remembered the important role that religion played in their communities. Colin recalled that the shul where her family attended services was “very active” and “very close knit like … a family.” Boys in Łódź were often sent to private schools for Jewish religious instruction while most Jewish girls attended public schools. An exception, Survivor Esther Davidson attended a Beis Yaacov religious school for girls.

Although the Jews of Poland had known antisemitism for centuries, attacks against Jews increased after Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of neighboring Germany in 1933. Survivor Bernard Gerszon remembered a pogrom in 1936 when members of the Polish antisemitic National Democracy (Endek) party “beat up Jews in the street in the middle of the day and broke windows, put houses to fire.”

Nazi forces occupied Łódź on September 8, 1939. Within a few months, the approximately 233,000 Jewish residents of the city were required to mark their clothing with a yellow Star of David. Survivor Walter Kase recalled, “You stopped being a person. You became a thing that the foreign power, the Nazi war machine, could do with anything they wanted.” By the end of the year a ghetto was created around the impoverished area of Bałuty, with multiple families crowded into one apartment.

Deportations to the Chełmno killing center began in January 1942. Those left behind faced starvation and disease. In August 1944 any surviving inhabitants were sent to Auschwitz. What was once the second-largest Jewish community in Poland had been annihilated. When Survivor Helen Colin returned to Poland after the war to look for the Jewish cemetery she found only a potato field.