Language:
German
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
55,9 (2007) 743-763
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Jews
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Commemoration
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
On the occasion of the dedication of a memorial to the Łódź ghetto in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of its liquidation, asks why this ghetto was until then almost ignored both in Germany and in Poland, as was the Chełmno death camp, where many of the ghetto's inmates were murdered. Part of the reason was that there was no heroic uprising in the Łódź ghetto; another was the problematic role of Chaim Rumkowski. The main reason, however, lies in the postwar history of Łódź, which was more antisemitic even than the rest of Poland. The communists fanned jealousy of the supposedly advantaged Jews in order to distract the workers from the misery caused by their own economic and political policies. In the course of the 1950s, they forced the emigration of a great majority of the Jews. They had no interest in keeping up the memory of the Holocaust. In Germany, suppression of the memory of the Łódź ghetto was part of the suppression of Holocaust memory in general in favor of the sufferings of the Germans; ethnic German refugees from Łódź contributed to this suppression. This, despite the fact that thousands of German Jews were deported to Łódź. Only in the 1990s did German researchers, and even later the public, begin to take an interest in the Łódź ghetto. Describes the memorial and the public criticism of it, especially by Jewish survivors.
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