Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski

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Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (1877 - 1944), Polish-Jewish industrialist and Zionist activist, functioned as the Nazi-nominated head of the Judenrat, or Jewish authorities in the Łódź Ghetto. Some remember him for his haunting and controversial speech, Give Me Your Children.

Before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, Rumkowski, a Russian Jew by origin, had had a career as an unsuccessful businessman and 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. He performed marriages when rabbis had to stop working, his name came to serve in the nickname of the ghetto's money, the Rumkie, and his face appeared in the ghetto postage-stamps.

Rumkowski and his family eventually suffered deportation and died in Auschwitz on August 28, 1944.

[edit] Debate over Rumkowski's role in the Holocaust

Due to his active role in the deportations and his iron rule, Rumkowski's behavior remains a topic of bitter debate.

Some historians and writers see him as a traitor and as a Nazi collaborator. In all his activities, Rumkowski displayed great zeal and organisational ability, becoming increasingly dictatorial and ruling with an iron hand. Within the ghetto, Rumkowski overcame opposition with the aid of Nazi intervention and introduced an even-handed system of food distribution. His attempts to perfectly satisfy all Nazi demands and to set up a model ghetto earned him comments such as "a man sick with megalomania", "King Chaim", "an old man of 70, extraordinarily ambitious and pretty nutty".

Others say that Rumkowski believed that some ghetto Jews would survive the war if they worked for the Nazis. They argue that Rumkowski believed that in order to save the majority of people in the ghetto, his people had to cooperate with the Nazis' deportation demands. Following the setting up of the extermination camp at Chełmno in 1941, the Nazis forced Rumkowski to organize the deportation of some of the ghetto population. Rumkowski claimed that he tried to convince the Nazis to cut down the number of Jews required for deportation and failed. Nevertheless, an estimated number of 5,000 to 10,000 Jews gave him some credit for their survival, and the Łódź ghetto lasted longer than other such establishments in occupied Poland. The Lodz ghetto was also the only ghetto not controlled by the SS.

It remains unclear whether, if he had survived the war, Rumkowski would have received thanks for saving the people he did, or a jail-term for allowing so many to go to their deaths. Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, in his book The Drowned and the Saved gives considerable consideration to Rumkowski concluding that we forget that "we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting." At best, Levi viewed Rumkowski as morally ambiguous and self deluded.

[edit] Give Me Your Children

Rumkowski's "Give Me Your Children" speech pleaded with the Jews in the ghetto to give up children of ten years of age and younger, as well as the old and the sick, so that others might survive. Some commentators see this speech as exemplifying aspects of the Holocaust.