Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto scrip, 5 mark coin, saved by a ghetto resident

Halina Wolman (1922-1998) was born on May 23, 1922 in Sieradz, Poland to Aron Wolman (d. 1941) and Mindla Majerczak Wolman and had a brother Izydor Józik (b. September 8, 1923). They lived in Łódź until May 1940, when all Łódź Jews were forced into a ghetto. Halina worked in the ghetto hospital as a nurse and Józik found employment in the ghetto pharmacy. Dawid Sierakowiak was Józik’s good friend. From 1940 to September 1942, the health department of the ghetto ran five to seven hospitals, five pharmacies, and several infirmaries. Aron died in the ghetto, probably in the winter of 1941. On August 30, 1944, during the final liquidation of the Łódź ghetto, Halina, Józik and their mother, Mindla were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Halina was chosen for work and her brother and mother were killed on arrival. In October 1944 Halina was transferred to Stutthof concentration camp and placed in Stulp (Slupsk), a sub-camp of Stutthof. Maryna Diamant, an acquaintance from the ghetto, placed Halina to work in the camp kitchen. Halina’s leg was wounded and the kitchen job, peeling potatoes, saved her life. In January 1945 the Germans started to evacuate the Stutthof prisoners. During this death march Halina and her friend, Renata Milerad, escaped the marching column and hid in a barn. Two days later the Red Army liberated the area in January 1945. Halina returned to her hometown and in the rubble of the ghetto she found a few photographs, among them the photographs of her brother Józik while he worked in the ghetto pharmacy. In 1947 Halina met and she married Eliasz Chaim Orensztajn (b. October 4, 1917 in Lublin), who later changed his name to Henryk Orski. His father, Jankel Orensztajn was a leather merchant and died in 1930. Henryk’s mother, Nesia Cukierkopf Orensztajn and his sister Sara, perished in Majdanek death camp in 1942. Henryk was active in the Polish Communist Party and was imprisoned in Bereza Kartuska and in Tarnow before the war. He survived the war in the USSR, where he joined the Polish Army. The Orski family, which included Jozef (b. 1947) and Maja (b. 1950), lived in Warsaw, where Halina continued to teach in a nursing school and worked as a nurse, and Henryk was history teacher and later principal of a high school. In November 1968 the Orski family left Poland and settled in Stockholm, Sweden. Jozef Orski married Barbara Klajn Orski and they had a daughter, Monika. Maja Orski Klamra, Jozef’s younger sister, married Wlodzimierz Klamra and they had two sons: Jakob and Mikael.

The coin was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2003 by Wowka Klamra, the son-in-law of Halina Wolman Orski.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Wowka Klamra

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.