Casting of the doorway surround from the Łódź ghetto Hospital No.1

Fiberglass casting of the entrance doorway surround of the Łódź ghetto Hospital No.1 (later the Helena Wolf Hospital), commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for installation in the museum’s permanent exhibition. On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland, and occupied Łódź the following week, renaming it Litzmannstadt. In February 1940, the German authorities established the Łódź ghetto in the existing slum of Baluty, and forced 160,000 Jews to relocate into one and a half square miles. The ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire fencing, and sealed on April 30. The authorities forced the Jewish residents to labor in textile factories, and the police exhibited brutal behavior towards them, and stole their valuables and other possessions. Most of the ghetto lacked running water or a sewer system, and overcrowding and starvation were rampant. The ghetto had seven hospitals, seven pharmacies, four clinics, and two emergency rooms. Hospital No.1 was located at 36 Lagiewnicka Street. The building was constructed for the National Health Service during the interwar period, and housed the Kasa Chorych Miasta Łódźi (Łódź City Hospital). Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski, chairman of the Jewish council in the ghetto, had an apartment in one of the wings. Beginning in December 1941, Jews were transported from the ghetto to Chelmno killing center, and another 600 people were killed inside of the ghetto. On the night of September 1, 1942, under the orders of German authorities, the Jewish Order Police began dragging patients from their beds into trucks waiting outside. Some escaped through hospital windows, but were later rounded up along with their family members. Afterwards, the building was repurposed to hold uniform tailoring workshops, and in August 1944, it began operating as a camp for the 600 Jews who remained in the ghetto until October, when they were sent for forced labor in Germany.