Analysis Of Chaim Rumkowski: Jewish Council Of The Lodz Ghetto

Chaim Rumkowski has been the topic of many books and documentaries, but no feature films have been made about the former Head of the Jewish Council of the Lodz Ghetto. There are many reasons that a feature film about Rumkowski has not been made yet. One reason was that there was a lot of controversy surrounding Rumkowski during his time as a leader in the Lodz Ghetto. No one can make a Holocaust survivor as a persecutor, but in some ways Rumkowski could look like that. In the way that in December of 1941 the Germans wanted 20,000 Jews to be resettled from the Lodz Ghetto, and the task of who would be resettled was given to Rumkowski (Cohen & Kuritzen, 1982). This would never be an easy choice for someone, and this was not a request but an

This disadvantage those living in the ghetto, because they were not able to take part in the black market like other ghettos were able to, and the black market could have provided the Jews in Lodz with more food, goods or anything they needed that they did not have access to in the ghetto. This makes it seem like Rumkowski is more on the side of the Nazis than the Jewish people living in the ghetto. This also shows how far Rumkowski took his leadership, since he named the currency after himself (Cohen & Kuritzen, 1982). Another thing that Rumkowski did that did not shine a good light on him, is that he berated Dr. Reicher when did not accept the request to joining the council as the one in charge of health in the ghetto (Horwitz, 23). Rumkowski did not like it when people went against his requests and started to criticize Dr. Reicher, and he used the term like “vermin,” and that term was used during this time to target Jewish people and dehumanize them (Horwitz, 23). This does not make Rumkowski look good, since he was a fellow Jew and was using terms that would have been insults to himself as well. It makes it seem as though Rumkowski thought of himself better and not like the others living in the

Take Schindler’s List, The Pianist, even as recent as The Zookeeper’s Wife along with many other feature films for example, they all depicted those who survived the Holocaust or helped save others from death. Though Chaim Rumkowski did all he could to keep those living in the Lodz Ghetto alive, in the end, nearly everyone from Lodz was sent to their deaths. The story of how Holocaust victims survived is what people want to see in the movies typically. Though feature films do add some details that are not true into the feature films, they still depict the true ending. In a feature film, they could not make an ending where the Lodz Ghetto ended up getting liberated by the Russians, like it could have been since the Russians were seventy-five miles away when they liberated Warsaw (Cohen & Kuritzen,