There are as many stories as there are people.

Although most of us are no longer working in the i24 offices, Jeff still works there every day.

We were office neighbours and loved teasing each other. His side of the hallway was jokingly referred to as the “Jewish Ghetto”, and mine, the “Gay Ghetto”.

However, one day while stopping by his office, he told me that his mother was interviewed by CBS Morning about her family’s experience during the war while being confined to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. The joke took a dark turn.

I learned a lot about the Lodz Ghetto from Jeff’s story. It’s one thing to read or hear about the Holocaust via books and documentaries, but very much more visceral when hearing it through the words of someone who was intimately touched by it.

Jeff told me that Chip Reid, the national correspondent for CBS News, interviewed his mother, Krysia Rosenstein.

They did a feature on her discovery of family photos from the Lodz Ghetto in Poland for CBS Sunday Morning.

Later at lunch, Jeff filled me in on the story.

His mother and sister went to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto to view the exhibit, Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross

“Having an official camera, I was able to capture all the tragic period in the Lodz Ghetto. I did it knowing that if I were caught my family and I would be tortured and killed.” – Henryk Ross

When they entered the last room, Krysia was shocked to see the image of herself with her father and mother. She had seen photos of her family in the ghetto before, but this was the first time she saw the three together.

When the curator of the exhibit found this out, she made sure that Krysia received a copy of the photo as well as Henryk Ross’ book.

Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross

Krysia’s Lodz Ghetto Story

Jeff’s mother, Krysia, was one of only four children who survived the Lodz Ghetto in Poland.

In her words, the early days of the ghetto were hard but bearable.

She knew nothing else and the residents tried to keep things as normal as possible.

This photo (below) seems surreal when you consider where and when it was taken.

It speaks to the resiliency of the human spirit.

After 1942, things took a dark turn as the “Children’s Action” began.

The Nazis appointed Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Council of Elders in the Łódź Ghetto.

He accrued a lot of power as he transformed the ghetto into a manufacturing centre of war supplies.

He had the mistaken belief that productivity was the key to Jewish survival beyond the Holocaust.

On September 4, 1942, on German orders, Rumkowski assembled the Jews in the ghetto.

He told the assembled they must give up their children (10 years and younger) as well as the elderly over 65.

He delivered the speech that has since been referred to as the infamous “Give Me Your Children”. (excerpt)

Rumkowski assembled the Jews in the Lodz ghetto

A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They [the Germans] are asking us to give up the best we possess – the children and the elderly.

I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I’ve lived and breathed with children, I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands.

In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters! Hand them over to me!

Fathers and mothers: Give me your children!

— Chaim Rumkowski, September 4, 1942

Older men and women darkened their grey hair with coffee.

Sick people dragged themselves out of bed and used makeup to brighten their faces. Children tried to hide, with their parents’ help.

Sick people dragged themselves out of bed and used makeup to brighten their faces.

Children tried to hide, with their parents’ help. (Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City)

On September 13, the Nazis announced that the deportation was over.

15,859 people had been packed into trains, taken to the Chelmno Extermination Camp and killed. A further 600 had been shot within the ghetto itself.

Jeff’s Grandfather, Jakob Stopnicki secretly dig bunkers throughout the ghetto where he hid his wife, Tania and child, Krysia.

They hid for nearly three years as he worked as a slave labourer.

By late 1944, the ghetto was emptied save for under 900 people who were commanded to remain and do the cleanup. Among them was Jeff’s grandfather, Jakob.

Jakob, Tania and Krysia were three of the of the 877 people that remained in Lodz when the Russian soldiers overran it in January of 1945.

This was all that was left of a peak population of 240,000.

Lodz Ghetto and Henryk Ross Resources

Memories unearthed from the Lodz Ghetto CBS Sunday Morning

This is the under seven-minute interview Krysia Rosenstein gives to Chip Reid on Sunday Morning News. Also interviewed was 94-year-old, Abraham Neuman who also survived Lodz ghetto.

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An all-seeing I: A closer look at the AGO’s sombre Lodz Ghetto photo exhibit

The review of the Memory Unearthed exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario by James Adams for the Globe and Mail.

The article contains more information about Ross as well as life in the ghetto.

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The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross | AGO

A detailed walk through of the exhibit that includes teacher and student resource.

The Long-Lost Powder Compact

The story of Jeff’s sister, Tina and her husband discover thought to be lost family heirloom – a small silver powder compact that once belonged to Tina’s grandparents, Jakob and Tania Stopnicki. Jakob gave his wife, Tania the powder compact as a gift, for which he traded his daily ration of bread.

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