Those who were still alive in the Łódź ghetto after the mass transports in 1944 were either in hiding or belonged to one of two groups. At least 662 Jews[1] were housed in 16 Jakuba (Rembrandt) Street, and had to clear the ghetto of its former residents’ belongings, dismantle the ghetto’s workshop and housing, and bring it for shipment to the Radegast (Radogoszcz) train station, at the ghetto’s northern border.[2]
Another group of 605 Jews[3] was housed at 36 Łagiewnicka (Hanseaten) Street, the former ghetto’s main hospital,[4] now a production site for Behelfsheimbauten (provisional housing), owned by Kelterborn & Stenvers, a Berlin-based company. It was one of the few workshops still running in the ghetto in the autumn of 1944, and was slated for transfer to the Sachsenhausen subcamp Königswusterhausen on the outskirts of Berlin, with Hans Biebow, head of the German ghetto administration at the helm.[5]
The assembly of the Jews at 36 Łagiewnicka Street, was supervised by Aron Yakubowicz,[6] former head of the central office of workshops in the ghetto and deputy to Chaim Rumkowski, former head of the Jewish council in the ghetto, who by this time had already lost his life in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The group was made up of skilled workers, managers of former workshops, artists, and doctors and their families....