Tragic Memories: the Jewish Cemetery of Łódź, Poland

Cmentarz Żydowski is north of downtown Łódź, near where the Jewish Ghetto was located in World War II. The cemetery has a long history. As summarized in the Jewish Łódź Cemetery web page:

The Cemetery at the Bracka Street in Lodz was established in 1892. About 160 000 people are buried there. Today the Cemetery has an area of 39,6 hectare. In more than 100 years of the history of the Cemetery many meritorious for our city and its history people like known rabbis, fabricants, physicians, politicians, social activists etc were buried at this Cemetery. Their tombstones often show high class of stone and metal craftworks. 

Also here are buried victims of one of the most tragic events in the history of the mankind - Holocaust.  On the part of the Cemetery called “Ghetto Field” some 43 000 victims from the Ghetto Lodz, who died from hunger and consumption, are buried there. On their graves seldom we can see a matzeva. To keep the memory about them, the Foundation cleaned this area in the years 2004 - 2009.  In spite of other works on the Cemetery, Ghetto Field was the most important and crucial to restore so, that the few still living descendants of the persons buried there, could put the matzeva on the graves of their love ones, and the Ghetto Field would receive the character of the military cemetery, as it in fact is.

The entrance on Bracka Street is a bit hard to find, but a GPS will direct you there. We overlapped with a holocaust remembrance event, during which two busloads to visitors rolled up soon after we arrived. A sign said, "No Photography," but the bus visitors were all using digital cameras and video equipment.

The cemetery was largely undamaged in World War II, which is unusual in Poland. And during the Communist era, it was mostly neglected. So the site today has largely returned to forest. Huge trees draped with vines cover much of the site, making it resemble the fanciful paintings of ruined classical temples being overcome by nature (known as capriccio), which were popular in the 1800s.

Many of the monuments are still upright, but thousands have fallen, the victims of tree roots or collapsing coffins beneath. Some stones have been cleaned by relatives, but many more are lichen- and mold-encrusted. But the artistic quality of the stone carving still shines through.

The cemetery goes on and on. You could spend hours exploring. In some area, volunteers have cleared underbrush within the last few years, but other areas are thickets of brush and tree saplings.

Do visit and spend some time contemplating one of the profound tragedies of the 20th century, the Holocaust.

The square photographs were taken with Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film in a Rolleiflex 3.5E twin lens reflex camera with a 75mm f/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens. Film development: Kodak HC-110 dilution "B", 4:45 at 68° F. The exposure range from the dark undergrowth to the sunny sky was at the limit of the Tri-X to record, and I had to modify the tone curve when I scanned the negatives with a Minolta ScanMulti medium format film scanner. I cleaned spots and lint with Pixelmator software on a Mac Mini computer.

Update March 2017:  During World War II, photographer Henryk Ross took photographers in and around the Jewish Ghetto at great risk to his life. He buried the negatives in the ground in 1944 to try to preserve them. A Washington Post article describes an exhibit of Ross's photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

Abandoned Textile Mills of Łódź

As I wrote in my previous article, Łódź, Poland, was once home to immense textile mills, making the city a major industrial center in the late 1800s and early 20th century. The city fell into major decline during the Great Depression and in World War II. During the communist era, the mills continued to function with captive markets in the Eastern Block. But the industry collapsed after the 1989-1990 fall of Communism because the industrial base had not been modernized and became uncompetitive in the international market. But the mill buildings remain. As of 2016, many have been redeveloped into technology centers, loft apartments, or malls. Some have been demolished, and some remain empty and semi-abandoned. Ten years ago, Łódź must have been an urban spelunker's paradise. But now, only a few of the unused mills seem accessible, although I am sure the local urban explorers know the interesting spots to visit.

This is an example of one of the former mills, this one visible from Ulica Przędzalniana. Some of these factory complexes extended for a kilometer. This building is unused, but just to its right (north), another factory had been converted into apartments. (By the way, we had fantastic weather in Poland. I used a polarizing filter to enhance the blue sky.)

This place off Księdza Biskupa Wincentego Tymienieckiego is beyond fixing. Many Polish names are like this - rather difficult for this foreigner to pronounce. Notice the quality of the brickwork. We learned that most of eastern Europe used brick for its industrial and monumental architecture. In western Europe, cathedrals were made of stone, but in eastern Europe, they were usually fantastic brick edifices. The quality of the craftsmanship was amazing. Even in the sewers of Łódź (great underground tour), the brickwork looked like artists embellished it to be visually perfect, even though only the sewer workers would ever see it. Remembers the sewer employees in the 1948 Orson Welles film, "The Third Man?" Similar teams of underground experts worked beneath Łódź. Regardless, that was the era when they built infrastructure to last and were proud of their work - in USA, we could sure use this philosophy.

We drove through a gate to visit this site, but a guard expelled us. No fun here.

This old factory, also off Księdza Biskupa Wincentego Tymienieckiego, may have been undergoing some sort of restoration or conversion.

Finally, across the side street from the previous factory, I found one with a pathway through the undergrowth. Aha, urban spelunkers have been here.

Notice how the original builders used reinforcing rods attached to iron rosettes to hold the walls together.

The stairs and halls were a bit intimidating, but they were reinforced concrete and still massive.

Amazing workrooms with concrete pillars. Three floors were reinforced like this, obviously designed to hold heavy machinery.

The urban artists have been at work.

The rooms in the tower would make fantastic loft apartments.

Anatewka Restaurant

All right, I couldn't resist. When you are done exploring abandoned factories, visit a pastry shop and have an espresso and pastry. After a few minutes digesting, take in a superb meal at Anatewka, which features classic eastern European Jewish cuisine. Yes, modern Poland is like this.

Click any photograph to expand it. These are digital images from my Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera with the Fuji 18-55mm and 14mm lenses.

Addendum: If you are interested in sewers, the web page sewerhistory.org: http://www.sewerhistory.org/photosgraphics/germany-poland-and-eastern-europe/ has an interesting discussion of sanitary sewer construction and culture in eastern Europe. You better be interested. That is where your stuff goes when you flush the loo.

Courtyards of Łódź

Łódź (in Yiddish, לאדזש‎, Lodzh) is an old textile industrial city in central Poland, about 130 km southwest of Warsaw. Łódź became an industrial powerhouse in the mid-late 19th century, when Jewish industrialists built immense textile mills to process cotton. Before our Civil War, much of the cotton came from the southern United States. The mills continued to thrive until World War II, when much of the production shut down. During the Communist era (1946-1989), the mills had a steady customer base in the Soviet block, but little investment was made in modernizing equipment and production processes. When Communism collapsed in 1989-1992, the mills were obsolete and could not compete in the international market. Many shut down, and Łódź became a grim Polish-style rust-belt city.

However, unlike most cities throughout Poland, Łódź did not suffer much destruction in World War II. The Jewish population was rounded up and exterminated in death camps, but the city did not suffer major bombing or warfare, sparing some amazing early 20th century architecture.

And Łódź is coming back! Because of the immense wealth generated by the textile industry, luxurious mansions coexisted with immense brick factories and old tenement houses. Many of the mills have been redeveloped as high tech think tanks, malls, or hotels. The arts thrive. Mansions have become museums. The main street through town, ulica Piotrkowski, throbs with cafes, restaurants, and boutiques. We were impressed at the activity, although there is still a lot of urban decay throughout the city.

The typical residential apartment in the city consisted of a short frontage along the street with two long arms extending back into the lot, much like a "U" shape. A passageway (tunnel) led into a courtyard, where residents had access to their stairwells. I assume that in the 1800s, latrines may have been located in the courtyards (as described by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער‎) in some of his pre-war novels (he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978). The two examples above are passageways off ulica Piotrkowska. The massive iron cones were designed to deflect wagon wheels.

During a recent trip to Łódź, my wife and I booked a couple of nights in Hostelik Wiktoriański at Sienkiewicza 40, near the main tourist area of the revived downtown. Come to find out, the lobby of the hostel faced the main street, but the rooms were in back in the courtyard. It was a bit gray and grimy, and not too welcoming. But the rooms were clean and the plumbing worked, and parking was free (for our tiny rental Opal) so we can't complain too much. A art-house cinema was in the building across the courtyard. I saw stacks of film cans in the lobby, so possibly they are trying to preserve films and project them optically (the old-fashioned way).

These buildings look like they have not had much upgrading over the years other than electrical work. Of course, now there is interior plumbing. And the windows are modern.

Great door. It has survived a century - how many people have passed through it? What drama, tragedy, or hope has it witnessed?

The hallways on the upper floors were pretty dingy. But the buildings had been massively built a century ago.

While I took this picture, a lady on her way to work came down the steps. She looked annoyed at me. She likely figured I was another one of those obnoxious tourists who stayed at the hostel. Sorry, this was too good of a chance to see inside one of these old buildings. 

The square pictures are scans of Kodak Tri-X film that I shot with a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera, equipped with the Schneider Xenotar 75mm ƒ/3.5 lens. I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 developer at dilution "B", 4:30 minutes at 68° F. I posted them at 2,400 pixels wide, so click any frame to see more detail.