A Virtual Tour of Jewish Lodz

The Ghetto Field in the Lodz Cemetery

Between 1940 and 1944, approximately 43,000 burials took place in the spare part of the Lodz cemetery that became known as the "Pole Gettowa" or Ghetto Field. Many of those interred were victims of starvation, cold and disease (especially typhus); they included Jews from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg, who were transported to the ghetto in 1941, as well as Roma (Gypsies) who died in the "Gypsy Camp." The cemetery was the site of mass executions of Jews, Roma and non-Jewish Poles. The Germans forbade the use of stone grave markers, so burial sites were marked with metal bed frames or low cement posts. In recent years, a project was begun to place low concrete markers on the grave sites in the Ghetto Field. The Ghetto Field is marked by two large Ohels -- a brick construction marking the graves of rabbis, tzaddiks and spiritual masters of Chassidism -- covering the final resting place of the rabbinical dynasty of Pabianice and Sochaczew. The sign reads: