February 8, 1940
Order Establishes the Łódź Ghetto
Historical context
On this day, February 8, 1940, German authorities in Łódź ordered Jews into a ghetto. The ghetto was sealed on May 1.
Archive record
Read the event, then follow its documented sources and archive threads.
- Date
- February 8, 1940
- Verified sources
- 1
- Archive threads
- 6
On this day, German authorities ordered the Jews of Łódź into a designated quarter of the city. Łódź had been occupied in September 1939 and annexed to the Reich as Litzmannstadt. A December 1939 memorandum by Friedrich Übelhör had already outlined a closed ghetto.
Jews were forced to move in the weeks that followed. The ghetto was sealed on 1 May 1940. It became the second-largest ghetto in German-occupied Poland. The January 1945 Soviet entry is a separate story.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Lodz · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum · Holocaust Encyclopedia View source
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