baumwollnahzwirn khaki-sandfarben litmannnstadter fabrik fur NAHGARNE AG litzmannstadt 1941 – Khaki-colored cotton sewing thread spool from the Jewish factory “LFN Litzmannstädter” in the Lodz Ghetto, 1941.
Spools of this type were used by Jews to sew uniforms for two units of the German army. The Jewish Council saw the establishment of the workshops as a way to save the ghetto’s imprisoned population from starvation. The starving Jews of the ghetto were willing to work for meager food rations, as the alternative was to die of hunger. The thread before us, sewn for fur NAHGARNE AG, is khaki brown in color, and spools in green were used for German units fighting in South Africa. On the labels of those threads, it was written: “FÜR UNIFORMEN DER SÜDFRONT / AFRIKA.”
In the early years of the Lodz Ghetto, the Jews took the initiative to establish and operate over a hundred small and medium-sized factories, producing a variety of goods for the Germans in exchange for food. The Jewish Ältestenrat (Council of Elders), led by Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, set up factories in the ghetto, organized the work, and sought to secure orders from the Germans. The Jews viewed their work in these factories as a way to demonstrate their economic value to the Germans, hoping this would save them from deportation to extermination camps. These factories were commonly referred to by the Jews as “ressorts” (a shorthand for Arbeitsressorte – work sectors).
In May 1940, the first tailoring ressort was opened. “It employed 300 tailors who brought their sewing machines and worktables from their homes… There wasn’t enough work for everyone, so they were divided into two groups and worked in shifts. The first orders that came from the city were few and small.” Most of the early orders were fulfilled using raw materials sourced within the ghetto itself, as the Germans did not initially supply materials to the ressorts. The ressorts primarily produced items required for the Reich’s war economy. In October 1940, the German administration of the ghetto, led by Hans Biebow (head of the Nazi German administration in the Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland, executed on June 23, 1947), decided to participate in the establishment of production factories in the ghetto. By the end of 1940, customers expressed satisfaction with the products, and orders from the ressorts increased. The expansion of the ressorts continued in 1941. In January 1941, Biebow noted: “The excellent craftsmanship of the uniform tailors prompted the client, the navy… to entrust almost all the work exclusively to the ghetto… The best proof of fair and solid performance is the extremely low percentage of returned goods (out of hundreds of thousands of shirts for the army, only about 700 were returned)…” (Michal Unger, Lodz: The Last Ghetto in Poland, pp. 155-163).
Approximately 120 ressorts were established in the Lodz Ghetto, most of them in the textile sector, employing over 70,000 Jews. The ressorts alleviated the hardships of hunger, cold, and disease in the ghetto to some extent, but despite their existence, the majority of the ghetto’s population perished from starvation, disease, and deportations to extermination camps, which began in 1942. Tens of thousands of Jews were sent to their deaths. By June 1944, 77,000 people remained in the Lodz Ghetto. About 90% of them were employed in production factories. By August 1944, nearly all the Jews in the ghetto were deported to the Chelmno and Auschwitz extermination camps. Out of over 200,000 Jews in Lodz, only about 7,000 survived the concentration camps.
A 50-gram cotton thread spool, with the original ghetto manufacturing label. Height: 7 cm. Diameter: 4 cm. Unused. Very good condition.
