Łódż Ghetto
United States, 1989; 118 mins.
Produced by Alan Adelson
Directed by Kathryn Taverna and Alan Adelson

The Łódż ghetto had several distinctions among the ghettos in formerly Polish territory. It was the first planned ghetto to be established, in February 1940; the first to be closed off from the surrounding city, in April 1940; and the last to be liquidated, from June to August 1944 (though its population was reduced by well over half by transports in 1942). It was second in size only to the Warsaw ghetto. Its economy was unusually vital, because German authorities valued the textiles it produced. Its governance, under Chaim Rumkowski, was memorably distinctive. And the experience of the Jewish inhabitants may be better documented for Łódż than for any other Nazi ghetto, with thousands of surviving photographs made by ghetto residents as well as the Germans' own films and photographs, and large collections of surviving writings and diaries from within the ghetto.

The film was made from these photographs and archival materials, at the same time that they were published in a book. The visual part of the film is made up predominantly of images from that time (the black-and-white movie clips and all the still photos, even those in color). The soundtrack consists of readings of materials left behind by the ghetto's occupants, together with a small amount of other contemporary material. (The voice of Rumkowski is rendered by Jerzy Kosinski, the novelist.)

By and large, a present-day perspective makes itself felt only in the selection, assembling and juxtaposing of what the ghetto inhabitants left for us, with a few supertitles indicating dates. The film is thus anything but analytical; there is little guidance on chronology, and no help in estimating the numbers of people involved in one event or another. But it offers a kind of direct access to parts of the ghetto experience that makes it one of the most effective of Holocaust documentaries.