Lodz City Tour

Lodz. Piotrkowska Street.

Representative street of the city which is one of the longest commercial avenue in Europe (more than 4 km).

It is a cultural and commercial center of Łódź.

Since 2006, in Lodz rides over 100 rickshaws, which are produced in the local factory (also for export to London or Frankfurt).

Polish actor and director describes Piotrkowska in an interview from 2013:

"We did a great night shots on Piotrowska.

It was June, got warm. Illumination.

Street began to fill with beer gardens, along a pavement ran rickshaws.

When editor saw the pictures, he was convinced that they misplaced from another movie.

 

He wondered from where we have photos of Hong Kong."

Lodz. Jewish Cemetery.

On an area of over 40 hectares are buried about 160,000 people.

To this day, managed to gather data of approximately 90,000.

In the cemetery we can find the largest Jewish tomb in the world, the mausoleum of multimillionaire Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznański with a wonderful roof decorated with a mosaic of two million glasses.

Family graves of pianist Artur Rubinstein.

But there is also the tomb of the Red Army doctor with the title of Heroine of the Soviet Union, who died in Poland and the symbolic burial in honor of 40,000 anonymous Jews from the ghetto in Lodz.

On the monument is a plaque of black marble, on which the inscription is engraved in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish:

"Monument to the bright memory of the innocent victims, Jews of Łódź and the surrounding area who were murdered by the Nazi criminals in the ghettos and camps in 1939-1945. The memory of you will remain in our hearts forever."

According to tradition, on the cemetery are separate quarters for men and women and all the gravestones are directed to the east.

Lodz. Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

Radegast railway station.

Action Great Szpera.

Friday, 4th of September 1942.

From the memoirs of a teenage Jewish girl:

"Yesterday's tragic news, unfortunately, turns out to be true. Germany require all children under the age of 10, the elderly over the age of 65 and the other patients, swollen, crippled, unable to work and out of work. Panic in the town is incredible. Nowhere nobody works, all run for the allocation of work for those who still do not work, the parents of the unfortunate children are trying to save them by any means. Reported office, after the issuance of the list, was sealed so that any attempt to rescue in the form of falsification of metrics, books of registration, and other documents, and drafting of death certificates, fail."

Friday 4th of September 1942.

Speech of Judenrat Chairman Chaim Rumkowski:

"At my age, I have to spread out my hands and beg:

Brothers and sisters! Give it back to me! Fathers and mothers - give me back your children! (...) Yesterday afternoon they gave me the order to send more than 20,000 Jews out of the ghetto and if not, "we will do it." (...)

I will tell you a secret. They demanded 24,000 victims, 3,000 for each of the eight days. I won reduction of the number to 20,000 but only on the condition that they are children up to 10 years. Ten-year and older are safe! However, children and the elderly are only about 13,000 souls, so we have to compensate the difference with inpatients. I can barely speak. I'm exhausted. (...) A broken Jew stands front of you."

 

To the extermination camp, within eight days, were taken away all children under 10 years of age and those over 65 years (total 20,000).

Lodz. Mural with Artur Rubinstein.

Painted by the Brazilian painter shows a photograph of the famous pianist (who was born in the nineteenth century in Łódź), taken during his trip to the Berlin Zoo. The musician, associated only with classical music, simply pulls faces and playing his ears.

Lodz is called the Polish capital of murals and street art. For many years, to the city are invited the greatest artists of this trend, resulting in more than 30 works of large murals and placing Lodz among the top 5 street-art festivals in the world.

More interesting murals can be found apparently only in New York, but to Lodz arrives CNN to make reports about street-art, and in Polish regional television no one is going to shoot American walls...