A Handwritten Map of the Lodz Ghetto - Early 1940's

A Handwritten Map of the Lodz Ghetto - Early 1940's

WOHNGEBIET DER JUDEN IN LITZMANNSTADT [The residential area of the Jews in Litzmannstadt - the German name for the Lodz Ghetto] - a map of the Lodz Ghetto. The map includes,  in addition to the roads inhabited by Jews, alleyways and neighborhoods in the Ghetto, landmarks of hotels, faculties, soup kitchens, stores, the post office, holy sites, the G.V. offices. On the bottom right is a key in Polish handwriting with the symbols of the various points. The map was sketched in three colors black, green and red and in pencil. 

The map was sketched by a Jew [a Holocaust survivor], a resident of the Ghetto while he lived in the Ghetto and was used to find his way and for escaping from the S.S. The Jew who drew up the map survived the Holocaust after joining a group of partisans. In the years after his immigration to Israel he was active in various frameworks to commemorate the Holocaust, gave video testimony in Yad Vashem, and even received a governmental prize for his activities. His family requested for his name to remain unpublished. There is another known printed map which is similar [but not identical] which appears in the archive of the Ghetto Fighters' Museum and is numbered 11850. That map is of German origins, and may have been used when drawing up this map. The basis of the map may be printed but he drew most of it by hand. 

Ghetto Lodz was one of the largest ghettos in occupied Poland, it was the second ghetto established after the Piotrkow Ghetto, and the last one to be liquidated in 1944. The area of the ghetto depicted on the map before us is only 4 sq. m., 2.5 sq. m. of which are built up. Over 165,000 of  the Jewish residents of Lodz and the surrounding area were squashed into this area, along with another 40,000 Jews deported from Germany, Austria and other areas. 

Size: 55x40 cm. Folding marks, paint stains, aging stains, remnants of wax which dripped from a candle. 

Fine condition.