Attempts to take action in a coerced community: petitions to the Jewish Council in the Lodz ghetto during World War II

The Lodz ghetto which existed from April 1940 until July 1944 was the second largest and longest running ghetto in German-occupied Eastern Europe. It was only in the second half of 1941 that the Nazi leadership decided to systematically murder the European Jews. In the city of Lodz the German city commissioner enforced the establishment of the Jewish Council with Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski as its head. He established a secretariat for petitions and complaints. Jewish people started to write petitions almost immediately and the volume increased after its establishment