Notice of achievement received by a boy in a Łódź ghetto orphanage

No restrictions on access Jakub (Jakob) Lapides was born on November 15, 1928, in Łódź, Poland. He had three siblings: Mosze (Moshe) born 1925, Sara, born 1926, and Miriam, born 1932. Their parents died in the late 1930s and the children were placed in orphanages. Łódź was occupied by German troops one week after Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The city was renamed Litzmannstadt and in February 1940, the Jews were forced into a ghetto in a small section of the city. For a while, this actually improved the children's living conditions because the chairman of the Jewish council, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, arranged for children in orphanages to get extra food rations. The children in the orphanage did not have to go out and work, although they were responsible for chores around the home. Rumkowski asked members of the Beirat to adopt some of the children and Jakob’s sister, Sara, was adopted by a family. During the Gehsperre Aktion in September 1942, when large numbers of children and the elderly were targeted for deportation to concentration camps by the Germans, Jakob and his siblings fled the orphanage and hid in the cemetery. While they were hiding, they saw men bring huge soup pots into the courtyard of the orphanage. Unable to resist their hunger, they ran over and got in the food line. While they were waiting, Germans trucks drove in. They had not gotten their food yet, but Jakob remembered saying to his siblings: “let’s go back to the cemetery. I went back. But not Moshe, and not Miriam, they did not come back. I saw that they boarded the trucks.” He stayed hidden in the cemetery for two days, but could hear “noises and screams coming from far away from the ghetto.” He finally decided to go live with his maternal aunt, Lola, because the orphanage no longer existed. She lived with her four year daughter, Mania, who lived with Jakob’s grandmother, ZIsi, and another aunt, Reisel. During the Aktion, Jewish policeman had come and ordered everyone to go down to the courtyard. Lola hid Mania in the attic and went down, but their grandmother was bedridden and could not walk down. The policeman went up to search the building and, finding the grandmother in bed, threw her out the window onto a cart filled with corpses. He found work in a leather and saddler workshop, and later, in a sausage making factory. While there, he got seriously ill from eating spoiled horse meat, but he was so hungry that he continued to eat it. He joined a Communist youth group. Then in March 1944, he was deported to a HASAG concentration camp in Czestochowa. HASAG [Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft], was the third largest consumer of forced and slave labor during the war; it produced infantry rocket launchers and other munitions. Jakub was at this camp when it was liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945. Jakob returned to Łódź and took a job in a bakery so he would never be hungry again. Eventually he returned to school, graduating from high school and continuing to college where he earned an engineering degree. He married a fellow survivor and they had two sons. In 1957, the family emigrated to Israel. Jakob died, age 77, in 2005. Picture postcard presented to 12 year old Jakub Lapides in the school he attended in the Jewish ghetto in Łódź, Poland, from 1939-1942. It recognizes his contribution to student self-government in the orphanage from August-September 1940. Jakub and his three siblings were living in an orphanage in Łódź, Poland, when it was occupied by the Germans in September 1939. The Jews were forced into a ghetto and at first, things were better for the children because the Jewish Council gave orphans larger food rations. But soon conditions worsened and hunger was everywhere. Deportations to concentration camps increased, and children and the elderly were often targeted for pickup. During one such roundup in September 1942, while Jakub and his siblings were hiding in a cemetery, they saw men delivering soup to the orphanage. As they were waiting in line, German trucks arrived; Jakub urged the others to flee with him, but they did not and he "saw that they boarded the trucks." After 2 days, he left his hiding place and went to his aunt's house because the orphanage no longer existed. In March 1944, Jakub was deported to a slave labor camp in Czestochowa. It was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945. Jakub returned to Łódź and got a job in a bakery so that he would never be hungry again.