Around one letter. The fate of Viennese Christians in the Łódź ghetto Cover Image

Wokół jednego listu. Losy wiedeńskich chrześcijan w getcie łódzkim
Around one letter. The fate of Viennese Christians in the Łódź ghetto

Author(s): Ewa Wiatr
Subject(s): Christian Theology and Religion, Jewish studies, History of the Holocaust
Published by: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów & IFiS PAN
Keywords: Łódź ghetto; deportations from Western Europe; converts; Holocaust; aid to ‘non-Aryan Catholics’;

Summary/Abstract: In the autumn of 1941 approx. 20,000 Jews were deported to the Łódź ghetto from the Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Among them were highly assimilated individuals, including converts. A large group of Catholics arrived from Vienna and this text is devoted to them. A letter addressed to the Center for Aid to Non-Aryan Catholics, which operated at the Archbishopric of Vienna, became an impulse for writing this article. The Viennese Catholics concentrated around Regina Fuhrman, a member of the Carmelite secular order, and they established the Catholic Community. The Jewish administration of the ghetto allocated a prayer room to be used by all Christians in the ghetto. The Christians were deported to the death center in Chełmno nad Nerem on 9 May 1942 within the framework of a large-scale deportation campaign which encompassed unemployed Western-European Jews. Many of them volunteered to leave, maintaining family or religious ties.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 15
  • Page Range: 305-319
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Polish