Rumkowski and the Orphans of Lodz

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Chaim Rumkowski, the Nazi-appointed leader of the Jewish community in the Polish ghetto of Lodz, has long been a controversial figure, despised by some as a collaborator for his role in the deportation of Jews from the ghetto. Eichengreen offers what appears to be an insurmountable case against Rumkowski. Soon after the teenage Eichengreen (From Ashes to Life) was deported to the Lodz ghetto in October 1941, she was told that Rumkowski, the ghetto's Jewish liaison to the Nazis, was alleged to have been a child molester before the war. In the following years, she learned, both from other ghetto residents and firsthand, that these accusations were true. The sexual abuse detailed here in spare, chilling prose is just the most egregious of the material and emotional hardships of ghetto life that made human decency virtually impossible. The author cogently describes the exploitation and deceit that infested intimate relationships in the ghetto. At times, her pillorying of Rumkowski's feeble attempts to save a few Jews appears unfair. She ridicules his apparently understandable statement that, if he were able to save a hundred Jews, his efforts would have been worthwhile, with the comment, "The enormity and monstrosity of Rumkowski's words appalled me." But the weight of the evidence she has marshaled, which includes testimony she gathered after the war from other survivors, will remove from most readers any sympathy they might otherwise have had for Rumkowski and his difficult position. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In broad form, Eichengreen's memoir differs little from that of many other Holocaust victims. It is, however, distinguished by its focus on the accusation that she and a number of other boys and girls were victims of sexual abuse by Chaim Rumkowski, the controversial Jewish leader of the Lodz ghetto. Rumkowski is regarded as either a megalomaniac collaborator or a man who probably saved thousands of Jews from extermination; Eichengreen weighs in on the former side by linking her story with those of other victims of his pedophilia. Although the book is well written, it is inevitably based largely on reminiscences and follows an orderly process that the reality may not have enjoyed. Recommended for larger public libraries and Judaica collections.--Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Eichengreen (From Ashes to Life, 1994) and Camhi Fromer (The House By the Sea, 1998) are individually responsible for two of the better recent Holocaust books; what would happen if they collaborated? Eichengreen returns to the story of her own life in this volume, elaborating on one of the worst periods of the war years as she recalls the experience of the Lodz ghetto, with particular attention to Chaim Rumkowski, the Nazi-appointed "Elder" of the ghetto. Rumkowski was the head of a major Jewish orphanage before the outbreak of war and, as the 16-year-old Eichengreen quickly learned from friends in the ghetto, had used his position to sexually abuse several of the children in his care. Confined with thousands of other Jews in the increasingly unhealthy, overcrowded, and grim ghetto, living in a small apartment with a half-dozen people, Eichengreen struggles to survive on the woefully inadequate food rations. Her mother dies, virtually from starvation, and her younger sister becomes increasingly listless from hunger and the emotional brutality of their circumstances, eventually being taken away on one of the many transports to the death camps. Left alone, Eichengreen finally meets the feared and loathed Rumkowski face to face, and finds herself added to a list of his potential "conquests." What makes this story almost unbearable reading is the idea that people who are suffering such great deprivation and abuse should be subjected to a final humiliation. As Eichengreen says, "We had all become accustomed to the privation in the ghetto, but [Rumkowski] was insufferable." Regrettably, despite their previous track records, Eichengreen and Camhi Fromer fall short of their previous work here.The writing is turgid and overheated; the reported dialogue all sounds like the work of a B movie writer—although Camhi Fromer's Afterword is useful and well-written, putting the history of the ghettoes into a larger context. Important as an illustration of the corruption and heartlessness of those Jews who willingly helped the Nazis, but disappointing as a work of literature or historical writing.