Third exploration Baluty

For our third exploration of the neigbourhood we wanted to look in the piece South of the church, there where also the Old synagogue Altshtot stood... "nothing remains from this synagoge", so I was curious to see if we could find out where it exactly was located on the Wolborskiej.

Gosia, Agnieszka and I started to walk in that direction to get an idea of the neighbourhood first. Well, it changed during the years as you can see in the pictures. it looks like, and it is actually is, not directly middle-class... but: blocs with apartments, nice houses, well painted, well maintained everything. Families with children, a man who tried to get his car out of the snow, somebody exercising her dog...

This neighbourhood really invites you to live here...

At the border from Baluty you find Park Staromiesky heavy used by the Balutians, winter and summer. 

And yes, there we find a sign of the former synagogue...  But is this the place where it stood on Wolborskiej? Most probably there where the apartments blocs are now.

This blog starts to go about synagogues only - yes, but... you cannot ignore the former presence from the Polish Jews here in Lodz and certainly not in Baluty... We have to incorporate that - unfortunataly historical - fact in our project without making it the main-issue.

So I promise this will be one of the last times about synagogues.

A little bit further (just behind the sign, you see a glimpse from it totally at the right-hand side of the picture) you find a statue with a text below it which says:

The ten commandments

a sculpter by Gustav Zemla

by page of history

a foundation for

the commemoration of

the presence

of Jews in Poland

november 1995

See in this respect next message: Mur i Wieża 

In The Ghetto....

In The Ghettoooo..... 

Open letter to Pavel Stingl, filmdirector

Dear Pavel,

I saw the trailer of your film "A ghetto named Baluty" (the movie itself seems not to be available yet) but... I don't think I like this film... It gives a lot of picturesque, colourful and tearjerking details from nowadays old Baluty. Nice! Well photographed!

BUT, these colourful sequences from nowadays Baluty in the movie (note: I cannot understand the text/speech; so my impression is only based on what I see) are consequently compared with images from the real ghetto in the Third Reich...

But this is something you cannot compare... not in the film and also not in a trailer.

I mean, Baluty today is NOT a slave laboury camp where at his peak 200,000 people where crammed in the old quarter of Stary Miasto and the slum quarter of Baluty, an area amounting to only six square kilometres where during the four years the ghetto existed some 60,000 people died through starvation, disease, hypothermia, suicide or execution.

In your film you cannot the contemporary rag merchant with his caddie compare with Jews (or Roma) transporting their last belongings and travelling towards their extermination.

Yes, Baluty is partly suffering from poverty, alcoholism and unemployment but this is first of all not the whole story and second absolutely in nothing comparable with the ghetto history.

Furthermore, I saw several nowadays ghetto's and I can tell you this: Baluty is a special neighbourhood, it certainly is, but Baluty has nothing to do with a ghetto, really nothing!

No Pavel Stingl, I will give it a try but I don't think I will make it 87 (or 83?) minutes long.

You say: Baluty then and Baluty now have much in common.... No Pavel Stingl, Baluty then and Baluty now have nothing in common.

It's easy going counterfeiting - falsifying - history. Or worse.

Rob Houkes

pictures by Henryk Ross from his book Lodz Ghetto Album

Maps & facts of Lodz and Baluty

And finally for the ones who are devoted to geographical facts and admirers of maps here a link to the Lodz/Baluty district.
Coming from the Piotrkowska (down in the middle of the map) and after crossing the Park Staromiesky you hit ulicy Wolborskiej where the former Jewish quarter, later the ghetto and nowadays Stare Baluty starts.
More or less everything above these line (and visible on the map) is where we planned to focuse on for our project.

On Wolborskiej 20 stood the Orthodox Synagogue "Altshtot" . It was the oldests synagogue in Lodz, first constructed entirely from wood, later relocated and replaced with stone in 1860 - 1863.
Burnt down by the Nazis at the night of November 15-16, 1939, so - notice! - even before there was a ghetto established.
No trace of the synagogue remains today.

Click here to see how this synagogue was build . For me this is also a kind of a map and in this case certainly one with a dramatic impact.
See more about this Stara Synagogyue on Wolborska 20 and all other synagogues in Lodz.
See also the very impressive list of Synagogues, prayer houses and others.

Furthermore I found a particular "map" of the old ghetto.

It had been made by:

Leon Jakubowicz, a shoemaker by training and a native of Lodz, began constructing this model of the Lodz ghetto soon after his arrival there from a prisoner-of-war camp in April 1940. The case holds a scale (1:5000) model of the ghetto, including streets, painted houses, bridges, churches, synagogue ruins, factories, cemeteries, and barbed wire around the ghetto edges. The model pieces are made from scrap wood. The case cover interior is lined with a collection of official seals, a ration card, and paper money, and the case exterior is covered with metal coins.

See here his model of the Lodz ghetto

And here a more detailed version of the same model

Next you will find  all important information about Lodz with (at the right-hand side) a map of Poland in which Lodz is situated in the middle.

Finally - zooming out - maps of  Poland itself:

This is our Bronx...

Coincidences, random actions which give the sensful whole after a while or unexpected meetings becoming crucial in your life - we usually try  to remember it.

For me it was buying a bookguide about Jewish Lodz for my friend's birthday, visiting Baluty with Gosia and Rob and watching a documentary film "A ghetto named Baluty" during the same week.

Director Pavel Štingl tells some facts about a Jewish ghetto established by the Nazis in 1940. Investigates Baluty with the help of Czech Jews and inhabitants of the quarter so the documentary is very subjective and full of emotions.
It is worth seeing though focused only on poverty, alcoholism, and unemployment found in Baluty. "This is our Bronx" - says one of the Balutars from the film.

Watch it and comment!

(Note: This message is actually placed by Agnieszka (Aga; see members of 'Baluty-Baluty' blog)

Second exploration of Baluty

For our second exploration of the  Baluty-district we focuse on the old Baluty again but 'north from the church' which seems to be in the middle from 'Stare Baluty'. On the map this part of Baluty is described as Os Berlinskiego. It's roughly the area inside the lines Zachodnia, Lutomierska/Zawiszy, Franciczkanska and Wojska Polskiego.

One my way to Baluty I nearly 'tumbled' over this sign on the pavement... Earlier I must have missed it or it was covered by snow. Anyhow, it shocked me. I walked just through the gates of the ghetto!...

The sign on the pavement says "Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1940 - 1944". Litzmannstadt is how Lodz was renamed by the Nazies. 

Read about this - this is a must - an article about language policy in the Third Reich written by William Bostock which tells also in short but very adequate what happens in the ghetto . More words are no needed to understand.

See for the whole article of William Bostock this link .

I realise as never before that I walk in a 'guilty landscape'. This term is coming from the Dutch artist Armando who dedicated his whole work to this subject since he played as a boy in the fields and woods where many cruelties from war had been taken place. 

He speaks of guilty or accused landscape, which means that the landscape/cityscape itself is also 'guilty' by transforming and hiding what had happened.

How do we/I deal with this topic? I mean, I see at the very moment I walk there the fences, and the gate, and all the people hopeless locked in, I nearly feel the pain and the suffering; it's still in the streets...

I meet Agnieszka and Gosia, tell them about my discovering of the sign and my thoughts and feelings. We decide to do our walk, that's probably how we and people in general deal with the horrible facts from the past: just go on with life and doing what you planned to do.

The sun is shining. We are impressed by the photographic opportunities we see around and start walking and taking photographs which us deliver comments from people around that it is if we are walking in a museum.... Not the best way to connect with the people but we decide one time to sin...

Next time we will hide the camera. But for now it's 'reading the city'. With the camera. Without avoiding all stereotypes.

That's why the rest what follows in this message now: photographes with a very few comment, and a very few people.

American flag above the market...

"Accused city-scape"?  Back-side of the building which was the Gestapo headquarters during WW II.

And this absolutely sad building is the same former Gestapo headquarter from the frontside... Nowedays a pharmacy, a sauna and a tattoo shop....

Crossing Zawiszy/Lagiewincka

Street phone on the same crossing

"Traditional" yard

This is about 'Red army of Balutians...  .

This seems to be brandnew flats...

Made with a template you can buy in the big shop Manufaktura in Baluty

Centre of 'Stare Baluty"? For us it is, for a moment. Till we know better.

Malewicz?

On our way to Baluty yesterday... an unexpected encounter with Kazimir Malewicz ... the younger one.

First visit Baluty

Finally we went for our first orientation really to the Baluty-district. To see at the map it's quite a huge quater. So we decided first to focus on the borders of the old ghetto. To see what it is, how it looks... how big it is. To get the taste of the old Baluty. Sniffing the atmosphere and meeting the people.

Gosia and Agnieszka did some research on the internet after "the old Baluty" and brought maps and books.

We walked along Zahodny and it turns out that we where on our way to the old Jewish cemetary which was situated outside the borders of the old ghetto. We followed our path and walked without knowing or realizing along the old walls of the cemetary...

Asking this lady for the old cemetary, she pointed out where it was, just where we where!

We missed the memorial sign.

and we found the stone... which says:

The old Jewish cemetery on Wesola street. established April 4, 1811 was in use until 1922. The German occupiers began to destroy the cemetery in 1942; the cemetery was completely destroyed by the communist authorities in the years 1949 - 1954.

The grounds hold about 12.000 graves.