When Parents Had to Part with Their Children: Emotional Records from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto
- JewishLodz
- May 21
- 4 min read
Applications for orphanages, nurseries, and children’s homes reveal the personal tragedies of families in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto
Among the many documents preserved from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto are files that are almost impossible to read without emotion.
They are applications written by parents asking for their children to be admitted to
orphanages, nurseries, kindergartens, or children’s homes.
At first glance, they resemble ordinary administrative paperwork.But in reality, they are deeply personal testimonies of fear, desperation, and parental love under catastrophic conditions.
Because behind every application stood one of the most painful decisions a parent could make:separation from their child.
“I Am Unable to Care for the Child”
The applications often describe extreme poverty, illness, hunger, overcrowding, or the death of a spouse.
For example, Estera Krol writes:
"I dare to submit the following request to you:My husband left at the time with the first transport to the Altreich, to which he volunteered himself, as can be seen from the attached certificate from the “Tricotagen-Abt.” I am employed in this resort in the position of sewing-machine operator. As a conscientious worker, I fulfill my work duties, and because of the shortage of workers among my superiors, my presence here is even desired.
I have a two-year-old son who, during my working hours, is forced to wander around the courtyards and remains without any care, exposing himself at every moment to the most dangerous situations. This concern gives me neither peace during the day nor sleep at night.
Therefore, with this heavy motherly plea, I most urgently ask Mr. Elder to place my son Abram Król in some boarding institution, so that I, as a mother, with a calmer heart and for
the good of my only child, may continue to work and contribute to the welfare of the ghetto.
My son will remain with me only until a place becomes available."
Many parents explained that they were no longer capable of providing even basic care. Some worked long hours and had nobody to watch their children.Others were sick, widowed, or trying to care for several children alone.
Again and again, the same fear appears between the lines:that the child would not survive at home.
For many families, requesting placement in an orphanage or childcare institution was not abandonment.It was an act of desperation mixed with hope — the hope that somewhere else the child might receive food, warmth, medical care, or simply a better chance of survival.
Some parents asked for temporary placement only during the winter months.Others openly admitted they could no longer provide bread for their children.
These are not distant historical statistics.They are intimate records of fear, helplessness, and impossible choices.
The Human Stories Hidden Inside Archival Files
What makes these documents especially powerful is their emotional tone.
Unlike many bureaucratic wartime records, these applications often contain personal explanations, appeals, and attempts to justify heartbreaking decisions.
Parents tried to explain why they were asking institutions to take responsibility for their
children.
Sometimes only a few lines survive.Yet even a short application can reveal an entire world:a widowed mother,a sick father,a child left alone while the parent worked,a family unable to obtain enough food,a household collapsing under the pressure of hunger and isolation.
These records preserve voices that are rarely heard in official histories of the ghetto.
They tell the story not only of persecution and deprivation, but also of parents trying, in impossible circumstances, to protect their children in the only ways still available to them.
Why These Records Matter for Genealogical Research
For genealogists, documents like these can be extraordinarily valuable.
Applications for placement in orphanages or childcare institutions often contain details that may not survive anywhere else:
names of parents and children,
addresses,
ages,
occupations,
family circumstances,
information about illness or death within the household,
and descriptions of daily life inside the ghetto.
They can also help explain family separations, disappearances, changes of address, or why a child later appears in orphanage records, survivor lists, or postwar documents without parents.
In some cases, these applications may be the only surviving testimony describing the emotional and social situation of a family during the war.
For descendants researching Jewish families from Łódź, such records provide something far more personal than dates and names alone:they preserve fragments of individual lives, decisions, fears, and hopes.
I have already indexed 197 applications from this collection on the JewishLodz website.
These records contain surnames of families from the Łódź Ghetto whose stories are often preserved nowhere else.
Perhaps you may recognize a surname connected to your own family history.
Children and Survival in the Ghetto
By 1940, life in the Łódź Ghetto had already become increasingly brutal.Overcrowding,
hunger, disease, and forced labor shaped everyday existence.
Within this reality, orphanages, nurseries, shelters, and childcare institutions became places
many families associated with survival.
For some children, admission could mean access to regular meals or medical attention unavailable at home.For parents, submitting these applications often meant living with the pain of separation while hoping they had made the only possible choice.
Today, these files remain among the most moving records preserved from the history of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.
Many family stories from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto survive today only in scattered archival documents like these applications, residence records, employment files, or wartime correspondence.
If you are researching relatives connected to the Łódź Ghetto and need professional help navigating the archives, you are welcome to contact me at info@jewishlodz.com.
You can also be interested in name indexes of the collection https://www.jewishlodz.com/indexes-2
Comments