Plan von Litzmannstadt mit Strassenverzeichnis [“map of Litzmannstadt (Lodz) with street index.”] Prepared by Erwin Thiem.

(HOLOCAUST).

S. Seipelt

Litzmannstadt (Lodz)

1942

Large 4-color map (scale 1:20,000) with text in German. On verso is a comprehensive listing of all street names throughout the city. The area of the Jewish Ghetto has been erased of street-names and replaced by a series of 105 individual letters or numbers comprising “Strasse Getto Norden” (small portion in white, in central upper area of map).

When German forces occupied the large central Polish city of Lodz in September 1939, the city had a population of 672,000, over one-third of whom were Jews. The Reich annexed Lodz directly into the Warthegau region and renamed it Litzmannstadt after General Karl Litzmann, who had led German forces in the area in 1914. The Germans intended to racially “purify” the city, central to which was the segregation and removal of its Jewish community who were henceforth cast with a doomed future. The present map clearly displays how the Nazis radically restructured Lodz’s demographic infrastructure as a way to exclude the city’s Jews.