Dash family papers

Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto scrip, 5 mark note issued to a Polish Jewish woman

Object

Łódź 5 mark ghetto scrip note acquired by Paula Dash, while she was forced to live in the Łódź ghetto from 1940-1944. The scrip was issued in the German-controlled ghetto from July of 1940 to its liquidation in the fall of 1944. Valuables and currency were forcibly exchanged for the scrip and it was used as modest payment for forced laborers, though it was valueless outside the ghetto. Paula was living in Łódź, Poland, with her family when Germany invaded on September 1, 1939. A week later, German forces occupied the city and quickly established an enclosed Jewish ghetto where Paula, her parents, and three siblings all lived in one small room. Her younger brother Henry, became very sick, and in 1942, her father, Aron, died from starvation. Paula was a forced laborer in a sewing factory, working ten to fourteen hour days. In August 1944, Paula, her mother, and two brothers were forced into cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Upon arrival they were examined and separated. While waiting to enter the gas chamber, Paula was selected for a forced labor detail in Bremen, Germany. She spent nine months clearing rubble from Allied bombing. In the spring of 1945, Paula was sent on a death march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She was liberated there on April 15, 1945, by British forces. While in the camp she contracted typhus, but recovered in a British hospital. She later married another survivor and immigrated to the United States.