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Home > Virtual Museum > CHGS Exhibitions > Fragments : "Rumkies"

"Rumkies"

"Rumkies' were worthless - like Monopoly money."

Currency from the Lodz ghetto, Poland.

Coins from Lodz Ghetto.

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, leader of the Lodz Judenrat (wearing Jewish stars on front and back of jacket) and Hans Biebow, German civilian administrator of the Lodz Ghetto.

Story of the Artifact

"We used ghetto money to get our rations and to buy our allotted bread from the ghetto stores.  We called the money "Rumkies" after Rumkowski, the Jewish administrator of the ghetto.  I worked in the Jewish administration office and I received Rumkies as my weekly salary for my work.  If you didn't work, you didn't get Rumkies.  You could only use this money on the inside.  Outside of the ghetto it was worthless - like Monopoly money."

Background

In December 1939, the Nazis established Lodz as the first major ghetto.  Only the Warsaw ghetto was larger.  The Nazis made it illegal for Jews to possess genuine currency in the ghettos and profited by forcing Jews to use substitute bank notes.  The Lodz bank notes were issued in denominations of 50 Pfennige and 1, 2, 5, 10 and 50 Mark.  They were nicknamed "Rumkies," after Mordechai Rumkowski, the leader of the Lodz Judenrat - the Jewish Council of Elders.

The Nazis had formed the Jewish Council with Rumkowski as its head, to keep order among the starving and desperate population.  Rumkowski hoped to save Jews by making Lodz economically indispensable to the Nazis.  The strategy worked for a time, in that Lodz was the last ghetto to be liquidated.  However, his position was an untenable one.  When the Nazis demanded that all children and old people be surrendered, Rumkowski felt he had no choice but to comply.  In the end, most of the Jews were gassed in Chelmno.  Rumkowski and his family were among those deported and killed in Auschwitz.