Ghetto Kingdom: Tales of the Lodz Ghetto

Isaiah Spiegel was an inmate in the Lodz Ghetto -- the first of the Jewish ghettos to be created by the Nazis in occupied Poland -- from its inception in 1940 until its liquidation in 1944. While there, he wrote short stories depicting Jewish life in the ghetto and managed to hide them before he was deported to Auschwitz. After being freed from the concentration camp, he returned to Lodz to retrieve and publish his stories. The stories are compelling and varied accounts of Jewish response to the German attack on their dignity and humanity. Some of the characters respond with a hopeless passivity and a belief that their persecution is the will of God. Some turn their anger against God and their faith, believing that God is on the side of the Germans. Some Jews turn on each other in desperation. And some are defiant, either trying to escape or taking refuge in a fantasy world. These stories examine the relationships between ghetto inmates and their families, their friends, their Christian former neighbors, German soldiers, and, ultimately, the ability of the ghettoized Jews to relate to the world of hopelessness and desperation that surrounded them. In using his creative powers to transform the suffering and death of his people into stories that preserve their memory, Spiegel succeeds in affirming the humanity and dignity the Germans were so intent on destroying. He tells the story of a people struggling to preserve themselves under oppressive tyranny.