Remember Me
A Holocaust Survivor's Story
by
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The Reich commissioner of the Łódź Ghetto was a man named Hans Biebow. Biebow wanted to transform the ghetto into a labor camp. He and the German authorities appointed Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski as the leader of the Jews confined in Łódź. Nobody really knew why he was chosen. Rumkowski was an older man, a widower who wasn’t very successful in business but ran an orphanage in Helenowek. He was called the Jüdenaelteste, “the Eldest of the Jews,” and was head of the Jewish council. He was put in charge of all ghetto social and economic life: distribution of food and medicine rations, employment, crime and punishment, deportation. Rumkowski had his own Jewish police force, the Orderly Service. We called them “the orderlies.” They wore a special armband, carried little clubs instead of guns and were charged with keeping order among those of us confined to the ghetto. Rumkowski’s main role was as an intermediary between the Germans and the Jews, carrying out German directives for the creation of factories and workshops, fulfilling deportation orders, and meeting production demands. Rumkowski created a centralized governing body and acted like an arrogant head of state. Many people despised him and blamed him for everything that was going wrong, especially the horribly disorganized food distribution and the lack of employment. But most of us were too overwhelmed with surviving to care. We were mainly concerned with finding work and getting food at any and all costs. Special money was printed in the ghetto, which was a joke. It had different denominations and Rumkowski’s signature on it. We called the money “rumkies,” after Rumkowski. The rumkies were worthless outside the ghetto and meaningless inside the ghetto. You had to work to get money to buy ration cards to buy food. But everybody got the same ration of food anyway - about a loaf of bread per family for a week plus some rotten vegetables. And work was practically nonexistent that first year. People starved. Even with so little, over time, both the rations and available work grew scarce. Hunger and privation increased with each day and it became clear that there either wasn’t enough food supplied or Rumkowski was administering it badly. People grew weary and thin and dysentery took hold. There were doctors and a hospital in the ghetto but no real medicine to speak of to help anybody.
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About the Book
Three months after the Nazi's marched down the streets of her town in Poland, Marian Kampinski turned fourteen years old. Her childhood destroyed, she spent the rest of her adolescence haunted and hunted by the Nazi.
Remember Me is Marian’s inspiring story of miraculously surviving the Holocaust. Beginning with the Nazi invasion of Poland, Marian’s memoir follows her confinement in the Łódź ghetto and transport to Auschwitz where she lost her brother, then Stutthof. While at Stutthof, Marian endured a typhus epidemic, extreme winters, inhuman living conditions, hunger, and beatings.
In this valuable addition to Holocaust literature, Marian’s distinct voice details her journey of suffering, tragedy, and loss. Her memories also detail milestones of heroic strength and resilience and the odds-defying miracle of surviving with both her sister and mother.
To read Remember Me is to experience the Holocaust firsthand through the eyes of a young girl catapulted into adulthood by circumstances no human being should ever endure. You will look into the face of inhumanity and see that love and faith can overcome the most powerful of all evils. Ultimately, to read Marian’s story is to remember, to recall those who survived and the millions who did not.
About the Author
Marian Kampinski was born in Łódź, Poland in 1925. She lived an idyllic childhood, but her world changed forever in 1939. After the Holocaust, Marian immigrated to the United States, where she married and raised four children. She resides in Cleveland with her husband, Isak. She is a prolific poet and writer who enjoys morning walks.