Ghetto Litzmannstadt
Following the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Rumkowski, a childless sixty-two-year-old man with billowy white hair and black circular glasses, was appointed the "Judenrat" Elder in the Łódź Ghetto where 230,000 Polish Jews were confined during the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Rumkowski created an industry within which Jews could work and make themselves useful to the Nazis to avoid the slaughter of the Holocaust. But his record of establishing a temporary refuge for the Jews was overwhelmed by the fact that to appease the Nazis he handed over almost the entire population to Nazi extermination camps. Old photographs and the very rare surviving film footage of the Łódź ghetto serve as the visuals for a documentary that asks how much people should be willing to compromise to survive.