Page 24 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

In the 1980s, the first documentary films about the
ghetto appeared in Sweden and the USA. They were not
shown in Łódź. We were still behind the Iron Curtain.
The extermination of the Jews of Łódź started being dis-
cussed during international symposiums. Memoirs from
the ghetto were published in various languages and his-
torians from all around the world came to Łódź to re-
search archival materials on the spot. The State Archive
in Łódź holds an enormous collection of documents,
which constitute an obligatory material for all serious
academic publications, exhibitions and films.
In the 1990s, two important exhibitions on the Łódź
ghetto were organized in Germany and in Israel in coop-
eration with Łódź institutions: Our Only Way is Work in
Frankfurt am Main (1990) and The Last Ghetto. Life in
the Łódź Ghetto 1940-1944 in Jerusalem (1995).The
German exhibition was later brought to Łódź and for
many years it was open to public in the Historical Mu-
seum of Łódź.
In 1994, fiftieth anniversary commemoration cere-
monies of the liquidation of the ghetto were organized
in the new post-communist Poland. It became possible
again to discuss certain topics which had formerly been
pushed aside. There was another symposium and new
publications. A chance to talk about Łódź with former
ghetto prisoners came up. Survivors were coming to
Łódź in growing numbers with their children and grand-
children in order to search for their roots and traces of
their families. Country borders posed no problem any-
more. TV Łódź and Contra Studio together with the Is-
raeli director, Edward Etler produced two films: The
Death District and Under the Roofs of Holon, featuring
the Łódź Jews who had survived the ghetto and were liv-
ing in Israel at that time. The city mayor, Marek
Czekalski visited members of the Organization of For-
mer Inhabitants of Łódź in Israel to signal that the con-
temporary inhabitants of Łódź were ready for dialogue.
On the rising tide of interest in the history of Jewish
Łódź, the Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Foundation
was established to save the heritage of the Łódź Jews.
Its first president was Arnold Mostowicz. For almost
twenty years, it has been working to preserve the Jewish
cemetery and the memory of the Łódź Jews. A statue of
Moses with the Ten Commandments tablets, also called
The Monument of the Decalogue, was unveiled in Park

22 Joanna Podolska