During the German occupation, the Bałucki Market was one of the most important places in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. The square was fenced with barbed wire and guarded by German sentries. It could only be accessed if one had a special pass. The main points of the German and Jewish ghetto administration were located there. The barracks at the Bałucki Market housed the German branch of the ghetto administrative agency (Gettoverwaltung), where Hans Biebow resided; the Central Secretariat also operated at the square, with the offices of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the Elder of the Jews in the Łódź ghetto, who held office from October 1939 until the liquidation of the ghetto. The Bałucki Market was also where fuel and food were brought to the ghetto from villages near Łódź.

Across Zgierska street, in the corner building which still exists today (Limanowskiego Street), the Łódź Gestapo headquarters were housed during the war, as well as the Schupo area VI (prevention police). It was from here that the Nazi authorities exercised political control over the ghetto and the police.

The center of the ghetto was the Bałucki Market. Once a marketplace flowing with food products directly supplied from the rural areas - at prices so low that no one, even the poorest never starved, now it has been turned into the headquarters of the Eldest of the Jews, his staff and the German ghetto authorities. There was also a food storage area located in wooden barracks that had a tram connection with the city and the ghetto. Everything was enclosed with a barbed wire fence, guarded by German sentries and a Jewish policemen. The population of the ghetto pronounced the name of the Bałucki Market solemnly. It was a manor, "a government district," a fortress, separated from the ghetto with barbed wire, supposedly excluded from its area. Only officials wearing a yellow band were allowed access and, in exceptional cases, civilians escorted by prevention service.

Bernard Heilig, The First Seven Months in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, 1942

(transl. from German by K. Radziszewska)