In the spring of 1940, the German forces occupying Poland drove the Jews of Lodz into the Holocaust's second-largest and most hermetically-sealed ghetto. It functioned both as a sweatshop serving the German war effort, and a prison for Jews en route to the death camps of Chelmno and Auschwitz. Self-governed by its Council of Elders -- with its own police force, currency and postage stamps -- its leader was the notorious Chaim Rumkowski. He complied with German orders, believing that the
