By the beginning of the 20th century, the people of Łódź could shop at elegant market halls. Their construction was financed by Baron Giuseppe Tanfani and the buildings were designed by the Jewish architect David Lande. The buildings formed a quadrilateral, with corners decorated with domes and an interior crowded with 140 shops. Today a lantern is all that remains of the grand market, which was closed in 1956.
In the interwar period, practically all trade moved to the Bałucki Market (Bałuty was annexed to Łódź in 1915). Peasants from the surrounding villages would arrive with carts full of vegetables and fruit and would leave with clothes made mainly by Jewish tailors. The district attracted not only traders but also writers. Arnold Mostowicz in his Ballad of Blind Max reported, ‘You could buy everything in Bałuty – things as well as souls, both stolen knickers and bartered decency, and the Bałucki Market was the nodal point of this exchange’.
The centre of Jewish culture, however, was the Astoria Café at 27 Piotrkowska Street. Astoria hosted writers (among them, the poet Moishe Broderson), painters (Jankiel Adler), actors (Mosze Puławer), and composers (Dawid Bajgelman). Avant-garde artists were centred around the artistic group Jung Jidysz (Young Yiddish). Like so much of Poland’s Jewish population, the regulars of the café became victims of the Nazi German occupation. In November 1939, a group of several dozen Jewish writers, journalists, artists, and actors were arrested at the Astoria.
During the Nazi occupation, the borders of the ghetto ran through Bałuty and the Old Town. On the eve of World War II, Łódź was inhabited by 233 thousand Jews – almost 35 percent of the population. After the war, only a few thousand returned to the city. Throughout almost the entire existence (8 February 1940 – 29 August 1944) of the Łódź Ghetto, Leon Jakubowicz, a shoemaker, worked to replicate his surroundings in a wooden model. Today, the model can be found in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. A discerning eye can easily locate the Adria Restaurant and Café at 27 Łagiewnicka Street. It was the most popular place in the ghetto, frequented mainly by clerks.
Shocked and confused