“CAST ME NOT OFF IN MY TIME OF OLD AGE…”: THE AGED AND ...

trip. During the Shpere, only their eyes protrude from their
sockets and the thought races through their minds:
“Got to hide…Where can one hide…?” 381
Finding a physical space big enough to contain a mature body and one that could be
easily reached despite declining physiology was next to impossible in the ghetto.
Families that wrestled with the idea often deterred older members from attempting to
evade the round up. 382
The aged were hindered not only by their own physical disabilities but also by
their neighbors’ fear. Herein lay the corrosive effects of Nazi policies that intensified
during the Shpere. Bonds of magnanimity and common purpose that held the Jews of
Łódź together and could have provided a source for solidarity had already eroded beyond
repair. In most cases, neighbors feared much more for their own lives than for the lives of
their elderly neighbors. The consequences of a German discovering an older man or
woman in hiding in the building were deadly.
Yankl Nirenberg reported the retaliatory methods that German authorities
employed upon discovering an elderly Jew who had been hiding. While conducting
random raids to “check their work,” the Germans discovered an elderly man who had
emerged from his hiding place after evading capture during the German’s first visit. As a
result, the Germans rounded up all of the people remaining at Lutomierska 42 and sent
them to collection points to await transport to Chełmno.
381 Ibid., 354.
382 Hilton, “My Story,” RG-02, File 164, 76. Rita Hilton relayed the experience of a friend from
the ghetto in her memoir. Hilton’s friend agonized over the last-minute decision to dissuade her elderly
parents from trying to find a hiding place. Instead, she ushered them down to the courtyard, where they
were immediately ordered to board the cart on its way to one of the collection points.
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