From Horse Cadavers to Garden Plots: Concepts of Nonhuman Nature in the Łódź Ghetto

What did “Nature” mean for Jews imprisoned in Nazi spaces? To what extent was “nature” a meaningful category for them in their struggles to survive? How did they relate to flora, fauna, landscape and climate that lay outside their notion of “Nature”?

In exploring these questions, this paper will focus on the Łódź ghetto as a case study, drawing from ghetto reports and reflections produced in real time. Within these sources, there seem to multiple, conflicting ways that the nonhuman natural world became significant to ghetto inhabitants. At times, people defined ‘ghetto nature’ as small pockets of greenery or personal ghetto garden plots. While offering respite and sustenance, these green spaces also became commodified and usurped as tools of control. Another prime mode of relating to nature in the ghetto was through discussions of animals, horses especially: Because of extreme food shortages, Łódź ghetto prisoners were often forced to scavenge for horse meat to survive, an act that aroused shame and self-disgust. This paper will attempt to map out these various notions of the natural sphere in the Łódź ghetto, asking what binds them together and how they may be applicable in further environmental studies of the Holocaust and mass atrocity.

Cosponsors: Center for Austrian Studies, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Department of German & European Studies, Department of German, Nordic, Slavic, & Dutch, Department of History, Immigration History Research Center, Department of Philosophy