The plans of setting up a ghetto in Łódź were first formulated in December 1939 by occupying German authorities – they decided it would be impossible to deport all the Jews from Łódź quickly and on a mass scale, so they decided to gather them, as it was then believed temporarily, in the northern part of the city. German plans were published in February 1940, when the decision was communicated in Lodzer Zeitung – a local newspaper. The territory of the "residential district for Jews" covered the area of the most neglected districts of Łódź – Bałuty and the Old Town. Most buildings there lacked sewerage and running water, while wastewater ran down the streets in gutters. By 29th February 1940, all Poles and Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutche) were forced to leave the area. The Jews, in turn, were to gradually moved in to replace them. Eventually, when the gates closed on the ghetto on 30 April 1940, it covered the area of 4.13 km2. The area included approximately 2,300 houses with more than 28,000 rooms. In the spring of 1940, they were to accommodate over 160,000 people. Moreover, in the autumn of 1941, the ghetto absorbed almost 20,000 Jews from Western Europe and several thousand Jews from liquidated ghettos in nearby towns. At its peak, the Łódź Ghetto was inhabited by over 180,000 people. In late 1941, more than 5,000 Roma people were "resettled” in it, for whom a special sub-camp was created and separated from the main ghetto.
