Message:
Still, Jews returning here at least have the luxury of seeing much of what they left behind. While the war leveled Warsaw, the 19th-century splendor of Lodz remains, though 45 years of communism have exposed the bones beneath the Victorian frills. The buildings in the Lodz ghetto are also largely intact, except for what Poles dismembered for firewood or the gold they thought the Jews had left behind. Billboards for Camels and Lucky Strike ("Born in the USA," they declare) now hang on buildings once jammed with Jews.
From http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/26/world/lodz-survivors-meet-and-remember.html
One of the returnees was Dr. Helena Zymler-Svantesson, a pediatrician in Lund, Sweden. Along with Dr. Helena Bergson, one of the 887 Jews still in the ghetto when the Russians arrived, she read the historic marker where the Gestapo headquarters once stood, then crossed Zgierska Street to the Baluty market. There, vendors sell vegetables, shoes and compact disks where Mordachai Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the ghetto's Jewish council and among the last to be sent to Auschwitz, had his offices. 'The Only Good Thing'
Proceeding along scruffy streets where young boys now smoke cigarettes and play soccer, Dr. Zymler-Svantesson found the room at No. 13 Mlynarska Street she shared with her parents, brother and an elderly couple from Vienna. Some 40,000 Jews were deported to the Lodz ghetto from other countries; many, including one of Kafka's sisters, died at Chelmno.
Dr. Zymler-Svantesson seemed stunned by the sight of her old quarters. The spell was broken only when she spotted a young mother and her baby in the courtyard outside. "You see children everywhere; that's the only good thing," said the doctor.
Note that the address in the NYTImes story where Helena lived, 13 Mlynarska Street is the same place as Muhlgasse 13 http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/lodz/streets-index1.htm.
