The Processing of Used Clothing as a Survival Strategy: The Łódź Ghetto Textile Industry in Official Visual Documents of the Judenrat

Abstract This article analyzes a photomontage album produced in the Graphics Office of the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto under Nazi occupation. Commissioned by the Jewish Council, the Judenrat, in a modern style, the album shows the functioning of the ghetto’s textile production. The article argues that the album was a visual expression of the Judenrat’s survival strategy: it was aimed at perpetuating a productive image of the ghetto in influential German circles to persuade the authorities to produce goods in the ghetto and to have it play an essential role in the Third Reich economy. The article draws on content and discourse analysis to demonstrate how the album’s narrative appealed to commonly held modern values such as industrialization, rationalization of work, and the idea of a circular economy. It argues that the narrative conveyed in the album can be seen as a counter-propaganda strategy to challenge the antisemitic image of the Jews as "weak” and "unproductive” communicated through Third Reich propaganda.