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Obit of the Day: The Last of Chodecz
The town of Chodecz, Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939. At the time there were 850 Jews in the town which was also comprised of Poles and Germans. One of the Jewish residents was a 12-year-old boy named Roman Halter. About a year after the invasion only 360 Jews remained. Among the dead was Roman’s brother who was hung for stealing food.
The Nazis then planned to transport the survivors to the Lodz ghetto, but there was only room for 120, including Roman’s family. The other 240 were shot and killed. At Lodz, his grandfather and sister died of starvation. When he was sent, with the remainder of his family, to the Chelmno death camp he mother demanded he escape. He did, but his mother, half-sister, and her two children died at Chelmno.
Roman Halter managed to return to Lodz and his job working sheet metal. Soon after, the ghetto was liquidated but Halter once again escaped death as the workers were considered too valuable to be killed. Finally in the Spring of 1945, Halter managed to escape for good as the Germans army neared defeat. He returned home to Chodecz. When he arrived he found the town deserted and learned that every Jew had died.
Halter, only 18, moved to Britain. He eventually became an architect.
Thirty years after the war, Halter was able to put his emotions and memories of the war onto canvas and glass, drawing and painting scenes from the Holocaust including women walking their children to the gas chamber, his brother being hung, and prisoners electrifying themselves on the fences. Even his more recent works, watercolors of the English countryside, have tiny figures of people on death marches hidden amongst the trees.
Roman Halter died at the age of 84.
(Image of “Women with Babies,” 1974, is courtesy of Imperial War Museums)

Obit of the Day: The Last of Chodecz

The town of Chodecz, Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939. At the time there were 850 Jews in the town which was also comprised of Poles and Germans. One of the Jewish residents was a 12-year-old boy named Roman Halter. About a year after the invasion only 360 Jews remained. Among the dead was Roman’s brother who was hung for stealing food.

The Nazis then planned to transport the survivors to the Lodz ghetto, but there was only room for 120, including Roman’s family. The other 240 were shot and killed. At Lodz, his grandfather and sister died of starvation. When he was sent, with the remainder of his family, to the Chelmno death camp he mother demanded he escape. He did, but his mother, half-sister, and her two children died at Chelmno.

Roman Halter managed to return to Lodz and his job working sheet metal. Soon after, the ghetto was liquidated but Halter once again escaped death as the workers were considered too valuable to be killed. Finally in the Spring of 1945, Halter managed to escape for good as the Germans army neared defeat. He returned home to Chodecz. When he arrived he found the town deserted and learned that every Jew had died.

Halter, only 18, moved to Britain. He eventually became an architect.

Thirty years after the war, Halter was able to put his emotions and memories of the war onto canvas and glass, drawing and painting scenes from the Holocaust including women walking their children to the gas chamber, his brother being hung, and prisoners electrifying themselves on the fences. Even his more recent works, watercolors of the English countryside, have tiny figures of people on death marches hidden amongst the trees.

Roman Halter died at the age of 84.

(Image of “Women with Babies,” 1974, is courtesy of Imperial War Museums)