Wolf Baumgarten papers

The Wolf Baumgarten papers consist of biographical materials documenting Baumgarten's Polish repatriation and the lives and deaths of his family members; correspondence between Baumgarten and his family and friends regarding their experiences in Prztytk, the Łódź and Szydłowiec ghettos, and the Soviet Union; scrip from the Łódź ghetto; photographs of Izak Baumgarten in Łódź, a burning synagogue, a Bytom synagogue, and Jewish men in Poland; and a Yizkor book for Przytyk. Wolf Baumgarten was born Włodzimierz Baumgarten in 1921 in Przytyk, Poland to Luzer and Sura Laja Kaczała Baumgarten. In 1936 he moved to Łódź with his parents and four brothers: Izak, Mosze, Benzion, and Jakub. His fifth brother, Szlomo, moved to the Soviet Union where he was executed in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Baumgarten was imprisoned in the POW camp in Częstochowa, and transferred to Radomsko, Bełchatów, Pabianice, and Łódź . He fled Łódź in 1939 and was deported from ZwisŁódź, Bielorussia to Leninsk Kuznietzkiy in Siberia in 1940. In 1941 he was mobilized into the Soviet Army, wounded during the battle of Kharkov, and spent the rest of the war in Novosibirsk. His parents and remaining brothers spent the war in the Łódź and Szydłowiec ghettos. In 1942 his mother died of hunger in Łódź and his father and four brothers were deported to Chełmno and perished. Baumgarten returned to Łódź in 1946, married Róża Gutfinger in 1947, and settled in Bytom until 1968, when the couple moved to Denmark.