There are still archives, diaries and even some photos of the Lodz ghetto, but very few actual witness accounts from survivors. Paula Biren's is all the more exceptional, with her having been part of the ghetto's Jewish women police at the time. Her sharp eye for detail as well as her dazzling intelligence underscores her incredible testimony. Of the hundred ghettos that dotted the Polish countryside, the one in Lodz had existed for the longest. It was ruled with an iron fist by the president of the Jewish council of elders, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, known as "King Chaim" – a man convinced he could save part of the community by turning them into manpower to serve the Germans.
