The last 74,000 inhabitants of the Lodz Ghetto had already been sent to Auschwitz. The only remaining Jews in the former ghetto were several hundred whom the Germans inducted to remove, and crate for shipment to Germany, the belongings of those sent to Auschwitz. The Germans intended to murder these Jews before their retreat from Lodz, but the prisoners, watching the Germans prepare this action, escaped and went into hiding. The Red Army entered Lodz on January 19. Of the 175,000 Jews who had lived in this, the second-largest Jewish ghetto, 800 were liberated from the ghetto on 19 January, 1945. No precise figures are available for the number of Lodz ghetto inmates who survived the concentration and death camps, estimates range from 5,000 ΓÇô 7,000.
