n 1941, over twenty thousand West European Jews arrived at the already overcrowded ghetto in Lodz. For the first time in modern history, two distant communities split not only by two centuries of civilization but also by an emancipation which had transformed the life of the Western Jews faced each other. The majority of the Polish Jews considered assimilation an apostasy, whereas the German Jews considered their attachment to an orthodox mysticism and isolation from society ignorant. They even felt an animosity against those coming from the East. And here the two groups were forced to meet.