October 13, 1939, the Nazi Amtsleiter in Łódź appointed Rumkowski the Judenältester ("Chief Elder of the Jews"), head of the Ältestenrat ("Council of Elders"). In this position, Rumkowski reported directly to the Nazi ghetto administration, headed by Hans Biebow. When the rabbinate was dissolved, Rumkowski performed weddings. The ghetto's money or scrip, the so-called Rumki (sometimes Chaimki), was derived from his name, as it had been his idea. His face was put on the ghetto postage stamps and currency, which led to his sarcastic nickname "King Chaim". By industrializing the Łódź Ghetto, he hoped to make the community indispensable to the Germans and save the people of Łódź. On April 5, 1940, Rumkowski petitioned the Germans for materials for the Jews in exchange for desperately needed food and money. By the end of the month, the Germans had acquiesced, in part, agreeing to provide food, but not money. Although Rumkowski and other "Jewish elders" of the Nazi era came to be regarded as collaborators and traitors, historians have reassessed this judgment since the late 20th century in light of the terrible conditions of the time. A survivor of the Łódź ghetto, Arnold Mostowicz, noted in his memoir that Rumkowski gave a percentage of his people a chance to survive two years longer than the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, destroyed in the Uprising. However, as noted by Lucjan Dobroszycki, the ultimate decision on the future was not his to make. Ghetto history prior to the "Final Solution" The ghettoization of Łódź was decided on September 8, 1939, by an order of SS-Oberführer Friedrich Uebelhoer. His top secret document stated that the ghetto was only a temporary solution to "the Jewish question" in the city of Łódź. Uebelhoer never implied the long-term survival of its inhabitants. The ghetto was sealed on April 30, 1940, with 164,000 people inside. On October 16, 1939, Rumkowski selected 31 public figures to form the Council. However, less than three weeks later, on November 11, twenty of them were executed and the rest disappeared, because he denounced them to the German authorities "for refusing to rubber-stamp his policies." Although a new Judenrat was officially appointed a few weeks later, the men were not as distinguished, and remained far less effective than its original leaders. This change conceded more power to Rumkowski, and left no one to contest or restrain his decisions. Rumkowski had the Jewish Ghetto