 Before the German invasion of Poland, Rumkowski was an insurance agent in Łódź; member of Qahal, and in 1925–1939 head of a Jewish orphanage at Krajowa 15 Street.According to Dr. Edward Reicher, a Holocaust survivor from Łódź, Rumkowski had an unhealthy interest in children.Łódź was annexed by the invading Germans into the Third Reich and became part of the territory of new Reichsgau Wartheland, separate from the "Generalgouvernement" established in most of the German-occupied Poland.