Lódz first appears in the written record in a 1332 document giving the village of Lodzia to the bishops of Wloclawek. In 1423 King Wladyslaw Jagiello granted city rights to the village of Lódz. From then until the 18th century the town remained a small settlement on a trade route between Masovia and Silesia. In the 16th century the town had fewer than 800 inhabitants, mostly working on the nearby grain farms. With the second partition of Poland in 1793, Lódz became part of the Kingdom of Prussia's province of South Prussia, and was known in German as Lodsch. In 1798 the Prussians nationalized the town, and it lost its status as a town of the bishops of Kuyavia. In 1806 Lódz joined the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw and in 1815 became part of Congress Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire.

World War II A wooden bridge connecting two sections of the Lódz Ghetto over a city street During the Invasion of Poland the Polish forces of the Lódz Army of General Juliusz Rómmel defended Lódz against initial German attacks. However, the Wehrmacht captured the city on September 8. Despite plans for the city to become a Polish enclave, attached to the General Government, the Nazi hierarchy respected the wishes of the local governor of Reichsgau Wartheland, Arthur Greiser, and of many of the ethnic Germans living in the city, and annexed it to the Reich in November 1939. The city received the new name of Litzmannstadt after the German general Karl Litzmann, who captured the city during World War I. Nevertheless, many Lódz Germans refused to sign Volksliste and become Volksdeutsche, instead being deported to the General Government. Soon the Nazi authorities set up the Lódz Ghetto in the city and populated it with more than 200,000 Jews from the Lódz area. Only about 900 people survived the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944. Several concentration camps and death camps arose in the city's vicinity for the non-Jewish inhabitants of the regions, among them the infamous Radogoszcz prison and several minor camps for the Roma people and for Polish children. Red Army enters the city (1945) Red Army enters the city (1945) . By the end of World War II, Lódz had lost approximately 420,000 of its pre-war inhabitants: 300,000 Jews and approximately 120,000 Poles. In January 1945 most of the German population fled the city for fear of the Red Army. The city also suffered tremendous losses due to the German policy of requisition of all factories and machines and transporting them to Germany. Thus despite relatively small losses due to aerial bombardment and the fighting, Lódz had lost most of its infrastructure. The Soviet Red Army entered the city on January 18, 1945. According to Marshal Katukov, whose forces participated in the operation, the Germans retreated so suddenly that they had no time to evacuate or destroy the Lódz factories, as they did in other cities.[1] In time, Lódz became part of the People's Republic of Poland. Having seized the area from Nazi Germany, the Red Army soldiers often treated the territory not as a Polish ally, but as a defeated enemy. There were many incidents of Soviet rapes, plunder and devastation in the area.[2]. In addition to the crimes against civilians, soon after the Soviets installed their own authorities, several show trials characterized by brutal methods were made against former Polish resistance members in the region loyal to the Polish government in exile.[3] Prior to World War II, the Jewish population of Lódz numbered about 233,000, accounting for one-third of the city’s population. The community was wiped out in the Holocaust.[4]