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Lishkowitz was situated about 15 kilometers off the main road Lowicz – Lodz, and during the years between the two world wars it has grown to be an industrial center.

Here operated a big sugar factory with its own plantations; in the season, it employed 800 workers. The owners of the factory were the Jewish magnates Rosenberg from Lodz. Only one Jew was among the workers, Leibl Hofnung, a progressive young man who, during the Nazi occupation fled to the forest and became a partisan.

The shtetl had a dynamic young population. The young people in town were always active, often went for their trade to Lowicz, Lodz and other big cities, and absorbed culture and progress. Most of them were leftists, and had their own library named after Y. L. Peretz, with 50 registered members and 200 books. The library hosted lectures, readings and political discussions with invited speakers.

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At times, it hosted performances as well.

In addition of the activity of the Communist Youth, we should mention the activity of the Zionist movement Hashomer Hatza'ir, which had several tens of members.

The majority of the Jewish population were artisans, small businessmen and peddlers, and many were quite poor.

The last years before WWII, the shtetl suffered from Anti–Semitism. For a long time the Anti–Semitic group conducted incitement and provocations against the Jewish doctor W. Berlin. After many interventions at the authorities in Lowicz the inciters succeeded in chasing the Jewish doctor out of town and replaced him with a Christian doctor.

Later, when it turned out that the new doctor was not a true Pole, the anti–Semite group, embarrassed and burning with hate against the new doctor, again addressed the authorities asking to replace him with a true Arian… but this time the authorities did not fulfil their request, because the doctor was a Jew converted to Christianity.

Members of the Lovicz Falanga [a Polish far–right political grouping in the 1930s] often came to the shtetl and distributed anti–Jewish inciting and hate–literature, or painted on the walls of the houses anti–Jewish slogans.

On the eve of the war, over one thousand Jewish persons lived in town; during the Nazi occupation there were in the ghetto about 500 Jews, and at the time of the evacuation, only close to 300.

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