Living Conditions
what were the living areas like?
The places that people were living while they were in the ghettos were very overcrowded places. There were usually many people living in one room at the same time. In the larger ghettos there would sometimes be from eight to ten people living in one room together, but in the smaller ghettos, there would sometimes be up to fourteen people living in one room.
How much food did they receive?
People that were living in the ghettos wouldn't receive much food and it wasn't very sanitary. The amount of food that they were supposed to receive would change very often. They would sometimes receive 200-300 calories a day, and sometimes they would be given a loaf of bread that was supposed to last them five days. These conditions caused a lot of people to suffer from starvation while they were in the ghettos.
did people try to smuggle food?
Lots of the people in the ghettos would try to sneak out to steal food whenever they could. The workers that were outside would try to smuggle whatever they could and if they could afford it, they would bribe the guards not to notice. If any of the Jews were caught smuggling, the automatic punishment was death, no matter how small it was.
Did they have warm clothes?
These conditions would sometimes would sometimes be so horrible that people would sell their warm clothes and blankets so they could buy small amounts of food, but during the winter, they would freeze because they wouldn't have any warm clothes.
