Creation of Ghettos

During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe's Jews.

The ghettos isolating Jews were meant to be temporary. In many places, ghettoization lasted only a few days or weeks. In others, ghettoization lasted for several years. The vast majority of ghetto inhabitants died from disease, starvation, shooting, or deportation to killing centers. (1)

The ghettos created by the Nazis were not the first in Europe: the term ghetto actually originated in Venice, Italy, where Jewish homes and businesses were confined to a designated part of the city beginning in 1516. Over the next 200 years, rulers in Rome, Prague, Frankfurt, and other cities also established ghettos, though by the late 1800s Jews were no longer legally required to live in them. But as the German army conquered territory in Poland and farther east in the early years of World War II, the Germans created ghettos throughout this area; historians estimate that during the war there were more than 1,100 Jewish ghettos.

They were not all alike: some ghettos were tiny, less than the size of a city block, while others, such as the Łódź ghetto, were vast areas almost like small cities themselves. Some ghettos, like Warsaw’s, were sealed off from the outside world by walls, barbed wire, and guards. Others were more open, and Jewish residents were able to leave the ghetto to work, most often as forced labourers for the Nazis or companies that supported the Third Reich. Some ghettos existed only for brief periods of just a few weeks, as places where Jews could be contained before deportation or murder; other ghettos were active for years.

Anxiety about deportation to concentration camps and the struggle to find enough food were part of daily life in most ghettos. In the Łódź ghetto, located in a part of Poland that had been incorporated into the German Reich, residents were particularly isolated from the surrounding population and had to exist on the small rations provided by the Germans. Smuggling of food and medicine—a lifeline for other ghettos—was nearly impossible in Łódź. (2)

The Ghettos | Yad Vashem

This movie, which focuses on the story of the Łódź Ghetto aims to shed light today, decades after the tragic events, on what Jews knew, felt or understood during those terrifying days. At the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish community of Łódź, Poland numbered nearly 200,000, roughly 30% of the city’s population. It was the second-largest Jewish community in Poland, and one of the largest in the world. Like other ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, the inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto suffered from horrendous living conditions and were forced to support the Nazi war effort through manual labour. (3)

Three members of the Jewish Fighting Organization caught after the Warsaw ghetto uprising. They worked in an underground workshop, making hand grenades and other explosives for the uprising. (6)

In the degrading, dehumanizing system of the ghettos, the struggle to maintain a sense of identity, dignity, faith, and culture was also a form of defiance, known today as “spiritual resistance.” In many ghettos, Jews organized secret schools, prayed and observed religious holidays, participated in clubs and cultural life, and worked with organizations set up to help others in the ghetto.

Some residents took great risks to smuggle food, supplies, and information into ghettos; some attempted to sabotage production at their slave-labour factory jobs. Others, especially younger people and those without children, were able to escape from ghettos; some went into hiding and others found ways to join armed resistance groups, known as “partisans,” that were active in eastern Europe beginning in 1941. Jews organized armed resistance in over 100 ghettos—most famously in the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. (4)

At one point, more than 400,000 Jews were crowded inside the ghetto but by the spring of 1943, the number had been reduced to 75,000 through disease, starvation murder and deportation to camps. In a desperate last stand, the remaining Jewish inhabitants of the walled-in enclave began a hopeless month-long battle against the Nazis. It was the first time during the war that resistance fighters in an area under German control had staged an uprising. It would end in the complete destruction of the ghetto. (5)

Everyday Life in the Ghettos | Yad Vashem

This video outlines day-to-day life of Jews within the ghettos during the Holocaust, featuring archival video and photographs from the World War 2 period. Topics covered include formation of ghettos, comparison between ghetto characteristics, hunger, overcrowding, disease, self-help organisation, labor, smuggling and more.

The Warsaw Ghetto | DW Documentary

The Warsaw Ghetto was located in the heart of the Polish capital. In November 1940, one year after Germany invaded Poland, the occupation authorities completed work on a three-meter-high wall that surrounded the ghetto. The Germans demolished the ghetto in May 1943 and sent the residents to concentration- or extermination camps. In this documentary, witnesses describe what life was like in Warsaw before the German invasion, and provide graphic accounts of life in the ghetto.

Resources

Daily Life in the Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

References:

Banner image: The Boy with Raised Hands. (2021, February 21). [Photograph]. JewishNews.TimesofIsrael.com. https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2020/01/Warsaw-ghetto-1024x640.jpg

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