| Ghettos inGerman-occupied Europe | |
|---|---|
 Main square of theRadom Ghetto with gate | |
| Also known as | Jüdischer Wohnbezirk inGerman |
| Location | Central,Eastern andSouth-Eastern Europe |
| Date | 1939–1945 |
| Incident type | Total of more than 1,000 ghettos created mostly in Central and Eastern Europe[1] |
| Perpetrators | Schutzstaffel (SS),Order Police battalions |
| Ghetto |
|
Beginning with theinvasion of Poland duringWorld War II, theNazi regime set upghettos acrossGerman-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confineJews, and sometimesRomani people, into small sections of towns and cities furthering their exploitation. In German documents, andsignage at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them asJüdischer Wohnbezirk orWohngebiet der Juden, both of which translate as theJewish Quarter. There were several distinct types includingopen ghettos,closed ghettos,work,transit, anddestruction ghettos, as defined byHolocaust historians. In a number of cases, they were the place of Jewish underground resistance against the German occupation, known collectively as theghetto uprisings.[2]
The first anti-Jewish measures were enacted in Germany with the onset ofNazism; these measures did not include ghettoizing German Jews: such plans were rejected in the post-Kristallnacht period.[3] However, soon after the1939 German invasion of Poland, the Nazis began to designate areas of larger Polish cities and towns as exclusively Jewish, and within weeks, embarked on a massive programme of uprootingPolish Jews from their homes and businesses throughforcible expulsions. Entire Jewish communities were deported into these closed off zones by train from their places of origin systematically, usingOrder Police battalions,[4] first in theReichsgaue, and then throughout theGeneralgouvernement territory.[5]
The Nazis had a special hatred of Polish and other eastern Jews. Nazi ideology depicted Jews, Slavs and Roma as inferior raceUntermenschen ("subhumans") who threatened the purity of Germany'sAryanHerrenrasse ("master race"), and viewed these people and also political opponents of the Nazi party as parasitic vermin or diseases that endangered the overall health of theVolksgemeinschaft, the German racial community. German doctors and public health officials helped advance these racist fearmongering ideas. The Germaninvasion of Poland (1 September 1939) and the formation of Jewish ghettos caused hunger and poverty, crowding and unsanitary conditions, which in turn actually created typhus epidemics in occupied Poland. German physicians and public health officials in the Nazi regime did not acknowledge this; instead, German medical professionals published essays blaming Jewish people's supposed "low cultural level" and "uncleanliness" for the typhoid epidemics. Posters depicting Jews as lice, which transmit from person to person the bacteria that causes epidemic typhus, were publicized, and the respected status of German doctors helped spread the belief that the Jews were responsible for spreading typhus.[6] The German public health officials in occupied Poland were concerned only with the health of German personnel, so they repeatedly urged occupation authorities to isolate Jews further from the rest of the population.[7]
German forces regarded the establishment of ghettos as temporary measures, in order to allow higher level Nazis in Berlin to decide how to execute their goal of eradicating Jews from Europe.[8]Nazi officials had anEndziel, an unarticulated final goal that would take time to reach, and also anEndlösung, a "final solution" which was a euphemism for the murder of Jews.Toward the Endziel and Endloesung there were intermediate goals to be carried out in the short term, and one of these was to concentrate Jews from the countryside into larger cities, thus making certain areasJudenrein ("clean of Jews").[9]
The first ghetto of World War II was established on 8 October 1939 atPiotrków Trybunalski (38 days after the invasion),[10] with theTuliszków ghetto established in December 1939. The first large metropolitan ghetto known as theŁódź Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) followed them in April 1940, and theWarsaw Ghetto in October. Most Jewish ghettos were established in 1940 and 1941. Subsequently, many ghettos were sealed from the outside, walled off with brickwork, or enclosed with barbed wire. In the case of sealed ghettos, any Jew caught leaving could be shot. The Warsaw Ghetto, located in the heart of the city, was the largest ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of 3.4 square kilometres (1+3⁄8 square miles).[11] The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 people.[12] According to theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, there were at least 1,000 such ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and theSoviet Union alone.[2]
Ghettos acrossEastern Europe varied in their size, scope and living conditions.[13] The conditions in the ghettos were generally brutal. InWarsaw, the Jews, comprising 30% of the city overall population, were forced to live in 2.4% of the city's area, a density of 7.2 people per room.[11] In the ghetto ofOdrzywół, 700 people lived in an area previously occupied by five families, between 12 and 30 to each room. The Jews were not allowed out of the ghetto, so they had to rely on smuggling and the starvation rations supplied by the Nazis: in Warsaw this was 1,060 kJ (253 kcal) per Jew, compared to 2,800 kJ (669 kcal) per Pole and 10,930 kJ (2,613 kcal) per German. With the crowded living conditions, starvation diets, and insufficient sanitation (coupled with lack of medical supplies), epidemics of infectious disease became a major feature of ghetto life.[14] In theŁódź Ghetto some 43,800 people died of 'natural' causes, and 76,000 in theWarsaw Ghetto before July 1942.[15]
To prevent unauthorised contact between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations, GermanOrder Police battalions were assigned to patrol the perimeter. Within each ghetto, aJewish Ghetto Police force was created to ensure that no prisoners tried to escape. In general terms, there were three types of ghettos maintained by the Nazi administration.[2]
The parts of a city outside the walls of the Jewish Quarter were called "Aryan". For example, inWarsaw, the city was divided into Jewish, Polish, and German Quarters. Those living outside the ghetto had to haveidentification papers proving they were not Jewish (none of their grandparents was a member of the Jewish community), such as abaptism certificate. Such documents were sometimes called "Christian" or "Aryan papers". Poland's Catholic clergy massively forged baptism certificates,[17] which were given to Jews by the dominant Polish resistance movement, theHome Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK).[18] Any Pole found by the Germans to be giving any help to a Jew was subject to the death penalty.[19]
In 1942, the Nazis beganOperation Reinhard, the systematic deportation of Jews toextermination camps. Nazi authorities throughout Europe deported Jews to ghettos in Eastern Europe or most often directly toextermination camps built byNazi Germany inoccupied Poland. Almost 300,000 people were deported from theWarsaw Ghetto alone toTreblinka over the course of 52 days. In some ghettos,local resistance organizations stagedghetto uprisings. None were successful, and the Jewish populations of the ghettos were almost entirely killed.[20] On June 21, 1943,Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jewish inhabitants toconcentration camps. A few ghettos were re-designated as concentration camps and existed until 1944.[21]
