ghetto, formerly a street, or quarter, of a city set apart as a legally enforced residence area forJews. One of the earliest forced segregations of Jews was inMuslimMorocco when, in 1280, they were transferred to segregated quarters calledmillahs. In some Muslim countries, rigid ghetto systems were enforced with restrictions on the sizes of houses and doors. Forcedsegregation of Jews spread throughoutEurope during the 14th and 15th centuries. The ghettos ofFrankfurt am Main and the PragueJudenstadt (German: “Jew town”) were renowned. In Poland and Lithuania, Jews were numerous enough toconstitute a majority of the population in many cities and towns in which they occupied entire quarters. The nameghetto, probably derived from an iron foundry in the neighbourhood, was first used inVenice in 1516. In that year an area for Jewish settlement was set aside, shut off from the rest of the city, and provided withChristian watchmen. It became a model for ghettos in Italy.

Customarily, the ghettos were enclosed with walls and gates and kept locked at night and during church festivals such asHoly Week, whenanti-Semitic outbursts were particularly likely because of thealleged guilt of the Jews in theCrucifixion ofChrist. Inside the ghetto the Jews wereautonomous, with their own religious, judicial, charitable, and recreational institutions. Since lateral expansion of the ghetto was, as a rule, impossible, houses tended to be of unusual height, with consequent congestion, fire hazards, and unsanitary conditions. Outside the ghetto, Jews were obliged to wear an identifying badge (usually yellow), and they were in danger of bodily harm and harassment at all times.

The ghettos in western Europe were permanently abolished in the course of the 19th century. The lastvestige disappeared with the occupation of Rome by the French in 1870. In Russia thePale of Settlement (seepale), a restrictive area on the western provinces of the empire, lasted until the 1917 Revolution. Ghettos continued in some Islamic countries, such as Yemen, until the large-scale emigration to Israel in 1948. The ghettos revived by theNazis duringWorld War II were merely overcrowded holding places that served as preliminaries to extermination. TheWarsaw ghetto was the foremost example.

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More recently, the termghetto has come to apply to any urban area exclusively settled by aminority group. In theUnited States, immigrant groups andAfrican Americans were compelled to live in ghettos because of legal and illegaldiscrimination and economic and social pressures. The goal of modern legislation has been to dissipate ghettos, but enforcement ofcivil rights laws (e.g., theCivil Rights Act) passed from the 1960s onward has been hampered by some of the same socialprejudices that brought the first ghettos into being.