Life in the Ghettos
The Pale of Settlement
• 1791- Russia annexed part of Poland
and put 90% of all Russian Jews in an
area known as the Pale of settlement
• Could only leave with special
permission
• Had to pay double taxes
• Forbidden to lease land and receive
higher education
Ghettos in Poland
• Formed soon after the Nazi invasion
• Some ghettos were closed, others were
open
• Germans considered them “Jewish
residential quarters”
• See maps of ghettos
Moving Into The Ghetto
• Goods and property were confiscated
• Ghettos were extremely crowded
Ghetto Life
• Was a life of hunger, disease, and
despair
• Starvation was rampant
• Serious public health problems
• Forced Labor was common
Ghetto Life
• Lived in constant fear of humiliation,
labor conscription, and deportation
• Survival was a daily challenge
• Continued to hold school and religious
services
Governing the Ghettos
• Government rested with the Judenrat or
Judenraete
– Jewish Council
• They were to carry out Nazi orders
Governing the Ghettos
Ghetto Money
Ghetto ration card
Governing the Ghettos
Typical ghetto room
Two starving women on a
rickstrew cart
Tough Decisions for Jewish
Councils
• Were asked to provide lists of those to
be deported
– What would you do?
• Looked to the Talmud to find their
answers
The Warsaw Ghetto
• Largest center of Jewish life in Europe
• One in ten died from starvation
• Had a political underground that
published newspapers
– 50 in all
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• One of the most remarkable events of
the Holocaust
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
One of the most
famous pictures of the
Holocaust. German
storm troopers force
Warsaw ghetto
dwellers of all ages
to move, hands up,
during the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising in
April-May 1943.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The SS thugs set
ablaze
entire blocks of flats in
order to force the
population to come out
of hiding...the water,
gas,
and electric supplies
were cut off...."
Chronicles
• Documenting the
story of the ghettos
took determination
and ingenuity
• Emmanuel
Ringelblum
The Lodz Ghetto
• German occupation force was
particularly ferocious
• Was the industrial center of prewar
Poland
• Had a long-term strategy for survival
– “salvation through work”
– First ghetto to be sealed
– Last ghetto to remain in existence
The Lodz Ghetto
Diary Entry from the Lodz
Ghetto
• Excerpted from In Those Terrible Days
by Josef Zelkowicz.
My Secret Camera
Theresienstadt
• Was a ghetto and concentration camp
• Was in Terazin, a Czech town
• Some of the most prominent Czech,
Austrian, and German artists, writers,
diplomats and musicians were killed
• 456 Danish Jews sent
Monopoly
Game
I Never Saw Another Butterfly
Read Poem
The Liquidation of the Ghettos
• Summer of 1942, Nazis liquidated the
ghettos of Eastern Europe
• By the end of the war, except in
Budapest, not a single ghetto, neither in
its entirety, nor in part, remained.
Population Figures of the Largest
Ghettos
Warsaw, Poland
400,000-500,000
Lodz, Poland
205, 000
Lvov, Ukraine
110,000
Minsk, Belorussia
100,000
Terezin, Czechoslovakia
90,000
Budapest, Hungary
70,000
Chernovtsy, Poland
50,000
Bialystok, Poland
35,000-50,000
Riga, Latvia
43,000
Vilna, Lithuania
41,000
Kovno, Lituania
40,000
Lublin, Poland
34,000
Online Museum Exhibitions
• Give Me Your Children: Voices From the
Lodz Ghetto
• Szpilman’s Warsaw:
The History behind The Pianist
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto
Closure
• What are some things that young
people you know might take for granted
that young people in the ghetto learned
to cherish?
• What did school mean in the ghetto?
• In challenging times, what is the
importance of remaining hopeful that
one’s situation will improve?
Closure
• It is difficult to maintain a hopeful
outlook over time. Do you believe there
is a point when people begin to lose
hope?
• If so, what do you think that point is?
• Do you think it is the same for
everyone?
Closure
• Has the loss of hope ever happened to
you? Have you ever witnessed it in
others?
• How does a person restore hope?
Assignment
• The establishment of ghettos marked
the end of freedom of movement for
Jews. Write about what freedom means
to you in your life and what you think it
would mean to lose it.