By Colleen Hughes and Maddie Huddle
Polish Citizens Walking By the Ghetto Wall
Kulturbesitz, Bildarchiv P. Polish Citizens Walking by the Ghetto Wall. 1940. Warsaw,
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 6 Nov. 2007.
Poland. United
“I feel like as if I were in prison. Yet I cannot console myself by looking out
the window, for when I peer from behind the curtain I witness hideous
incidents.” –Mary Berg from Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, by Gail Stewart
What is the Warsaw ghetto?
How did the Warsaw ghetto start?
What were the living conditions like?
What were the different rules?
What was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?
What were the causes of death?
Works Cited
1. What is the Warsaw ghetto?
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website,
Holocaust Biographies: Emmanuel Ringelblum, by Mark Beyer, and Life in the
Warsaw Ghetto, by Gail Stewart, the ghettos of Warsaw were homes for more than
half a million Jews from 1940 to 1943. The ghettos were limited spaces where Jews
from smaller communities were transported from towns that are nearby. It was one
of the first steps to concentration camps. The ghettos were made to segregate the
Jews from the outside world. For example, the ghettos were all closed off by a ten
foot high brick wall with barbed wire on top. There were also bridges that connected
areas of the ghettos to prevent Jews from entering the streets that were not part of
the ghetto. At first, the Germans tried to make the ghettos as normal as possible,
but still more than eighty-five thousand died in the Warsaw ghettos. The Warsaw
ghettos were located in Warsaw, Poland which was the second largest Jewish
community in the world. The Warsaw ghetto covered only 2.4% of the city. The
ghettos were controlled by the Jewish council, called the Judenrat, which was led by
Adam Czerniakow. They treated the Jews decently, but were spied on by the
Germans so that the Germans would know what was going on. The German soldiers
however would terrorize and often kill people in the ghetto, and they would also
humiliate them in front of others for their own entertainment.
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2. How did the Warsaw ghetto start?
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website,
Holocaust Biographies: Emmanuel Ringelblum, by Mark Beyer, and Life in the
Warsaw Ghetto, by Gail Stewart, before World War II, Warsaw, Poland had the
largest Jewish community in Europe with a population of over three-hundred and
fifty thousand people. It was the center of Jewish life and culture. The Warsaw
ghettos started following the Germans invasion of Poland. On September 1 st, 1939,
Warsaw suffered air attacks and canon shootings form Germany. Warsaw
surrendered on September 29, 1939. German officials then ordered the Judenrat to
be established. Judenrat was the Jewish council that the Germans spied on. On
November 23, 1939 the Germans ordered all Jews to wear white armbands with the
Star of David on them. The Jewish schools were closed, their property was taken,
their organizations were stopped, and the Jewish men were forced to work. On
October 12, 1940, the Warsaw ghetto was established. After the German occupation,
Warsaw became the largest ghetto in Europe.
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Children on Streets of Warsaw Ghetto
Photographer Unknown. Children on Streets of Warsaw Ghetto. 1940. Warsaw, Poland. United Sates
Holocaust Memorial Museum. 6 Nov. 2007
3. What were the living conditions like?
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, and
Mark Beyer, from the book, Holocaust Biographies: Emmanuel Ringelblum, the living
conditions in the ghetto were uncomfortable, fearsome, and extremely unsanitary.
There were shortages of food, clothes, medicine, and housing. People would often
smuggle these objects along with weapons into the ghettos. Warsaw at its highest
point in population had up to four-hundred thousand Jews between its closed walls,
which was thirty percent of the town’s population. The ghetto residents live in an
area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of seven persons per room. According to a
Jewish ghetto survivor, Channa Morgensztern, from the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum website, “the hunger in the ghetto was so great, was so bad, that
people were lying on the streets and dying.” Also (from the same website) a man,
Beno Helmer who went through living in the ghettos explains, “Filth was also
tremendous,” and that in the winter the toilets were iced. He explained how people
would die of malnutrition and if you didn’t have food, then it’s too bad. Food supplies
were rationed by the Germans and there was not enough food and nutrition for them
to survive. What at first seemed like an okay place to live, soon became an area of
filth, disease and death throughout time.
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Kulturbesitz, Bildarchiv P. SS Guards Search Jews for Weapons. Oct. 1939. Warsaw, Poland. United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. 7 Nov. 2007.
4. What were the different rules?
From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, and Mark
Beyer, from the book, Holocaust Biographies: Emmanuel Ringelblum, the rules in the
ghettos were very strict. The Jews had to wear armbands to show they were Jewish
One of the rules was that the Jews had a curfew that they could not be outside after
7:00 PM. The Nazis also banned the Jewish people from teaching, studying and
writing. Some people did write, yet it was extremely risky to keep a journal. People
buried their records of what happened in old milk cans or strong boxes. Some Jews
also broke the rules such as they helped worship services or school for the children.
The consequence if the Germans found out they were breaking the rules and not
doing what they were told, would be death.
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Yad Vashem. Germans buring the Warsaw Ghetto. Aish.com. November 6th 2007.
5. What was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, the
Warsaw ghetto between July and September 1942, the Germans deported about
300,000 Jews; reducing the Jewish population in Warsaw at about 55,000 people.
Two main armed self-defense organizations were created by Jews, The Jewish
Fighting Organization and the Jewish Fighting Union. Both organizations began to
work together to stop the Germans deporting people. However, in January of 1943,
the Germans began to mass deport the Jews. People from the two fighting groups
broke into a column of Jews who were being escorted to the transfer point and
fought with the German soldiers who were escorting them. After this revolt, Germans
stopped deporting people for a while, the fighting groups of Jews began to feel
confident that their resistance was working. Nevertheless, the Germans began to
deport people again on April 19, 1943; though when the Germans went into the
ghetto to take the Jews to the transfer point, the streets were empty. The Jews hid
underground and fought with the Germans for the next month until May 16, and in
the end the Germans burned places to force people out of their hiding places. The
Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first urban resistance and the largest.
For more information, on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, click here or here.
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6. What were the causes of death?
Over eighty-five thousand Jews died in the ghettos for several of different
reasons. There was disease such as colds, malnutrition or there were beatings,
shootings, torture, or random harassment. Also mass executions were common.
People who were found breaking the rules would often be punished and most of the
times killed. Jews who didn’t do exactly what the Germans said would be killed as
well. Over four thousand, six hundred people died in the Warsaw ghetto in February
1942, and more than five thousand, one-hundred deaths recorded in January 1942.
According to the Warsaw Life website, by April 1941 the death rate in the ghettos
was about six thousand people per month. Also, funeral carts would come and collect
the naked bodies every morning from four to five AM. The Jews were forced to strip
the dead bodies to sell their clothes. There were shootings on April 18, 1942 known
as “the bloody night.” On this night, there were lots of German soldiers and SS
guards that take Jews out form their apartments and shoot them in the streets. In
total, fifty-two Jews die. This results in lots of terror and rumors throughout the
ghetto. According to the Museum of Tolerance Online Multimedia Learning Center
website in 1940, Chaim A. Kaplan talks about how to keep hope in the ghettos when
she says, “We are left naked, but as long as this secret power is still within us we do
not give up hope. And the strength of this power lies in the indigenous nature of
Polish Jewry, which is rooted in our eternal tradition that commands us to live.”
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Works Cited
Ghettos. 25 Oct. 2007. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 6 Nov. 2007.
<http://www.ushmm.org/>
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 25 Oct. 2007. Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. 7
Nov. 2007. <http://ushmm.org/research/center/>
Beyer, Mark. Holocaust Biographies: Emmanuel Ringelblum. New York. The Rosen
Publishing Group, Inc, 2001.
Stewart, Gail. Life in the Warsaw Ghetto. San Diego, California: Lucent Books, Inc,
1995.
“The Warsaw Ghetto.” Warsaw Life.com. 2003-2007. Lifeboat Limited. November 8th,
2007. <http://www.warsaw-life.com/poland/warsaw-ghetto>.
“Daily Life in the Ghettos.” Museum of Tolerance Online Multimedia Learning Center.
1997. The Simon Wiesenthal Center. November 8th 2007.
<http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/>.
Pictures:
Photographer Unknown. Children on Streets of Warsaw Ghetto. 1940. Warsaw,
Poland. United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum. 6 Nov. 2007.
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/>
Kulturbesitz, Bildarchiv P. Polish Citizens Walking by the Ghetto Wall. 1940. Warsaw,
Poland. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 6 Nov. 2007.
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/>
Kulturbesitz, Bildarchiv P. SS Guards Search Jews for Weapons. Oct. 1939. Warsaw,
Poland. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 7 Nov. 2007.
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/>
Yad Vashem. Germans buring the Warsaw Ghetto. Aish.com. November 6th 2007.
<www.aish.com/holocaust/overview/he05n27.htm>
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