The Ghetto

Ghettos Constructed to control and restrict Jews There were hundreds constructed in Poland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic States They were increasingly used as holding centers prior to deportation

This image shows Jews being used as slave labor in the construction of a wall around a ghetto; the run-down section of a city where the Jews were held to separate them from the general population. Many Jews were shipped to work camps and death camps from these ghettos.

Jews made of 30% of the population of Warsaw. This one third of the city was crammed into an area of 1.3 miles in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Not so bad, you think? The Warsaw Ghetto had 350, ,000 people crammed into an area the size of 1.3 square miles. (Roughly—From Runnings to Microtel and the Medical Center to Pleasant View Drive

Ghetto = the size of Springfield Estimated Population of Minneapolis in 2008 = 382,605

Some ghettos were open, but many had walls built to restrict Jewish freedom.

Jews entering the ghetto

FACT: Only 1% of apartments in the Warsaw ghetto had running water.

Waiting in line for a drink of water

“Ghetto Disease” Nazis limited food intake to a portion of bread, about 200 calories per day Many people begged in the streets Many people sold their clothes and blankets to buy food but froze once winter arrived

Children scaling the wall to go find food

Many children scaled the wall, squeezed through the holes in the walls or even wiggled through sewers. Those who looked Aryan were the most successful, but there was a huge risk of being caught.

 Death was rampant because there was so little food, and what food there was of such poor quality.  There was no heating and people suffered from the bitter winter cold.  Infections ran rampant because of overcrowding and lack of water to keep clean.  The sight of people dead on sidewalks and streets was common.

People were subjected to searches for no reason.

Overcrowding was typical Several families often had to share a single room. Personal conversations were impossible. People burned their furniture for cooking and heating. People had to sleep on the floor— sometimes in shifts.

Dead bodies were hauled away for mass burial.

Notice the white armband identifying this woman as a Jew.

LIQUIDATION Families were separated in the liquidations, and mothers were often separated from their children. Children were sometimes deported because they were less useful to the Nazis. Parents being deported sometimes hid their children or entrusted them to anyone who could take them.

The ghettos were liquidated, and inhabitants were sent to camps. They did not know where they would be going or what they would be doing.

This is the scene Elie must have experienced as he and his family were waiting outside under the brutal sun.

Being loaded onto cattle cars

Children on the cars, leaving for the camps… And often certain death.

Information taken from Holocaust: the events and their impact on real people Images taken from “The Warsaw Ghetto”: scrolls.com/shoah/wghetto.html scrolls.com/shoah/wghetto.html