Holocaust : Jews Crossing The Bridge

Every day there were about 200 jewish people sent to the area where all the jewish people sit there and wait for their death. Also 400,000 jews were crammed into the ghetto. Ben's family moved into one small room and got some rest. (9 )

The term ghetto, originally derived from Venetian dialect in Italy during the sixteenth century, has multiple variations of meaning. The primary perception of the word is “synonymous with segregation” (Bassi). The first defining moment of the ghetto as a Jewish neighborhood was in sixteenth century Italy; however, the term directly correlates with the beginning of the horror that the Jewish population faced during Adolph Hitler’s reign. “No ancient ghetto knew the terror and suffering of the ghettos under Hitler” (Weisel, After the Darkness 20). Under Hitler’s terror, there were multiple ghettos throughout several cities in numerous countries ranging in size and population. Ghettos also differed in purpose; some were temporary housing

The Jews didn't want to believe what Moshie was saying was true, so they just ignored him and thought he had lost it. When they were forced to give up some of their rights like where they could go, they believed it was for their own good. Since it hadn't hurt anyone and nothing too serious had happened, that things could've still gotten better. Finally, by thinking that the ghettos were for their own protection and not to just set them up to be put into a more dangerous situation are all signs of self-deception. The Jewish people did not want to believe what was happening to them, so instead they relied of self-deception to continue to have hope to try to get them through those

In the ghetto the Jewish created their small government within the ghetto to keep order within the premier of the ghetto. "A Jewish Council was appointed, as well as a Jewish police force, a welfare agency, a Labor community, a health agency-a whole governmental apparatus." (Page 12). The Jewish people have no fear of the situation of being put in a ghetto by the German soldiers. Around the town two ghettos were made for housing the Jewish population: one

“The ghetto was to be liquidated entirely. Departures were to take place street by street, starting the next day” (Wiesel 13). Days later after they felt safe again, they would be taken to the camps, to be worked to death. They were dehumanized from that

While in many places ghettoization only lasted a brief period of time, ghettos had a profound impact as they isolated Jews from society, served as a crucial role in Hitler’s Final Solution, and left thousands living in inhumane conditions.

This was the Nazi’s policy to murder Jews in Europe. The Nazis believed that the Aryan German race were superior to Jews, which were a threat to German community. There were however other victims including the Roma(Gypsies), disabled, Slavic, Jehovah’s witnesses, war prisoners, etc. Ghettos were created to segregate the Jews from the rest of the world. There were three different types of ghettos; closed, open and destruction. Most ghettos were temporary, but some lasted for several years. Inside the ghetto people were forced to wear badges to be easily identified. Many died inside the ghetto from either disease, or starvation. The ghettos also were used to temporarily hold Jews, and they would later be deported to either a concentration camp or a killing center (ushmm.org).

Life in the ghetto was subjected to death. Many took their own lives, and others tried to escape.

Anti-semitism, which is defined to be the hatred of Jews, played a major part in our world history, such as the Holocaust. The Nazis believed that the Jewish community was inferior to their own race, and wanted to get rid of them for good. Initially in the early 1930’s, Adolf Hitler conducted one of the worlds now largest genocides, the annihilation of the Jews during WWII. Nealy six million Jews died during the span of twelve years, which was ⅔ of the Jewish population in Europe, and he was able to do so using the four stages of isolation. Those of which, were the stripping of rights, segregation, concentration, and extermination. The stripping of rights was taking away the Jewish men and women's basic needs, stripping them of their German citizenships, forcing them to wear an armband of the star of David, and etc. The second stage of isolation was segregation. The Jews were kicked out of the comfort of their own homes, and were forced to live in an isolated area called the “ghettos”. The third stage was concentration. After a couple of months from being moved to the ghettos, the Jews were brought to concentration camps where they were forced to work for hours at a time under all conditions, they were starved and all were mistreated. The last stage of isolation is the extermination, which was the stage in which the Jews were killed. The Nazis used different methods to do so, many were shot, beaten to death, burnt alive, but most were brought into gas chambers where they were gassed with Zyklon b which killed all within 3-15 mins of inhalation. There was not much of an option for the Jews their only chance of making it out alive is by figuring out various tactics to survive. Surviving meant that they had to live within a grueling environment, despite the difficult circumstances. Regardless of all the hardships they faced during that time, they were able to survive and overcome them by using different strategies, such as trading with one another, using their skills, and made friendships and built allies with one another in the camps.

According to Merriam-Webster a ghetto is, “ a part of a city in which members of a particular group or race live usually in poor conditions (ghetto).” This paper will focus, however, on what daily life was like in the ghettos, what Jews did or didn’t do to prevent their fate, and how Holocaust survivors are doing now. I chose this topic because when Elie and his family were living in the ghetto in the beginning of Night, it seemed as though they had plenty of opportunities to escape that they didn’t take. It also seemed much closer to pleasant than I imagined, and I was curious to see if that was completely true.

Around this time the Nazis came up with the term “The Final Solution” This meant to have all Jewish people segregated and put into ghettos, limiting their freedom and lives. People were evicted from their properties and also from their business just because they were Jews, and they were put in the “ghettos”. Life in the ghettos was unbearable and overcrowding. Specially when they have ten families living in one small apartment. They were also limited on the food that they could buy, since Nazis did not let them buy enough food for them and their family they were only aloud to buy small amounts, they were trying to make the Jewish starve. Jewish kids also sneak out through small openings in the ghetto walls to smuggle food, but if they got caught they were going to be severely punished. The housing inside ghettos were unsanitary specially when plumping broke down, and human waste was thrown in the streets along with garbage and caused contagious diseases that spread rapidly in the ghettos. Many people died every day in the ghettos because of the terrible conditions they lived and some

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the

The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, considered "inferior," were a major risk to the Germans. They came up with a plan called “The Final Solution” to murder all the Jews in Europe. It all began with their leader, Adolf

Ghettos were primarily created on the basis of low class Jewish neighborhoods. Ghettos such as the Warsaw Ghetto and the Łódź Ghetto caused thousands of deaths due to cramped and unsanitary living space. Large families lived in a tiny, crowded homes. The initial goal of the Nazi party for creating Ghettos were to dehumanize Jews and isolate them from the rest of the Germans. Ghettos created in Poland were developed for a specific reason according to the Nazi’s.

Theresienstadt became a ghetto where most of the well-known Jews of Europe would reside happily for the remainder of the war. Theresiensadt, now a beautiful town filled with the most prosperous Jews of Europe became the set for a well-planned propaganda film that the Nazi’s used to deny the final solution. The ghetto had become a scene for a sick play for the worlds viewing.