Jewish Ghettos Essay

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

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

Mostly ghettos are places or sections of a city, that are a thickly populated slum area inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic, or other minority groups, as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures or hardships. Ghettos also are places that do not have career oriented jobs but in most cases, they only offer trade jobs like sewing, hairdressing and carpentry. We can tell from

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

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.

More than 30,000 Jews were arrested to go to these ghettos. Once they had everything ready for all of the undesirables. SS guards were hired to do the dirty work of putting all of the prisoners to do forced labor until they died. No one cared how all of the undesirables were treated. It became an amusement to watch one die or get killed. Considering that's all they wanted was for all the innocent people to die. Every Day would be the same watching friends and families die, working for the Nazi getting nothing in return, digging their own graves, and only getting one cup of black coffee with soup that was just broth a day. Women even got raped by SS guards during this time considering the women were separated from the men to different camps. No one did anything to stop it because of the fear of death. In 1939 the Nazi had figured out a way to make sure there will never be a Jew again they called it the final

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

​According to dicitonaity.com, a ghetto is “a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships” (“Ghetto”). The five major ghettos were established in Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, and Lvov (“Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos”). The Nazi Party used three different types of ghettos to isolate Jews from society. The three types were closed, open, and reconstruction ghettos (“Types of Ghettos”). Closed ghettos were the most common and often had high mortality rates as they were closed off with stone or brick walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire. The largest ghetto, Warsaw, was a closed ghetto and had over 400,000 people in an area of 1.3 squared miles (“Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos”). Open ghettos had no physical barriers, but restrictions on entering and were often only in small towns used for temporary housing before relocating to a larger, often closed, ghetto. The majority of open ghettos were located in small towns, and in the countries of Poland, the occupied Soviet Union, and Transnistria. Lastly, deconstruction ghettos were tightly sealed off and only

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).

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.

The Jews of the Sighet ghettos remained within the ghettos only for a short period of time. As a result, they never encountered starvation or mass death as experienced in other ghettos. Nevertheless the Jews endured crowded living conditions. The ghettos were relatively small: “one in the center of town occupied four streets, and another smaller one extended over several alleyways on the outskirts of town”

The ghettos were streets where Jewish people lived. The three main ghettos were Lodz, Warsaw, and Theresienstadt. It had horrible living conditions. They were non-sanitary, bad electricity, extremely crowded, and there was not enough food. Contagious diseases spread rapidly due to all of these bad conditions. Everyday children became orphaned, and many had to take care of younger

The ghettos were used as a means to hold the Jews captive, and isolate what Heydrich had termed the “plague” until they could find a what to eradicate the problem. This made it appear that the Nazi’s were helping the Jews, and was a way to cover up the “final solution.”

Holocaust ghettos; these are the over looked places where the Jews, in Nazi controlled lands, awaited their future.

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.