The effects of the second world war in Poland was almost an extinction of an entire race. (Luongo 32-35) Less than ⅓ of the Polish Jew population was wiped out from September 1, 1939 to January 17, 1945. In the beginning of the war, on the day of the Polish invasion, the population was around 35,100,000 citizens in total. This number would be cut in half and then some at the end of the war. The drop in population was due to the fact that the Nazi’s captured and tortured the Polish Jews all around the country and in particular, Warsaw. Warsaw along with other cities in Poland isolated the Jews in their communities and were starved and diseased. (“warsaw” 1) In Warsaw before the resistance, the Jews were captured and sent to their death, in either concentration camps like Treblinka or in isolated 10 foot wall confinements known as the “Jewish Ghettos” there was no way out of the Nazi grasp for these defenceless Jews. (Bond 370)
When the Nazi’s siezed the city of Warsaw on September 29, 1939 they had a “Judenrat”, a council meeting for the representatives of the
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The threat being non aryan, indesirables of society in Europe, (the Jews) specifically in Warsaw, Poland. The Nazi’s had made orders for a 10 foot wall with barbed wire on the top with the area of 1.3 square miles for the Jewish inhabitants in Warsaw. (“Warsaw” 1) This tactic was to ensure that the Jews were kept separated from the outside world, getting in and out of the wall was close to impossible without german stamp of approval on documents. (“Warsaw”1) With the minimal contact with the outside world from the ghetto, food and medicine were hard to come by. (“Warsaw” 1) Many of the Jews starved and were infected with disease. The Jews that did survive, survived with outsiders in Warsaw smuggling in food and medicine for them. Around 83,000 Jews died from starvation and disease in the ghetto. (“Warsaw”
The Germans soon came to Warsaw making the Jews do as they said. If they didn't they would
The Warsaw Ghetto By the middle of 1942, Jews in the ghettos realized that all their former residents were being murdered, not sent to labor camps. In the Warsaw Ghetto
During the holocaust, Jews were losing their jobs, rights, and property. In 1933, the Nazi leaders began assigning Jews to handle situations to help the jews in the Ghettos, these Jews were known as the Judenrat. The Judenrate weren’t Jewish volunteers, they were assigned and given tasks to perform: “Composed of 24 male jews … prescribed as 1) executing German orders, 2) taking an improvised census of the Jew in their area, 3) executing the Jew from rural to urban locations, 4) furnishing adequate maintenance for the evacuees en route to the cities, 5) providing quarters for the evacuees in the cities ghetto.” (Bernard 27). In many cases, the Judenrat were responsible
When the Germans invaded Poland, they processed ghettos in several Polish cities, where Jews were in hiding. The living conditions in the ghettos were: hunger, disease, and overcrowding killed tens of thousands. The Germans transported Jews from all over occupied Europe to these ghettos, modeled after the ghettos the Catholic Church had established all over Europe since the Middle Ages.
Summary: This article was an introduction to the Holocaust. The German Nazi’s thought that the Jews were a community. Not only the Jews were targeted, anyone with a racial inferiority was targeted. For example, although the Jews were the main threat the gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals and the disabled were also targeted. The Holocaust was a way to decrease the Jewish population; the final solution was to murder the Jews of Europe or anyone that was a threat to their German culture. Many died of incarceration and maltreatment. During the war they created ghettos, forced-labor camps between 1941 and 1944 the Nazi German Authorities would deport the Jews to extermination camps where they were murdered in gassing facilities. May 7, 1945 the German armed forces surrendered to the allies.
Starting in September of 1939, the Nazis established the Judenrat, Jewish councils meant to operate within the Jewish communities of Nazi-occupied Europe. The Judenrat have been a controversial topic among historians since the end of the Holocaust. Some historians label its members as traitors to the Jewish community for going along with Nazi orders, but others are more sympathetic towards its members, considering the difficult situation they were put in by the Nazis. The fact is that most of the Jews who were under the control of the Judenrat did not survive the Holocaust, and many attribute the Judenrat’s failure to save their communities to the its incompetence in performing basic tasks. While the Judenrat’s general incompetence can be partially
Ghettos were put in to segregate, restrict, and isolate the Jews from the rest of the population. Unlike Ghettos set up in medieval times, the Nazi Ghettos had walls around them and were guarded. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in Europe and it was built in April 1940. The Warsaw Ghetto was a residential district in Warsaw until it was designated as a Jewish ghetto in World War II by the Nazis. (Warsaw Ghetto Facts). All the Jewish people that lived in the Warsaw were sent to the ghetto. This meant that 30 percent of the population were forced into 2.4 percent of the city's area. They set up these ghettos, so the Nazis knew exactly where to find them to persecute them (Holocaust Ghettos). The Ghetto was liberated on January 17, 1945 by the Soviet army, and 300 Jews were found hiding despite the fact that the ghetto was almost completely destroyed.
As Joseph tells us, “There was no future for Jews in Poland.” The Jewish people were constantly mistreated in Poland. Many children could not walk home alone because someone would take them and beat them.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was organized by Jews in an underground group called the ZOB. The Jews were being held in the ghetto, and the Nazis began deportations to an extermination camp. The ZOB collectively organized an attack in order to stop the deportations. Then, “The resistance sprang into action. Jewish fighters could strike [the Nazis] quickly, then escape on rooftops,” (Berenbaum 4). Jews crowded the Nazis, using whatever weapons they could find to strike them. It had seemed like their efforts had been successful, because, “the German deportations effort ended within a few days… from then on the [ZOB] dominated the ghetto,” (Berenbaum 4). The Jews were in charge of their ghetto, and they felt freed. Unfortunately, a few days later the deportations to the extermination camps resumed, and the Jews could no longer fight.
As Nazi Germany expanded outward throughou t Europe, so did their stiff oppression and disenfranchis ement of any culture or race deemed a threat to Aryans. Most racial groups, in particular the Jews and Gypsies, faced relocation by the Nazis in to tightly packed and isola ted ghettos to be more easily moni tored and restricted. These ghettos, which were formed during the beginni ng of World War II, shared many aspects with concentra tion camps and in fact were mostly transformed
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
2). The ghettos were in awful condition, they were located in run down sections of town, surrounded by walls, and the buildings were in bad shape, often about to collapse (Rogasky 38). Warsaw was a ghetto located in Poland (Altman 21) it was the largest ghetto with 500,000 Jews living on 840 acres (Warsaw par. 2). Warsaw was surrounded with 10 foot high wall made of bricks (Altman 21) that was 11 miles long (Warsaw par. 2). Warsaw had no housing and those who did were often crowded in a room and many died from starvation and disease. This quote explains what a survivor thought about living in the ghettos. “Beautiful, sunny day. When the sun shines, my mood is lighter. How sad life is. When we look at the fence separating us from the rest of the world, our souls, like birds in a cage, yearn to be free. Longing breaks my heart, visions of the past come to me. Will I ever live in better times?” (Anonymous par.
of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the
When the Germans invaded Poland, the Jews thought they would survive as their race always had, by petitioning and buying off authorities. They soon discovered that the Nazi threat was much more awful than they had envisioned. Their organizations and homes were appropriated, and they were compelled to live in a ghetto. Eventually, the ghetto was cleared, and they were placed in some of the seventeen hundred large and small forced-labor camps in Poland. On the day the Krakow ghetto was shut, four thousand individuals were discovered stowing away and were
Before getting into deep information about the city, I am going to first talk about many interesting facts about Warsaw, Poland, which many people may not know when they first go to visit this city but I do find important for people to learn the history so they can really appreciate the city once they arrive. Warsaw, known for its incredible history, with its first settlement in the 11th century but the city was founded in 1300 and came under the Polish rule in 1526. It became the capital of Poland in 1596, taking over Krakow. The city of Warsaw during the World War II was almost completely destroyed losing approximately 17% of its population and between 17th-18th century was reconstructed with mainly old architectural style. When the Nazi occupied this city, around 350,000 Jewish