Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany

{{short description|Areas of Jewish imprisonment during the Holocaust}} {{pp-extended|small=yes}} {{Infobox holocaust event | name = Ghettos in [[German-occupied Europe]] | image =File:Gate to the Ghetto in Radom, Poland 1.jpg | image_size = | caption = Main square of the [[Radom Ghetto]] with gate | AKA = ''Jüdischer Wohnbezirk'' in [[German language|German]] | location = [[Central Europe|Central]], [[Eastern Europe|Eastern]] and [[South-Eastern Europe]] | date = 1939{{ndash}}1945 | incident_type = Total of more than 1,000 ghettos created mostly in Central and Eastern Europe<ref name="YV03">Yad Vashem, [http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/03/introduction.asp "The Ghettos"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161104000414/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/03/introduction.asp |date=2016-11-04 }}. The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. Overview. Retrieved 28 September 2015.</ref> | perpetrators = [[Schutzstaffel]] (SS), [[Order Police battalions]] | participants =  | organizations =  | ghetto = {{plainlist | * Open ghettos, in specified areas (1939) * Closed or sealed ghettos (1940–1941) * Destruction or extermination ghettos (1942)}} | victims =  | documentation =  | memorials =  }} Beginning with the [[invasion of Poland]] during [[World War II]], the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi regime]] set up [[ghetto]]s across [[German-occupied Europe|German-occupied Eastern Europe]] in order to segregate and confine [[Jews]], and sometimes [[Romani people]], into small sections of towns and cities furthering their exploitation. In German documents, and [[signage]] at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them as ''Jüdischer Wohnbezirk'' or ''Wohngebiet der Juden'', both of which translate as the [[Jewish Quarter (diaspora)|Jewish Quarter]]. There were several distinct types including ''open ghettos'', ''closed ghettos'', ''work'', ''transit'', and ''destruction ghettos'', as defined by [[the Holocaust|Holocaust]] historians. In a number of cases, they were the place of Jewish underground resistance against the German occupation, known collectively as the [[ghetto uprising]]s.<ref name="H.E.">{{cite web|author=Holocaust Encyclopedia |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005059 |title=Ghettos. Key Facts |publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |year=2014 |access-date=28 September 2015 |via=Internet Archive |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120815195917/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005059 |archive-date=August 15, 2012 }}</ref>

==Background and establishment of the ghettos== {{further|List of Nazi-era ghettos|Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland}} [[File:Ringelblum collection - Ghetto in Grodno in occupied Poland.jpg|thumb|left|Jews being forced into the new [[Grodno Ghetto]] in ''[[Bezirk Bialystok]]'', November 1941]]

The first anti-Jewish measures were enacted in Germany with the onset of [[Nazism]]; these measures did not include ghettoizing German Jews: such plans were rejected in the post-[[Kristallnacht]] period.{{sfn|Browning|2007|pages=166, 172}} However, soon after the [[Invasion of Poland|1939 German invasion of Poland]], the Nazis began to designate areas of larger Polish cities and towns as exclusively Jewish, and within weeks, embarked on a massive programme of uprooting [[Polish Jews]] from their homes and businesses through [[Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany|forcible expulsions]]. Entire Jewish communities were deported into these closed off zones by train from their places of origin systematically, using [[Order Police battalions]],{{sfn|Browning|2007|page=139|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=gold%2Brush Gold rush]}} first in the ''[[Reichsgau Wartheland|Reichsgaue]]'', and then throughout the ''[[General Government|Generalgouvernement]]'' territory.<ref name="Berghahn">{{cite book |author=Volker R. Berghahn |author-link=Volker Berghahn |chapter=Germans and Poles 1871–1945 |title=Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences |publisher=Rodopi |year=1999 |page=32 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j6VCNno2DVMC&q=Reichsgaue+1939 |isbn=9042006889}}</ref>

The Nazis had a special hatred of Polish and other eastern Jews. Nazi ideology depicted Jews, Slavs and Roma as inferior race ''[[Untermenschen]]'' ("subhumans") who threatened the purity of Germany's [[Aryanism|Aryan]] ''[[Herrenrasse]]'' ("master race"), and viewed these people and also political opponents of the Nazi party as parasitic vermin or diseases that endangered the overall health of the ''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'', the German racial community. German doctors and public health officials helped advance these racist fearmongering ideas. The German [[invasion of Poland]] (1 September 1939) and the formation of Jewish ghettos caused hunger and poverty, crowding and unsanitary conditions, which in turn actually created typhus epidemics in occupied Poland. German physicians and public health officials in the Nazi regime did not acknowledge this; instead, German medical professionals published essays blaming Jewish people's supposed "low cultural level" and "uncleanliness" for the typhoid epidemics. Posters depicting Jews as lice, which transmit from person to person the bacteria that causes epidemic typhus, were publicized, and the respected status of German doctors helped spread the belief that the Jews were responsible for spreading typhus.<ref name="ushmm_pubhealth">{{cite web |title=Public Health under the Third Reich |url=https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus |website=Experiencing History - Holocaust Sources in Context |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC |access-date=20 April 2021 |archive-date=20 April 2021 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210420134850/https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus |url-status=dead }}</ref> The German public health officials in occupied Poland were concerned only with the health of German personnel, so they repeatedly urged occupation authorities to isolate Jews further from the rest of the population.<ref name="ushmm_hygiene">{{cite web |title=Final Solutions: Murderous Racial Hygiene, 1939–1945 |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC - Holocaust Encyclopedia |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solutions-murderous-racial-hygiene-1939-1945 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC |access-date=20 April 2021 |archive-date=20 April 2021 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210420130036/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solutions-murderous-racial-hygiene-1939-1945 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

German forces regarded the establishment of ghettos as temporary measures, in order to allow higher level Nazis in Berlin to decide how to execute their goal of eradicating Jews from Europe.<ref name="sjm_ghettos">{{cite web |title=Ghettos |url=https://www.holocaust.com.au/the-facts/the-outbreak-of-world-war-ii-and-the-war-against-the-jews/ghettos/ |website=The Holocaust - The Nazi Genocide against the Jewish People |publisher=Sydney Jewish Museum, Australia |access-date=20 April 2021 |archive-date=20 April 2021 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210420134650/https://www.holocaust.com.au/the-facts/the-outbreak-of-world-war-ii-and-the-war-against-the-jews/ghettos/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Nazi officials had an ''Endziel'', an unarticulated final goal that would take time to reach, and also an [[Final Solution|''Endlösung'']], a "final solution" which was a euphemism for the murder of Jews. Toward the Endziel and Endloesung there were intermediate goals to be carried out in the short term, and one of these was to concentrate Jews from the countryside into larger cities, thus making certain areas ''[[Judenrein]]'' ("clean of Jews").<ref>https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-ghettos Accessed June 2021</ref>

[[Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto|The first ghetto of World War II]] was established on 8 October 1939 at [[Piotrków Trybunalski]] (38 days after the invasion),<ref name="chronology">{{cite web |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1939-1941/1939/chronology_1939_16.html |archive-url=https://archive.today/20090106032256/http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1939-1941/1939/chronology_1939_16.html |archive-date=January 6, 2009 |title=First Jewish ghetto established in Piotrkow Trybunalski: October 8, 1939 |url-status=dead |access-date=June 1, 2016}}. ''[[Yad Vashem]] The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority''.</ref> with the [[Tuliszków]] ghetto established in December 1939. The first large metropolitan ghetto known as the [[Łódź Ghetto]] (''Litzmannstadt'') followed them in April 1940, and the [[Warsaw Ghetto]] in October. Most Jewish ghettos were established in 1940 and 1941. Subsequently, many ghettos were sealed from the outside, walled off with brickwork, or enclosed with barbed wire. In the case of sealed ghettos, any Jew caught leaving could be shot. The Warsaw Ghetto, located in the heart of the city, was the largest ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of {{convert|3.4|km2|sqmi|frac=8|abbr=off}}.<ref name="ushmm-5069">[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005069 Warsaw], [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]</ref> The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 people.<ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005247 Ghettos] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141027181340/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005247 |date=2014-10-27 }}, [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]</ref> According to the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] archives, there were at least 1,000 such ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the [[Soviet Union]] alone.<ref name="H.E."/>

==Living conditions== Ghettos across [[Eastern Europe]] varied in their size, scope and living conditions.<ref name="ushmm-7445">[https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/types-of-ghettos Types of Ghettos. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.]</ref> The conditions in the ghettos were generally brutal. In [[Warsaw]], the Jews, comprising 30% of the city overall population, were forced to live in 2.4% of the city's area, a density of 7.2 people per room.<ref name="ushmm-5069" /> In the ghetto of [[Odrzywół, Przysucha County|Odrzywół]], 700 people lived in an area previously occupied by five families, between 12 and 30 to each room. The Jews were not allowed out of the ghetto, so they had to rely on smuggling and the starvation rations supplied by the Nazis: in Warsaw this was {{cvt|253|kcal|kJ|order=flip|abbr=off}} per Jew, compared to {{cvt|669|kcal|kJ|order=flip|abbr=on}} per Pole and {{cvt|2613|kcal|kJ|order=flip|abbr=on}} per German. With the crowded living conditions, starvation diets, and insufficient sanitation (coupled with lack of medical supplies), epidemics of infectious disease became a major feature of ghetto life.{{sfn|Browning|2007|loc=pp. 149, 167: [https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=sanitation Sanitation]}} In the [[Łódź Ghetto]] some 43,800 people died of 'natural' causes, and 76,000 in the [[Warsaw Ghetto]] before July 1942.<ref name="trunk223">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ugVsNrbMSx4C | title=Łódź Ghetto: A History | publisher=Indiana University Press | isbn=0253347556 | date=2006 | access-date=29 September 2015 | author1=Isaiah Trunk|author2= Robert Moses Shapiro | pages=223}}</ref>

==Types of ghettos== [[File:The Wall of ghetto in Warsaw - Building on Nazi-German order August 1940.jpg|thumb|[[Warsaw Ghetto]]; walling-off [[Świętokrzyska Street, Warsaw|Świętokrzyska Street]] (seen from "Aryan side" of [[Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw|Marszałkowska]])]]

To prevent unauthorised contact between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations, German [[Order Police battalions]] were assigned to patrol the perimeter. Within each ghetto, a [[Jewish Ghetto Police]] force was created to ensure that no prisoners tried to escape. In general terms, there were three types of ghettos maintained by the Nazi administration.<ref name="H.E."/>

*''Open ghettos'' did not have walls or fences, and existed mostly in initial stages of World War II in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union, but also in [[Transnistria Governorate|Transnistria]] province of Ukraine occupied and administered by Romanian authorities. There were severe restrictions on entering and leaving them.<ref name="ushmm-7445" /> *''Closed or sealed ghettos'' were situated mostly in [[Occupation of Poland|German-occupied Poland]]. They were surrounded by brick walls, fences or barbed wire stretched between posts. Jews were not allowed to live in any other areas under the threat of [[capital punishment]]. In the closed ghettos the living conditions were the worst. The quarters were extremely crowded and unsanitary. Starvation, chronic shortages of food, lack of heat in winter and inadequate municipal services led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics such as [[dysentery]] and [[typhus]] and to a high mortality rate.<ref name="aktion">Hershel Edelheit, Abraham J. Edelheit, [https://books.google.com/books?id=94NvHsiyn38C&pg=PA216 ''A world in turmoil: an integrated chronology of the Holocaust''], 1991</ref> Most Nazi ghettos were of this particular type.<ref name="ushmm-7445" /> *The ''destruction or extermination ghettos'' existed in the final stages of the Holocaust, for between two and six weeks only, in German-occupied Soviet Union (especially in [[Lithuania]] and [[Ukraine]]), in [[Hungary]], and in [[occupied Poland]]. They were tightly sealed off. The Jewish population was imprisoned in them only to be deported or taken out of town and shot by the German killing squads, often with the aid of local [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|collaborationist]] [[Schutzmannschaft|Auxiliary Police]] battalions.<ref name="ushmm-7445" />

===Aryan side=== The parts of a city outside the walls of the Jewish Quarter were called "Aryan". For example, in [[Warsaw]], the city was divided into Jewish, Polish, and German Quarters. Those living outside the ghetto had to have [[identification papers]] proving they were not Jewish (none of their grandparents was a member of the Jewish community), such as a [[baptism]] certificate. Such documents were sometimes called "Christian" or "Aryan papers". Poland's Catholic clergy massively forged baptism certificates,<ref name="Paulsson">[[Gunnar S. Paulsson]], "The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland", ''The Journal of Holocaust Education'', vol. 7, nos. 1 & 2 (summer–autumn 1998), pp. 19–44.</ref> which were given to Jews by the dominant Polish resistance movement, the [[Home Army]] (''Armia Krajowa'', or AK).<ref name="Piotrowski2007">{{cite book|author= Tadeusz Piotrowski|title= Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces, and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947|year= 2007|publisher= McFarland|isbn= 978-0-7864-2913-4}}</ref> Any Pole found by the Germans to be giving any help to a Jew was subject to the death penalty.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Donald L.|last1=Niewyk|first2=Francis R.|last2=Nicosia|title= The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust|url=https://archive.org/details/columbiaguidetot00niew|url-access=registration|year= 2000|publisher= Columbia University Press|isbn= 978-0-231-11200-0|page= [https://archive.org/details/columbiaguidetot00niew/page/114 114]}}</ref>

==Liquidation== [[File:Biala Podlaska - likwidacja getta - 1942.jpg|thumb|right|Deportation to a [[death camp]] during liquidation of the [[Biała Podlaska]] Ghetto conducted by the [[Reserve Police Battalion 101]] in 1942]] In 1942, the Nazis began [[Operation Reinhard]], the systematic deportation of Jews to [[extermination camp]]s. Nazi authorities throughout Europe deported Jews to ghettos in Eastern Europe or most often directly to [[extermination camp]]s built by [[Nazi Germany]] in [[occupied Poland]]. Almost 300,000 people were deported from the [[Warsaw Ghetto]] alone to [[Treblinka]] over the course of 52 days. In some ghettos, [[Jewish resistance during the Holocaust|local resistance]] organizations staged [[ghetto uprising]]s. None were successful, and the Jewish populations of the ghettos were almost entirely killed.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206508.pdf |title=Warsaw |website=[[Yad Vashem]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241229094618/https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206508.pdf |archive-date=29 December 2024}}</ref> On June 21, 1943, [[Heinrich Himmler]] issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jewish inhabitants to [[concentration camp]]s. A few ghettos were re-designated as concentration camps and existed until 1944.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/himmler-order-for-ostland-ghettos-liquidation.html |title=Order by Himmler for the Liquidation of the Ghettos of Ostland, June 21, 1943 |website=[[Yad Vashem]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241126162533/https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/himmler-order-for-ostland-ghettos-liquidation.html |archive-date=26 November 2024}}</ref>

==See also== {{commons category|Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944}} * [[Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland]] * [[Judendienstordnung]] * [[Judenrat]]

==Notes== {{Reflist}}

==References== * {{cite book |title=[[Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945]]|editor1-first=Geoffrey P.|editor1-last=Megargee|editor-link1 = Geoffrey P. Megargee| others=in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|year=2012|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington|isbn=978-0253355997}} * {{cite book |first=Christopher R. |last=Browning |author-link=Christopher Browning |year=2007 |orig-year=2004 |title=The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy 1939–1942 |location=Lincoln |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=ghettoization%2Bpolicy |isbn=978-0803203921 }} *{{cite book |last1=Corni |first1=Gustavo |title=Hitler's Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society 1939–1944 |date=2003 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-0-340-76246-2 |language=en}} {{The Holocaust}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghettos In Nazi-Occupied Europe}} [[Category:Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany| ]] [[Category:Jewish Polish history]] [[Category:Jewish Ukrainian history]] [[Category:Holocaust locations]]