Warsaw Ghetto: Difference between revisions

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[[File:The Wall of ghetto in Warsaw - Buiilding on Nazi -German order August 1940.jpg|thumb|The wall of ghetto in Warsaw, being constructed by German order in August 1940. Taken on [[Świętokrzyska Street, Warsaw|Świętokrzyska Street]] from the "Aryan side" ([[Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw|Marszałkowska Street]]).]]
[[File:The Wall of ghetto in Warsaw - Buiilding on Nazi -German order August 1940.jpg|thumb|The wall of ghetto in Warsaw, being constructed by German order in August 1940. Taken on [[Świętokrzyska Street, Warsaw|Świętokrzyska Street]] from the "Aryan side" ([[Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw|Marszałkowska Street]]).]]


The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German [[General Government|Governor-General]] [[Hans Frank]] on October 16, 1940. Frank ordered Jews in [[Warsaw]] and its suburbs rounded up and herded into the Ghetto. At this time, the population in the Ghetto was estimated to be 400,000 people, about 30%<ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005069 Warsaw], [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]</ref> of the population of Warsaw; however, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4%<ref>[http://www.warsaw-life.com/poland/warsaw-ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto]</ref> of the size of Warsaw. The ghetto was split into two areas, the "small ghetto", generally inhabited by richer Jews and the "large ghetto", where conditions were more difficult; the two ghettos were linked by a single footbridge. The Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, by building a wall, topped with [[barbed wire]], and deploying armed guards.
The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German [[General Government|Governor-General]] [[Hans Frank]] on October 16, 1940. Frank ordered Jews in [[Warsaw]] and its suburbs rounded up and herded into the Ghetto. At this time, the population in the Ghetto was estimated to be 400,000 people, about 30%<ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005069 Warsaw], [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]</ref> the warsaw ghetto was were jew hed to suck dic.from the nazis.of the population of Warsaw; however, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4%<ref>[http://www.warsaw-life.com/poland/warsaw-ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto]</ref> of the size of Warsaw. The ghetto was split into two areas, the "small ghetto", generally inhabited by richer Jews and the "large ghetto", where conditions were more difficult; the two ghettos were linked by a single footbridge. The Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, by building a wall, topped with [[barbed wire]], and deploying armed guards.


== Administration of the Ghetto ==
== Administration of the Ghetto ==

Revision as of 19:03, 31 May 2011

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, located in the territory of General Government in occupied Poland during World War II.

Remaining part of Warsaw Ghetto wall in a backyard of a house at Sienna Street 55

Creation

The wall of ghetto in Warsaw, being constructed by German order in August 1940. Taken on Świętokrzyska Street from the "Aryan side" (Marszałkowska Street).

The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. Frank ordered Jews in Warsaw and its suburbs rounded up and herded into the Ghetto. At this time, the population in the Ghetto was estimated to be 400,000 people, about 30%[1] the warsaw ghetto was were jew hed to suck dic.from the nazis.of the population of Warsaw; however, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4%[2] of the size of Warsaw. The ghetto was split into two areas, the "small ghetto", generally inhabited by richer Jews and the "large ghetto", where conditions were more difficult; the two ghettos were linked by a single footbridge. The Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, by building a wall, topped with barbed wire, and deploying armed guards.

Administration of the Ghetto

Like all the Ghettos in Poland, the Germans ascribed the administration to a Judenrat (a council of the Jews), led by an "Ältester" (the eldest).[3] In Warsaw this role was attributed to Adam Czerniaków, who chose a policy of collaboration with the Nazis rather than revolt. Adam Czerniaków confided his harrowing experience in several diaries.[4] He became aware of his own tragic duplicity in July 1942 and committed suicide.

Although his personality has remained less infamous than Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the "Ältester" of the Lodz Ghetto, Adam Czerniaków's collaboration with the Nazi policy is the paradigm of the attitude of the majority of the European Jews vis à vis Nazism, whose fundamentally evil nature they failed to appreciate. The Jewish collaboration authority was supported by a Jewish Ghetto Police. According to Lucy S. Dawidowicz,

From its inception, the Judenrat was looked upon as a reincarnation of the kehillas. Czerniakow's first draft of October, 1939; for organizing the Warsaw Judenrat, was just a rehash of conventional kehilla departments: chancellery, welfare, education, rabbinate...[5]

But she adds:

In performing these functions, the kehilla had operated a "gemeinschaft" institution... But the Kehilla was an anomalous institution. Throughout its history in czarist Russia, it served also as an instrument of the state, obligated to carry out the regime's policies within the Jewish community, even though these policies were frequently oppressive and specifically anti-Jewish...[6]

Conditions

A child dying in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto

During the next year and a half, thousands of the Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller cities and the countryside were brought into the Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhus),[7] and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 186 calories, compared to 1,669 calories for gentile Poles and 2,614 calories for Germans.

Unemployment was a major problem in the ghetto. Illegal workshops were created to manufacture goods to be sold illegally on the outside and raw goods were smuggled in often by children. Hundreds of four to five year old Jewish children went across en masse to the "Aryan side," sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did. Smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for Ghetto inhabitants, who would otherwise have died of starvation. Despite the grave hardships, life in the Warsaw Ghetto was rich with educational and cultural activities, conducted by its underground organizations. Hospitals, public soup kitchens, orphanages, refugee centers and recreation facilities were formed, as well as a school system. Some schools were illegal and operated under the guise of a soup kitchen. There were secret libraries, classes for the children and even a symphony orchestra. The life in the ghetto was chronicled by the Oyneg Shabbos group.

Over 100,000 of the Ghetto's residents died due to rampant disease or starvation, as well as random killings, even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the inhabitants from the Ghetto's Umschlagplatz to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion Warschau, part of the countrywide Operation Reinhard. Between Tisha B'Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942, about 254,000 Ghetto residents (or at least 300,000 by different accounts)[8] were sent to Treblinka and murdered there.[9] Polish resistance officer Jan Karski reported to the Western governments in 1942 on the situation in the Ghetto and on the extermination camps. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.[8]

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and destruction of the Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto; 1943
File:Warsaw Ghetto destroyed by German forces, 1945.jpg
Warsaw ghetto {east view} in 1945
Main article: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

On January 18, 1943, after almost four months without any deportations, the Germans suddenly entered the Warsaw ghetto intent upon a further deportation. Within hours, some 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 others rounded up. The Germans expected no resistance, but preparations to resist had been going on since the previous autumn.[10] The first instances of Jewish armed resistance began that day. The Jewish fighters had some success: the expulsion stopped after four days and the ŻOB and ŻZW resistance organizations took control of the Ghetto, building shelters and fighting posts and operating against Jewish collaborators.[7]

The final battle started on the eve of Passover of April 19, 1943, when a Nazi force consisting of several thousand troops entered the ghetto. After initial setbacks, the Germans under the field command of Jürgen Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 23, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminated with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps, most of them to Treblinka.

Ruins of Warsaw Ghetto, leveled by German forces, according to Adolf Hitler's order, after suppressing of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. North-west view, left - the Krasiński`s Garden and Swiętojerska street, photo taken in 1945

Remnants of the Ghetto today

A remnant of the Ghetto's wall at backyard of house at Złota Street 60

The ghetto was almost entirely levelled during the uprising; however, a number of buildings and streets survived, mostly in the "small ghetto" area, which had been closed earlier and was not involved in the fighting. The buildings on Próżna street are the original residential buildings that once housed Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. The buildings have largely remained empty since the war and the street is the focus for the annual Warsaw Jewish Festival. Nearby, the Nożyk Synagogue also survived the war, as it was used as a stables by the German Wehrmacht. The synagogue has today been restored and is once again used as a synagogue. The last remaining piece of the ghetto wall is located at ul. Złota 62. There is a small monument on a mound at ul. Mila 18 to commemorate the site of the Jewish underground headquarters during the Ghetto Uprising.

People of the Warsaw Ghetto

Casualties

"Janusz Korczak and the children" memorial at Yad Vashem

Survivors

Icchak Cukierman testifies for the prosecution during the trial of Adolf Eichmann

Associated people

File:Jan Karski.jpg
Before a wall map at the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum, Jan Karski recalls his secret 1942 missions into the Warsaw Ghetto
  • Władysław Bartoszewski - Polish resistance activist of the Żegota organization in Warsaw.
  • Henryk Iwański - Polish resistance officer in the charge of support for the Ghetto. Died in 1978.
  • Jan Karski - Polish resistance courier who reported on the Ghetto for the Allies. Died in 2000.
  • Irena Sendler - Polish resistance member who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Ghetto and helped to hide them, subject of the film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Died in 2008.
  • Szmul Zygielbojm - Polish-Jewish socialist politician. In 1943 committed suicide in London in an act of protest against the Allied indifference to the death of the Warsaw Ghetto.

See also

References

  1. ^ Warsaw, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  2. ^ The Warsaw Ghetto
  3. ^ cf Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1975). The war against the Jews 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. pp. 228–229.
  4. ^ Hilberg, Raul, et al. (editors). The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Stein & Day, NY, 1979).
  5. ^ Dawidowicz op.cit.
  6. ^ Dawidowicz op.cit.
  7. ^ a b (English) David Wdowiński (1963). And we are not saved. New York: Philosophical Library pp. 222. ISBN 0802224865. Note: Chariton and Lazar were never co-authors of Wdowiński's memoir. Wdowiński is considered the "single author."
  8. ^ a b "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Last Updated: May 20, 2008.
  9. ^ Treblinka, Yad Vashem
  10. ^ Martin Gilbert, 'The Holocaust' (1986), pages 522-523.
  11. ^ "Businessman Sol Rosenthal dies", Monroe News Star, Monroe, Louisiana, January 31, 2009

Bibliography

  • Mary Berg, The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007 (2nd ed), ISBN 1-85168-472-7 (1st ed: Warsaw Ghetto: a diary by Mary Berg, New York: L.B. Fischer, 1945; translated by Norbert Guterman; edited by S.L. Shneiderman; a "war time book")
  • Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights, London: Bookmarks, 1994, ISBN 0-906-22456-X
  • Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ISBN 0-395-60199-1
  • Martin Gray, For Those I Loved, ISBN 0-316-32576-7
  • Raul Hilberg, et al. (editors). The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Stein & Day, NY, 1979).
  • Emmanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, New York: ibooks, 2006, ISBN 1-59687-331-0
  • Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, ISBN 0-312-31135-4
  • Dawid Wdowiński, And We Are Not Saved, ISBN 978-0802224866, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, ISBN 978-0-300-11234-4
  • Barbara Engelking & Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, ISBN 978-0-300-11234-4
  • Warsaw and Ghetto, Warsaw: B&M Potyralski, 2000, ISBN 83-901501-2-3

Fictional Representations

  • Jurek Becker, Jacob the Lair, Arcade Publishing, 1996, ISBN 978-1559703154
  • John Hersey, The Wall, Vintage, 1988, ISBN 978-0394756967
  • Leon Uris, Mila 18, Bantam, 1980, ISBN 978-0553147018 (originally published in 1961 by Doubleday)
  • Richard Zimler, The Warsaw Anagrams, Corsair, 2011, ISBN 978-1849013697

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Warsaw Ghetto.

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