Life in the Ghettos

The Pale of Settlement

• 1791- Russia annexed part of Poland and put 90% of all Russian Jews in an area known as the Pale of settlement

• Could only leave with special permission

• Had to pay double taxes

• Forbidden to lease land and receive higher education

Ghettos in Poland

• Formed soon after the Nazi invasion

• Some ghettos were closed, others were open

• Germans considered them “Jewish residential quarters”

• See maps of ghettos

Moving Into The Ghetto

• Goods and property were confiscated

• Ghettos were extremely crowded

Ghetto Life

• Was a life of hunger, disease, and despair

• Starvation was rampant

• Serious public health problems

• Forced Labor was common

Ghetto Life

• Lived in constant fear of humiliation, labor conscription, and deportation

• Survival was a daily challenge

• Continued to hold school and religious services

Governing the Ghettos

• Government rested with the Judenrat or Judenraete– Jewish Council

• They were to carry out Nazi orders

Governing the Ghettos

Ghetto Money Ghetto ration card

Governing the Ghettos

Typical ghetto room Two starving women on a rickstrew cart

Tough Decisions for Jewish Councils

• Were asked to provide lists of those to be deported– What would you do?

• Looked to the Talmud to find their answers

The Warsaw Ghetto

• Largest center of Jewish life in Europe

• One in ten died from starvation

• Had a political underground that published newspapers– 50 in all

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• One of the most remarkable events of the Holocaust

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

One of the most famous pictures of the

Holocaust. German storm troopers force

Warsaw ghetto dwellers of all ages to

move, hands up, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April-May 1943.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The SS thugs set ablaze

entire blocks of flats in

order to force the

population to come out

of hiding...the water, gas,

and electric supplies

were cut off...."

Chronicles

• Documenting the story of the ghettos took determination and ingenuity

• Emmanuel Ringelblum

The Lodz Ghetto

• German occupation force was particularly ferocious

• Was the industrial center of prewar Poland• Had a long-term strategy for survival

– “salvation through work”– First ghetto to be sealed– Last ghetto to remain in existence

The Lodz Ghetto

Diary Entry from the Lodz Ghetto

• Excerpted from In Those Terrible Days by Josef Zelkowicz.

My Secret Camera

Theresienstadt

• Was a ghetto and concentration camp

• Was in Terazin, a Czech town

• Some of the most prominent Czech, Austrian, and German artists, writers, diplomats and musicians were killed

• 456 Danish Jews sent

Monopoly Game

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

Read Poem

The Liquidation of the Ghettos

• Summer of 1942, Nazis liquidated the ghettos of Eastern Europe

• By the end of the war, except in Budapest, not a single ghetto, neither in its entirety, nor in part, remained.

Population Figures of the Largest Ghettos

Warsaw, Poland 400,000-500,000

Lodz, Poland 205, 000

Lvov, Ukraine 110,000

Minsk, Belorussia 100,000

Terezin, Czechoslovakia 90,000

Budapest, Hungary 70,000

Chernovtsy, Poland 50,000

Bialystok, Poland 35,000-50,000

Riga, Latvia 43,000

Vilna, Lithuania 41,000

Kovno, Lituania 40,000

Lublin, Poland 34,000

Online Museum Exhibitions

• Give Me Your Children: Voices From the Lodz Ghetto

• Szpilman’s Warsaw:The History behind The Pianist

• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto

Closure

• What are some things that young people you know might take for granted that young people in the ghetto learned to cherish?

• What did school mean in the ghetto?

• In challenging times, what is the importance of remaining hopeful that one’s situation will improve?

Closure

• It is difficult to maintain a hopeful outlook over time. Do you believe there is a point when people begin to lose hope?

• If so, what do you think that point is?

• Do you think it is the same for everyone?

Closure

• Has the loss of hope ever happened to you? Have you ever witnessed it in others?

• How does a person restore hope?

Assignment

• The establishment of ghettos marked the end of freedom of movement for Jews. Write about what freedom means to you in your life and what you think it would mean to lose it.