Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw ghetto was an enclosed area within the German-occupied city of Warsaw, Poland, that the Jewish population was forced to inhabit during World War II. It existed as “living quarters” from November 16, 1940, through July 22, 1942, after which it became the location from which 75 percent of the ghetto population were driven from their homes and transported to the Treblinka death camp. The purpose of establishing the ghetto was to hold the inhabitants in a state of immobility that enabled supervision and facilitated both effective exploitation of slave labor and easy deportation to death camps. The area served as a prison not only for the Jews of Warsaw but also for all Jews sent there from outside the city limits, from both rural and urban areas of Poland. Jewish refugees from Austria, Germany, and other parts of Europe were also transported to the ghetto.

The Warsaw ghetto is significant in a community context in that it is representative of a minority population that unified against all odds and under intolerable circumstances in order to resist a military force whose objective was to wipe them out. Physically and spiritually weakened by starvation, beatings, random killings, and public humiliation, many ghetto inhabitants developed a high level of community activism, because it was fundamental to their daily survival and ultimate escape. Collective, organized planning made it possible for many people to successfully resist mass deportation by sustaining a five-month armed revolt against the Nazis.

The ghetto comprised 2.3 percent of the geographic area of the city of Warsaw, it but housed more than 30 percent of Warsaw's population. By March 1941, 445,000 people lived in the ghetto, an area that had once been inhabited by 200,000 people. After this time, the population gradually declined due to deaths from hunger and disease. As a result of the premium on living space, it was common for two or three families to share a small apartment, and six people to occupy a single room. Since food rations did not sustain life in the ghetto, it was necessary for the inhabitants to smuggle. Rye flour and bread were often loaded onto hearses that had previously unloaded the corpses of victims of typhus. Secret private mills for grinding rye were built within the ghetto borders. While large numbers of individual smugglers worked to bring in enough food for themselves and their families, most food was smuggled by organized groups who engaged in smuggling as a profession. These groups used various methods, which included bribing German and Polish police, removing (and later refilling) bricks from the ghetto walls for the successful transfer of food, and creating secret passage-ways between connected houses for food distribution.

A wide variety of politically oriented youth groups functioned as the life force of the ghetto. These groups included Bund, a Socialist anti-Zionist organization; Akiba and Hechalutz, Zionist youth movements that favored emigration to Palestine; Ha-tzohar (Revisionists), a strongly anti-Socialist, Zionist group that advocated noncooperation with British mandatory power in Palestine; and Hashomer Hatzair, a defense section of the Communist Pioneer youth movement. While these youth movements differed radically in their ideological perspectives, their members worked together to ensure communal well-being within the ghetto. They set up soup kitchens for the refugees, printed and distributed underground newspapers, and secured contacts with [Page 1472]outside organizations to optimize emigration possibilities and enable the safe escape of young children. These youth were also responsible for establishing study circles and schools, and organizing cultural activities such as parties and literary debates.

A wall closes off a street in Warsaw, Poland, confining some 500,000 Jews to the ghetto behind the wall.

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