Ghetto Essays - Jewish Ghettos In German-occupied Poland

Ghetto By: It is widely known what went on between the Jews and the Germans during World War II. Millions upon millions of Jews were killed because of Hitler's hatred, Hitler's tyranny, and Hitler's fury. While many people today still cringe at the thought of life in concentration camps, many are not aware of the harsh reality that existed in the Jewish ghettos. The word "ghetto" is not only the scariest place in America but also a word used to refer to a Jewish community. These ghettos or communities were the holding areas of many, many Jews who were forced to perform slave labor for the Germans during the war instead of going to concentration camps. In Germany, during the early stages of the war, more and more occupations were closed to Jews, and the free professions were totally banned to them. However, during the drafting of a general law designed to totally displace the Jews from their positions in the economy, it became evident to the Germans that the problem could not be solved without simultaneously clearing the way for increased emigration. If the Germans dispossessed them, they would no longer be a burden on the German economy. In June of 1938, a man named Martin Bormann, acting on behalf of the fuhrer's deputy, Rudolf Hess, sent German party activists a secret directive about "the removal of Jews from the economy." In a Nazi meeting held on October 14, 1938, a man named Herman Goring, who was second in power only to Chancellor Adolf Hitler, declared that "Aryanization (making the world one Aryan race) was the state's, and only the state's concern," adding that he was not prepared to allocate foreign currency to dispose of the Jews. He also added the remark that "if the need arises we will have to establish ghettos in the big cities," and so it seems the stage was set as this was the first time mention was made of the plan to set up Jewish work brigades. Originally, the ghettos were not supposed to be permanent institutions, but used as temporary concentration camps until it was possible to find the ultimate solution to the problem of disposing of al the Jews. The first known instance of establishment of a ghetto was in December of 1939 in a town called Leczyca in Poland when the Germans attempted to segregate the Jewish population from the Poles. A prominent example of the way in which large communities were depopulated was the fate of Kalisz, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Poland with a population of twenty thousand at the outbreak of the war. Both Germans and Poles joined in the brutal attacks against the Jews. The Jews had no chance. Many Jews fled, some seven thousand reaching Warsaw. The healthy men remaining in Kalisz were sent to work in the camp, while the ailing were slaughtered in a nearby forest. By October of 1940, only a few hundred Jews were left in the city. The first ghetto to be established in a systematic fashion was the Lodz ghetto. Governor of the Kalisz-Lodz District, Friedrich Ubelhor, had planned the idea for a ghetto in Lodz since December 10, 1939. Ubelhor proposed two things. The first was to close off most of the Jewish population in the northern part of the city, where most of the Jews lived, and to transfer the Jews from other parts of the Lodz area to this area. The second was to select those fit to labor and concentrate them in another ghetto, actually a labor camp, where they would be organized into labor battalions. The first step in setting up Ubelhor's labor camp was to first fix the borders of the ghetto and work out the problems of transport through the streets .The Germans and Poles also had to find new homes to be resettled in. Other factors that played a part were sealing and guarding the ghetto, provisions for medical care, sewage, refuse removal, burials, and fuel necessary for heating. The basis for establishing the ghetto in Lodz focused primarily on three spheres: (1) the deportation of as many Jews as possible, with preference given to the wealthy, the educated, and community leadership, if they had not managed to flee by then; (2) the confiscation of property on as broad a scale as possible; and (3) terrifying the Jews by harassment, depriving the population of food, and abducting people for labor. Once the ghetto was completed and all the Jews had been confined, a Jewish body for self-administration