What+was+life+like+in+the+Warsaw+Ghetto?

Life in the Warsaw Ghetto was a terrible mixture of disease, starvation, and and general suffering. The ghetto was a 1.3 square mile area of Warsaw that was separated from the rest of the city by a ten foot, barbed wire wall guarded by armed soldiers. Inside the ghetto were crammed over 400,000 Jews, forced by the Nazis to survive on the meager supplies allowed into the area. As will happen in any area with such a high population density, diseases like typhus quickly spread, killing thousands. Food consisted of small rations of bread, potatoes, and fat supplied by the Germans. As this was not nearly enough food to sustain the population, 83,000 Jews starved to death, many of them children. "The average Jew in the ghetto subsisted on 1,125 calories a day. [Adam] Czerniaków [President of the Jewish Council] wrote in his diary entry for May 8, 1941: 'Children starving to death.' Widespread smuggling of food and medicines into the ghetto supplemented the miserable official allotments and kept the death rate from increasing still further" (Warsaw).

The Jewish Hospial was siezed by the Nazis and the Jews were forced to use an abandoned government office building and an old schoo instead. Medical care was virtually impossible as the Jews had not been allowed to take any medical supplies into the ghetto and the Germans would not supply them. Patients died as the doctors looked on, helpless (Stewart 25). Many more people froze to death as the winters came and they had no means of warming themselves. Conditions soon became desparate enough that many people began relying on supplies smuggled in from across the ghetto wall. Small children were often used, as they would be able to fit through small openings in the wall. However, anyone caught smuggling supplies, no matter their age, would be brutally punished (Life in the Ghettos).

The residents also had to live in constant fear of the Germans. Soldiers marching through the ghetto would often beat and humiliate random Jews for their own amusement, sometimes aided by non-Jewish Poles. They would also be on constant alert for violations of the Nazi's laws, which would be met by harsh punishment (Stewart 32). Further fear was caused by the occasional deportations. A certain street block would be walled off and the people inside it would be forced out, or occasionally lured out with promises of food. They would then be deported to the Treblinka Killing Center, where most were murdered on arrival. It was this fear that later led to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Deportations to and from the Warsaw Ghetto).

The Nazis had also banned all forms of cultural expression or public gatherings. Schools and synagogues were closed as education and religious observance was outlawed. However, this was one ban that wasn't well enforced. Many students continued their schooling in secret, learning to conceal books and other learning tools from the Germans. Historian Emanuel Ringelblum even went so far as to organize and write the Oneg Shabbat, which was a written history of the plight of the people of the Warsaw Ghetto, some which survived the liquidation of the area. Furthermore, most people still practiced Judaism and observed religious holidays in defiance of the ban. The Germans could control what went in and out of the ghetto, but they couldn't completely control what the people did in their homes (Jewish Resistance).

Written by Wyatt Falcone

[|Click here to see an animated map on the Warsaw Ghetto and the subsequent rebellion.]

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