For my US History class we have been studying WWII. We have to do a project every term that includes an essay, a visual, and a presentation. As usual, I willingly wrote the essay for my group and was pretty proud of my last paragraph. I figured that I would put it up here because I think it is the most meaningful piece I have written in a long time (at least on this blog.) So here it is. Let me know what you think.
The Ghetto of Warsaw: A Whisper of the Past
The Warsaw Ghetto, or Jüdischer Wohnbezirk (Jewish Quarters) according to the Nazis, was established on October 12, 1940, when a decree ordered 113,000 Poles to make room for the 400,000 Jews in an area of only 2.4% of Warsaw. Living conditions were incredibly poor and not many survived it. Jews had to resort to smuggling food. Councils and police forces of their own people were created to enforce Nazi regulations. In the end, when the Nazis tried to move all of the Jews out of the ghetto and into the Treblinka extermination camp, an uprising that would become the biggest single retaliation during the war began. The Warsaw Ghetto was a place where hundreds of thousands came to live and were forced into deah.
In October of 1940, thousands of Jews were brought into the Warsaw Ghetto. From that point on they were to have extremely limited contact with the outside world. Over 400,000 people had been crowded into an area that was only meant to house 160,000. As more and more time passed, the living conditions became worse and worse. On November 16, 1940 a wall, topped with glass and barbed wire, was built around the ghetto to keep them from leaving. Before then the death toll was already at 445. By August of 1941 almost 6,000 people had died.
Jews in the ghetto were given food rations that did not even fulfill 10% of what a normal person requires. This caused smuggling to start very early on. If the people living in the ghetto had not been able to get hold of outside food, they all would have died from starvation very early on. Often the smugglers were children between the ages of 5 and 6. They would smuggle the food through the walls, the gates, the sewers, houses on the borders of the ghetto, etc. The Nazis often caught and killed the smugglers but the smuggling never stopped. Even after one particular slaughter of 100 people near Warsaw, the smuggling never stopped. It was one of the most basic things that they could do in hopes of surviving.
For other issues within the ghetto, the Jews had their own councils and law enforcement. The Judenraete (Jewish Council) was first created by the Germans before their occupation of Warsaw in order to enforce German regulations. They were also in charge of handing over lists of names for deportation to extermination camps. Some were killed for refusing to do so and others committed suicide to keep from having to do it. These councils were very controversial because the people on them were forced to implement Nazi policies. It was believed by some, however, that compliance with the Germans would ensure that at least part of the population would survive. The councils were also in charge of selecting the Jewish Police.
The Jewish Police were established for four main purposes: to direct traffic in the streets, supervise garbage collection and the clearing of snow and dirt from the streets, supervise the sanitation of buildings, and prevent crime and run a court to take care of conflicts that arose inside of the ghetto. The Judenraete was given a list of guidelines from which they were supposed to recruit men for the police. However, these guidelines were not closely followed. Even though the police were supposed to be another department of the Judenraete, the councils believed that the Germans would use them in order to enforce their policies more directly.
There was a draw for Jewish men to be a part of the police, though. The Jewish Police was a protected organization. Being part of it not only was likely to keep them from forced labor, but it also made them less likely to be deported and gave them the possibility of earning food and money. In early 1942, however, the Nazis began deporting Jews from the ghetto to a extermination camp in Treblinka. When this happened many of the Jewish police had to decide whether to stay with the police or not. Many left to show their alliance to their families and the entire population as they were being deported. Still others remained with the Jewish police until the final days of the ghetto’s existence, continuing to implement Nazi demands.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on January 18, 1943 in reaction to the increasing amount of Jews that the Nazis were deporting to Treblinka. They believed that they were merely being sent to labor camps and not to their deaths. During the first two months of the extermination process, about 300,000 residents of the ghetto were killed. When the Jews realized what was going on they decided to revolt. They did not have many weapons and many did not actually fight. However, they managed to stop the deportations for a time and only 5,000 instead of the planned 8,000 were taken at the time.
The fighting commenced again on April 19, 1943. The Germans planned to finish their plan for extermination within the next three days, but an ambush by the Jews set them back once again. The Jews continued to defend their territory for ten days. In fact, two boys climbed to the top of a building and raised both the Polish flag and a blue and white banner symbolic of the fighting Jews. The Germans were unable to remove the flags for four days. On the 29th many of the Jewish leaders were dead and the rest of the fighters fled into hiding. It was not until May 8 that the Germans found the Jewish command post and killed many of the remaining fighters. Officially, the uprising ended on May 16, 1943. Gunshots were heard inside of the ghetto through that summer, however. The final fight occurred on June 5, 1943 and was between the Germans and a group of armed criminals affiliated with the Jewish resistance.
What was once the biggest Jüdischer Wohnbezirk (Jewish Quarter) in all of Europe is now nothing more than renovated buildings, a single piece of wall, and several memorials. To the uninformed eye it looks as regular as any other city in the world. Children play, people walk their dogs, cars drive through the streets. The pain, the suffering, the bloodshed, and the injustice that occurred not yet 80 years ago is now no more than a whisper in the city of Warsaw.
