The Ghettos
During the
Second World War, the German occupation administrations in Eastern Europe
established residential districts exclusively for Jews, which they called
"ghettos". No ghettos had existed there previously. The East European Jews
referred to the small towns where many
of them lived as "Schtetl". In the larger towns they had lived
within the residential areas of their non-Jewish compatriots.
The
establishment of ghettos from 1939 onwards made it possible for the SS and
police to control hundreds of thousands of people. The Jews were firstly
exploited as forced labourers. Photos of impoverished and starving Jews crammed
together in such ghettos were used for antisemitic propaganda. Ghetto residents
were later deported to the extermination camps in the course of the often
extremely brutal process of liquidating the ghettos. Residents included
thousands of Jews deported from the West as well as Sinti and Roma (gypsies).
12.1.
Establishing the
Ghettos
The first
ghettos were established in occupied Poland during 1939 and the last in Hungary
during summer 1944. The worst districts were selected for this purpose – often
without a sewerage system or electricity. The ghettos were founded partly as a
result of central decisions and partly as a result of local initiatives taken by
the German civil administration in the occupied territories.
Heydrich decreed that ghettos should be established
in the annexed territories of western Poland for the later deportation of Jews
to the East. He subsequently designated Theresienstadt as a central ghetto and
deportation camp for Czech Jews. Soon afterwards this location in Bohemia became
the destination for Jews from Western Europe, the German Reich and
Hungary.
Ghettos were
founded at different stages in the General Government. The German civil
administration repeatedly justified ghettos as a way of preventing the
risk of epidemics, halting the black market or satisfying the need for Jewish
labour.
In the occupied Soviet Union, ghettos were set up
under the pretext of providing a military safeguard against partisan groups.
Some of these ghettos only existed for a short time as major shooting operations
began as early as 1941
Litzmannstädter Zeitung, Sunday, 22 September 1940:
(This report on a visit to the Kutno ghetto voices
antisemitic prejudices)
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"The Ghetto – a Place of Decay
The mayor introduced us to the
Police Chief, Lieutenant Weißenborn, who invited us to visit the ghetto. We soon
arrived at the gates of a half-dilapidated factory, which had not been entirely
spared from the battles for Kutno. It was raining. The factory site is a total
mudbath. Even just entering the ghetto showed that the mayor was really not
exaggerating when he referred to an unbelievably dirty rabble. We are used to
all kinds of filth from the Litzmannstadt ghetto, but what we saw here surpassed
everything we had previously encountered.
'Imagine if this was a German prisoner of war
camp! In 14 days the place would be clean and orderly. But since they moved here
in April, the Jews have not lifted a finger to make their
living conditions in some way
fit for human beings. On the contrary, the filth has increased significantly',
explained Lieutenant Weißenborn.
In the yard we saw stalls made
out of dilapidated fireplaces trading the most extraordinary things: food, half
shoe soles, rusty nails and other such items. A community kitchen had also been
set up so that the poor would not starve – but not on the initiative of the
wealthier Jews! We cast a look inside. It stank of burnt onions. 'Pea soup' was
apparently available. We wished them bon appetit! Then we entered the
factory. Seven and a half thousand Jews live here. As the Lieutenant said, this
is not a camp where order prevails, but a pile of dirty cave dwellings. The Jews
seem to feel at home here. Some of them approached the Lieutenant and asked him
for permission to go into town. Each of them had a different request. Permission
was only granted in a few warranted cases. 'There are various jobs which are
really suited to the Jews', said the Police Chief, 'and as long as there is good
leadership we let them work relatively independently at the workplaces
concerned. But most of them are lazy and prefer to hang around here.' We left
the place of decay."
Litzmannstädter Zeitung
(newspaper), Sunday, 22 September 1940 |
Litzmannstädter Zeitung, Sunday, 9 June
1940
The title’s reference to 250,000 Jews is an
over-estimation. At the time, around 158,000 people were locked inside the
ghetto in Litzmannstadt (Polish name: Łódż). This article justifies the
establishment of the ghetto as a way to prevent the risk of epidemic, the black
market and swindling behaviour.
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“250,000 Jews in self-governement”
“The Ghetto – a Call
for Self-Preservation
On 1 May this year
Litzmannstadt was finally liberated from the sight and disastrous impact
of these parasites. Step by step, the authorities responsible for the
German future of Litzmannstadt implemented the radical isolation of the
Jews with determined action and iron resolution. In a few months they
thereby achieved a feat of organisation that, in connection with the
sacrifices made by non-Jews affected by the resettlement,
deserves our unreserved recognition. These measures are necessary for
three main reasons. First, the conscientious investigations carried out
by the municipal health authorities have provided incontrovertible proof
that the 140,000 Jews who had already penetrated the residential areas
of the non-Jews when the town was Polish pose a severe and constant
danger for the health and life of the entire population, on account of
their born dirtiness and unbelievable disregard for any hygiene
conditions necessary for the co-existence of a large community. In this
context, it is particularly interesting to note that the 185 reported
cases of typhus this spring only concerned Jews or people living in very
close contact with Jews. Consequently, in accordance with tested methods
of fighting epidemics applied throughout the world, those carrying the
virus or particularly susceptible to it through their own fault must be
isolated as the first and most urgent measure taken by those responsible
for the health of a town with three quarters of a million inhabitants.
Secondly, the Jews represent a threat to the entire economic structure
of Litzmannstadt on account of their hereditary asocial attitude: they
are born hoarders and black marketeers, they cause goods shortages and
force prices up. As a result, the already significant difficulties
involved in achieving a normal provision of goods that equally satisfies
all needs would be insurmountable if radical measures were not taken to
deprive the Jews of any chance of profiteering from the shortage of
goods caused by the war, the harsh winter and various other irrevocable
necessities. Last but not least, compelling ideological, racial and
national factors are
decisive factors in implementing a strict isolation of Jews to exclude
from the outset any chance of racial mixing, or even mere social
co-existence with Aryans, which experience has shown to always have
unwelcome consequences. For Jews carry disease, not just in the hygiene
sense but also in terms of morals and ethics, and they can only be
rendered harmless through strict isolation." |
Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (newspaper), 24 July
1941:
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"Jews among
themselves
How this people
live, the people who produced the murderers of Bromberg, Lemberg, Dubno
and Bialystok. A report from the Warsaw ghetto.
The Warsaw ghetto: A home of
epidemics for decades.
In the incomparably
dilapidated, filthy Jewish districts of Warsaw typhus, the indigenous
disease, has never been eradicated. 92 per cent of all those suffering
from typhus in the General Government have been infected by the
Jewish population. The Jews themselves have often become immune through
years of habituation to the fever. The Jewish mortality rate was just 10
per cent, but the disease raged all the more among Germans and Poles,
reaching a mortality rate of 40 per cent. The administration of the
General Government has started to fight against the epidemic and
is having epidemic houses locked and guarded by the Jewish constabulary.
Their own world
A high wall
separates the Jewish quarter from the other districts of the town. Here
is the start of the ghetto, the largest Jewish residential area in
Europe, established by the German administration and run by a Jewish
Council of Elders under the supervision of the General
Government’s
administration. Trams
and a large number of three-wheeled taxis provide transport.
From one ghetto
district to another: a road bridge.
The ghetto is fully cut off from the outside: sometimes it was hard to
draw the boundaries. Bridges had to be built over the small roads which
passed through the Jewish town... Putting the Jews in their own
residential district has become necessary for three reasons. First, the
Jewish question had to be solved in the General Government, which houses
some 1.5 to 2 million Jews. Second, measures related to the war economy
required the isolation of the Jews, who always prove to be saboteurs and
black marketeers and drive up prices in the economic sector. Food
provision could only be secured by breaking the influence of the Jews,
who controlled almost the entire trade in agricultural products. Third,
it was necessary to start combating the almost proverbial criminality of
the Eastern Jews. The isolation of the Jews concludes a process that has
been ongoing for centuries. Under Russian and Polish domination the Jews
repeatedly attempted to break out of their Judenreservoirs.
Through its determined struggle it gradually infiltrated the environment
of the host people. The Jews took
possession of
one house after another. They seized the factories, the warehouses, the
large shops; the constant influx from the villages strengthened this
invisible infiltration. In this way, Warsaw became the town with the
most Jews after New York. Every third inhabitant was a Jew. And today
one in eight of Moscow’s residents is a Jew!" |
Shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union,
German troops found the bodies of prisoners murdered by the Soviet secret
service when entering many border towns. German propaganda made the dead out to
be the butchered victims of “Jewish-Bolshevist brutes". The sub-heading of this
antisemitic piece is a reference to these propaganda reports.
12.2.
Forced Labour under
German Local Administration
Compulsory
forced labour existed in all of the East European ghettos. The production
capacity needed for the war could be cheaply exploited in these locations. In
return for the
labour carried out the ghetto
residents were provided with the absolute minimum of food. Forced labour was
organised by the German civil administrations in different ways. For instance,
Litzmannstadt had a municipal authority supervising the jobs being carried out
in factories within the ghetto. In Warsaw, companies established branches
directly within the ghetto and controlled the work themselves. In Riga, an
external department of the German Labour Office provided Jewish forced labourers
for work outside the ghetto borders.
(see German Catalogue
page 141)
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Organisational chart of the company Schultz & Co. in the Warsaw ghetto
The Danzig
company Fritz Emil Schultz & Co., manufacturers of fur ready-to-wear garments,
commended large-scale production in the Warsaw ghetto in autumn 1941..
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From spring
1942, straw guard’s shoes were produced in the ghetto for German troops in the
East. The Wehrmacht ordered at least 1.6 million pairs of shoes during
the war.
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A
unit of Jewish labourers returns to the Kaunas ghetto, undated,
Fotographer: George Kadish (BH Tel Aviv) |
12.3.
Everyday Life in the
Ghetto
Living conditions in the ghettos were determined
externally by German ghetto administrations. Despite being permanently exploited
as labourers, the Jews received far too little food. There was only minimal
medical care. This forced community living together in extremely cramped
conditions was deprived of the necessary hygiene standards. Hunger and sickness
led to mass fatalities, which the Germans allowed to happen. So that the outside
world would learn nothing of the reality, it was only possible to send
pre-printed postcards from a small number of ghettos.
Those trapped inside had to fight to survive. They
refused to give up the social norms and values of human society. They combated
the food shortages through smuggling and bartering. They organised wards for the
sick, public baths and rubbish disposal. An independent cultural life became a
means to counter the permanent humiliation as slave labourers.
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The ghetto
gate of Wilna from the outside, undated
To the left,
a member of the Jewish ghetto constabulary, to the right a Lithuanian reserve
policeman. |
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Still from a German propaganda film on living conditions in the Warsaw
ghetto, spring 1942
Shortly before this point in the film the children pictured are stopped
by the police on suspicion of smuggling and violently forced to hand
over the food they are carrying.
(GHWK Berlin) |
On Friday 26
July 1940, German guards shot at four people in close succession, who had in
part been standing around 100 metres away from the fence around the
ghetto. Such incidents were recorded in daily reports by the Jewish constabulary
in the Litzmannstadt ghetto:
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Shootings on
Friday, 26 July 1940
Case 1/
Time of incident: 15.55
Place of incident: Am
Bachstrasse 15, around 10-15 m. from the barbed wire fence
Name of person
shot: unknown
Age: around 55
Type of shot: 1
shot in the leg, one in the chest and most probably one in the spine
The person was
not trying to get over the barbed wire fence.
Facts: The
person shot was walking along the pavement of the uneven numbered side
of Am Bachstrasse in the direction of Scheunenstrasse. This individual
was hit by 3 rifle shots. After the second shot he managed to go through
the gate of the house at Am Bachstrasse No. 15.
He died 25
minutes later, after most probably being shot a third time in the spine.
Case 2/
Time of incident: 17.00
Place of
incident: Waldstrasse 9, around 100 m. from the barbed wire fence
Name of person
shot: unknown.
Age: around 28
Type of shot: 1
shot in the stomach and 1 in the head.
Facts: The
person shot was firstly shot in the stomach and then shot in the head
whilst on the stretcher, after which he died.
Case 3/
Time of incident: 17.00
Place of
incident: Waldstrasse 9, around 100 m. from the barbed wire fence.
Name of person
shot: Grylak, Josef, resident at Waldstrasse 7
Age: 77
Type of shot: 1/ grazing shot
on the right of the neck 2/ 1 shot in the head, 1 in the chest and 1 in
the stomach
Facts:
statement from constabulary officer No. 77.
Case 4/
Time of incident: 17.00
Place of
incident: Waldstrasse 1, around 100 m. from the barbed wire fence
Name of person injured: Rojza Frydenberg
Age: around 35
Type of shot: 1 shot in the
chest.
Facts:
statement from constabulary officer No. 77
[Stamped:
The Jewish Elder in Litzmannstadt] |
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