A map showing the major ghettos established by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
This file is part of the Stroop Report, a report prepared by SS Commander General Jürgen Stroop detailing the events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Here, Stroop offers an insight into why the Warsaw Ghetto in particular was created.
This document is a translation used in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
David Friedmann, pictured here (right) next to his wife, Mathilde, and daughter, Mirjam Helene in February 1940, was an Austrian Jewish artist born in Mährisch Ostrau in 1893. Prior to the Second World War, Friedmann worked in Berlin before fleeing Germany with his family for Prague in 1938.
Copyright ©1989 Miriam Friedman Morris.
A map showing the major ghettos established by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
A ghetto is a place where groups of people are kept forcibly
segregatedfrom others. The Nazis used ghettos to isolate and contain the Jewish population of occupied Europe.
This section explores when the Nazis began using ghettos, the different types of ghettos, how the ghettos were run, and what life was like for those imprisoned in them.
This file is part of the Stroop Report, a report prepared by SS Commander General Jürgen Stroop detailing the events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Here, Stroop offers an insight into why the Warsaw Ghetto in particular was created.
This document is a translation used in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
As a result of their antisemitic ideology, following the invasion of Poland the Nazis developed ghettos to segregate and control Jews.
Historically, ghettos had been used to segregate Jewish communities from the rest of the population across Europe. The Nazi leadership, Wehrmacht soldiers, Einsatzgruppen , SS , SD and various local authorities across Poland built on and adapted this historic idea.
The Nazis also introduced ghettos due to their false theories that Jews spread diseases and therefore should be segregated to protect the rest of the population. This was in line with their racist and eugenic beliefs.
This order from Himmler, issued on 21 June 1943, highlights the escalation of policy against Jews following the Wannsee Conference – from ghettoisation to extermination. This order states that all Jews remaining in ghettos in the Ostland area have to be concentrated in concentration camps ‘or evacuated to the East’.
This document is a translation used in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Invasion of Poland and the Madagascar Plan
Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, three million Jews came under Nazi control. This presented a problem for the Nazis, as they wanted their newly acquired land to be free of Jews in line with their antisemitic beliefs. In response, the Nazis segregated the Jews from the rest of the population, and ghettos were developed to forcibly detain them.
These ghettos were initially thought of as temporary holding spaces. The Nazis initial plan to remove Jews from Poland was to deport all Jews to the island of Madagascar. This was called the Magagascar Plan .
The establishment of ghettos
On 21 September 1939, Reinhard Heydrich issued an order to the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen known as the Schnellbrief. This order stated that Jews in Poland were to be concentrated in large towns and cities near railway lines. The order also declared that councils of Jewish Leaders were to be set up to administer the newly uprooted Jewish communities.
As steps were taken to concentrate Jews in towns and cities, the problem emerged of what to do with the Jews when they arrived. Whilst Heydrich’s order detailed generally where to concentrate Jews (in towns and cities with railway access), it did not detail where in each town Jews would then live, or how they would reestablish life there. These decisions were left to the local authorities and Jewish Councils that had been set up in towns. Each local authority improvised and responded to this problem differently. As a result, no two ghettos were the same.
On 8 October 1939, the first ghetto was opened at Piotrków. This was soon followed by the ghetto in Radomsko on 20 December 1939, and the first major ghetto in Łódź in February 1940. Over the following two years, hundreds of ghettos would be established across Poland.
Abandonment of the Madagascar Plan and the ‘Final Solution’
By September 1940, Britain’s remaining naval superiority meant that the Magagascar Plan became regarded as unfeasible and indefinitely postponed. This development meant that the ghettos became more permanent features of the Nazi occupation.
However, this was not the Nazis’ intention. As the invasion of the Soviet Union brought millions more Jews under Nazi rule, the question of what to do with the Jews segregated in ghettos across Poland became more pressing. The decision was made to start exterminating racially undesirable groups. To coordinate this decision, a conference was called in January 1942. This conference was held in a suburb of Berlin, called Wannsee, and became known as the Wannsee Conference.
The Nazis extensively persecuted Roma as well as Jews.
Most Roma were segregated into camps, however some were also placed in ghettos. One example of this is the 5007 Roma who were deported from Austria to the Łódź Ghetto in late 1941. Within a few months of arrival, almost half of those deported had died.
This account is taken from The Wiener Holocaust Library’s eyewitness testimony project. The account was given by Professor Dr. Herbert Lewin, a German physician who was incarcerated in the Łódź Ghetto in 1941.
Although no two ghettos were the same, ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe were broadly catagorised into three different types: open, closed, and destruction.
Open
Open ghettos had no fences or walls around their perimeter. Despite this, there were still restrictions against who could enter or leave, when, and how often.
Closed
Closed ghettos were closed in by fences or walls. Leaving or entering the ghettos was prohibited. These circumstances made conditions inside extremely unsanitary, with huge shortages in food and water leading to high death rates.
Destruction
Destruction ghettos were spaces in towns and cities that were sealed for short periods of time, typically around two weeks, before their inhabitants were deported to extermination camps and murdered.
Within the ghetto, a Jewish police force was recruited to enforce order. Here, the Jewish Ghetto Police of the Warsaw Ghetto are pictured.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
The SS were responsible for setting up each ghetto and ensuring that the administration of the ghetto ran smoothly.
In addition to the SS, Jewish Councils called Judenräte were set up to carry out and govern the day-to-day running of the ghetto. The Jewish Councils were controlled by the SS and had to comply and carry out its demands.
David Friedmann, pictured here (right) next to his wife, Mathilde, and daughter, Mirjam Helene in February 1940, was an Austrian Jewish artist born in Mährisch Ostrau in 1893. Prior to the Second World War, Friedmann worked in Berlin before fleeing Germany with his family for Prague in 1938.
Copyright ©1989 Miriam Friedman Morris.
Life inside the ghettos was extremely difficult, and, for many, conditions were deadly.
Housing
As huge populations were forced into small areas, several families were forced to share each house. In the Warsaw Ghetto an average of just over seven people shared a room. This overcrowding, coupled with a lack of clean running water and proper sewage systems, resulted in poor sanitation and rampant disease.
Food and medicine
Medical supplies were sparse and, after many ghettos were sealed and cut off from the outside world, quickly ran out altogether.
Food supplies were extremely sparse to the point that many ghetto inhabitants quickly died of starvation. To try and alleviate this situation people went to great lengths to smuggle food into the ghetto. If caught, they faced death.
Work
After having lost their businesses and normal forms of employment, most people in the ghettos had no regular source of income. This led to a thriving black market , where people attempted to exchange possessions for their everyday needs.
As the ghettos became more established, the Nazis sometimes used inhabitants for forced labour.
Work in each ghetto differed. Inhabitants could be used for anything from construction work to making clothes. Forced labourers worked extremely long hours in brutal conditions. Some work was used as a form of torture rather than for productivity, although most work did attempt to productively use the free labour, typically for the war effort.
For some Jews, work offered a temporary lifeline, as those who were being used for labour often received extra rations (although these were still minimal) and were less likely to be chosen for deportation lists. Temporary exclusion from transport and additional rations could save lives. Work often also offered a chance to escape the ghetto walls, which gave workers additional chances to smuggle in extra food or rationed material, although this also heightened their risk of being caught and punished.
On 5 March 1933, elections were held for the German Reichstag. The Nazis used violence to increase their vote share.
On 22 March 1933, the first Nazi concentration camp was established in the town of Dachau.
On 24 March 1933, the Enabling Act was passed, allowing Hitler to make laws without the approval of the Reichstag.
On 17 March 1935, 700 pastors of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazis, were arrested.
On 15 March 1938, following the German annexation of Austria three days earlier, Hitler gave a speech in front of the palace in Vienna.
