PRESENTATION OUTLINE
THESIS
Over land before and during World War II, the horrors of the Holocaust sparked the implementation of Jewish ghettos, and were used to quarantine millions of Jews.
There were 11 million total victims of the Holocaust, consisting of homosexuals, Jews, Poles, and African Americans.
Creation of the Ghettos
The creation of ghettos was a key process of separating, persecuting, and destroying Europe's Jews. They were set up to keep the Jews segregated from the German race in German occupied territories.
In the fall of 1939, the first large Jewish ghetto was built at Priotrkow Trybanalski. The Germans created over 1000 ghettos in occupied areas of Poland and the Soviet Union alone.
The ghettos were designed to be temporary; some lasted a few weeks or months, and others for several years.
Types of Ghettos
The Germans designed three different types of ghettos. The most commonly established ghetto was the closed ghetto. These ghettos were closed off with barbed wire fencing or towering, 10-15 foot walls that the Jews built themselves.
Open ghettos had no walls or fencing, but had restrictions on leaving and entering the ghetto. These types of ghettos were located in Poland and the Soviet Union.
Destruction ghettos were tightly sealed off and only existed for two to six weeks before its inhabitants were killed off. These ghettos were commonly found in the Soviet Union and Hungary.
Living Conditions
Most ghettos were severely overcrowded and had inadequate housing and food rations. Such crowded conditions made contagious sicknesses and diseases spread extremely quickly.
Multiple families lived in a single room and had little to no privacy.
A large number of Jews died of starvation or epidemics as doctors had little to no medications to treat sickness. Such doctors had to decide which patients to treat due to their shortness of medication.
The housing had no air conditioning and heating; this lead to blistering hot summers and bitterly cold winters. Many people sold their blankets for food and normally froze to death during the winters.
The Jews were given a measly ration of 200 calories a day(normally a slice of bread) and many starved to death.
Some children risked their lives by crawling through holes in the surrounding walls to retrieve some potatoes or a loaf of bread to bring back to their families.
Jewish Councils
The Nazis set up organizations in the ghettos called Jewish Councils to ensure that Nazi regulations were in place and provided basic community services.
The Nazis appointed council chairman to lead each council and to follow the orders of the Jews. If the chairmen didn't follow Nazi orders, they'd either be killed or removed from their position.
Jewish Council Chairmen Joseph Parnes refused to surrender 5000 Jews for deportations and was killed for his defiance.
Jewish Council Chairman Adam Czernialcow committed suicide the day deportations started as he didn't want to send his fellow Jews away to their dooms.
To make the ghettos useful to the Nazis, many council leaders set up factories that made clothing and uniforms for the Nazis.
The people in the factories were considered lucky as they were given extra rations to manufacture clothing for the Nazis.
Resistance Efforts
Jews that were living within the ghettos often smuggled in food, weapons, medicine, and information through the walls of the ghettos.
Most of these acts were almost always done without consent of the Jewish Council members. The councils that did know about the smuggling often tolerated it and/or encouraged it.
The Nazis saw any form of social gathering as a security threat and forbade any form of continuous education or schooling.
However, most ghettos gave the children as much education as they were able to anyways. Most schools were attended in soup kitchens or in the apartments of some complexes.
Ghettos in Hungary
No ghettos were installed in Hungary until the spring of 1944. All 500,000 Jews in Hungary-excluding residents of Budapest-were forced into scattered ghettos.
Some Jews were forced to live on the streets due to inadequate housing. A large amount of Hungarian Jews were deported out of the country on trains. The average size of each ghetto was .1 miles and held an average of 70,000 people.
Lodz Ghetto
The Lodz Ghetto was the second largest ghetto that was established. Over one third of the city's population was Jewish, and they were forced to live in a remote area of the city.
They were cut of from the rest of the city with barbed wire fencing. Residents in the city that weren't Jewish were able to pass through the ghetto, but it was forbidden for them to stop.
In 1942, over 40,000 Jews were deported to Lodz. There were no major deportations from Lodz.
The Lodz ghetto resembled a force labor camp, and the Nazis eventually destroyed the ghetto in spring 1944; it was the last surviving ghetto in Germany.
Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw was the largest established ghetto with 400,000 Jews in 1.3 square miles. The Nazis made a decree for the Jews to move into the small area. An average of seven people were crammed in each room.
Average amount of calories each Jew had each day was approximately 200 calories(which was normally just a piece of bread).
Between 1940 and 1942, over 83,000 Jews had died from starvation, disease, or being shot by the Nazis. In between July 22 and September 12, 1942, German SS and police units deported 265,000 Jews to killing centers.
There were 35,000 Jews killed in Warsaw during these months. Approximately 70-80,000 Jews were put into forced labor.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
In January 1943, the Jews in Warsaw revolted against the Nazis and held out for three weeks before surrendering.
The Jewish fighters were heavily outnumbered by the Nazis but refused to surrender; they took shelter in bunkers and cellars and travelled to different buildings throughout the sewers.
The Nazis had 135 machine guns to the Jews' two machine guns and 1,358 rifles to the Jews' 15 rifles.
On April 19, 1943, German troops and police force entered the ghetto to end the Jewish revolt. The head of the police, General Jürgen Stroop, ordered his troops to set the ghetto ablaze.
The revolt finally ended after Stroop ordered the sewers to be flooded. Of the 55,000 Jews captured, 7,000 were shot and the rest were deported to death camps.
CONCLUSION
The Holocaust was an absolutely horrific time period and was very unfortunate for the Jews, with 6,000,000 Jews dead and 11,000,000 total victims. The last of the ghettos were shut down or destroyed in 1945.
