Germany occupied western Poland in fall 1939. Much of this territory was annexed to the German Reich. Eastern Poland was not occupied by German forces until June 1941. In south-central Poland the Germans set up the Generalgouvernement (General Government), where most of the early ghettos were established. Ghettos were enclosed districts of a city in which the Germans forced the Jewish population to live under miserable conditions. Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities both from the population as a whole and from neighboring Jewish communities. The Warsaw ghetto, established on October 12, 1940, was the largest ghetto, in both area and population. There, more than 350,000 Jews--about 30 percent of the city's population--were eventually confined in about 2.4 percent of the city's total area.
Jews forced to move into the Lodz ghetto. Lodz, Poland, date uncertain.
During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe's Jews. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
Forced laborers work on the construction of a wall around the Warsaw ghetto area. The Germans announced the construction of a ghetto in October 1940 and closed the ghetto off from the rest of Warsaw in mid-November 1940.
Footbridge over Chlodna Street, connecting two parts of the Warsaw ghetto. The street below was not part of the ghetto. Warsaw, Poland, date uncertain.
The footbridge over Zgierska Street that joined the two parts of the Lodz ghetto. The street itself was not part of the ghetto. Leon Jakubowicz's model of the Lodz ghetto recreates, on a small scale, the physical appearance of the ghetto, creating the shape of the model to mimic the exact boundaries, streets, and buildings that had a major impact on daily life in the ghetto. Lodz, Poland, ca. 1941.
During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe's Jews. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
Sabina grew up in a Jewish family in Piotrkow Trybunalski, a small industrial city southeast of Warsaw. Her family lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood. Her father was a businessman and her mother was a teacher. Both Yiddish and Polish were spoken in their home. In 1929 Sabina began public school, and later went on to study at a Jewish secondary school.
1933-39: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Four days later, German troops streamed into Sabina's city. After one month of occupation, her father had to give up his business, she had to give up school, and their family of five was forced into a ghetto that had been set up by the Germans. They shared an apartment with another family. From blocks away they could hear the sounds of German patrols and heavy German boots on the cobblestones.
1940-44: In 1942, as the ghetto was being liquidated, Sabina's Polish girlfriends Danuta and Maria got Sabina and her sister false Polish ID cards. On the eve of the final roundup, they escaped and hid in Danuta and Maria's home. Two weeks later Sabina and her sister took labor assignments in Germany where nobody knew them. Sabina was a maid in a hotel for German officers. One of them asked her whether there were Jews in her family. He said that he was an anthropologist and that her ears and profile seemed Jewish. She looked offended and continued to work.
Sabina was liberated in Regensburg, Germany, by American troops on April 27, 1945. She immigrated to the United States in 1950 and pursued a career as an ophthalmologist.
Shlomo was one of seven children born in Lodz to the Reich family. The Reichs were a religious Jewish family, and Shlomo's Hasidic father wore earlocks and a traditional fur hat. After public school every day, Shlomo attended the Ostrovtze Yeshiva, a rabbinical academy where he studied Jewish holy texts. Shlomo's father owned a shoelace factory.
1933-39: The Germans invaded Lodz in September 1939 and began to institute anti-Jewish measures. Jews were not allowed to use public transportation, to leave the city without special permission, or own cars or radios. Eventually, Jewish apartments were confiscated.
1940-44: In the early winter of 1940, the Germans set up a ghetto in Lodz, and the city's Jews were concentrated there. The Reich family was also moved into the ghetto, where they all lived in one small room. Shlomo found work at a clothing factory in the ghetto, where he received thin soup at lunchtime. After four years in the ghetto, Shlomo was deported in the late summer of 1944 for slave labor at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
Shlomo was liberated in the spring of 1945. After the war, he learned that four of his six brothers and sisters had also survived. He immigrated to the United States in 1946.
Shulim was the oldest of three children born to religious Jewish parents living in Kolbuszowa, a town in south central Poland. His father owned a wholesale general store in town, and was known in the region for his impressive strength. Shulim's mother tended to the house and cared for him, his brother, Shlomo, and his sister, Rozia.
1933-39: When Shulim was 9, the Germans invaded Poland. Polish soldiers on horses tried to fight against the German army, but they were no match against the tanks. After the short battle, there were many dead horses in the streets. Shulim's father and his uncle Naftali were forced to help bury the horses. The Germans ordered that Jewish children could not go to school anymore. Shulim stayed at home with his mother, brother and sister.
1940-42: In July 1941 the Germans forced all the Jews of Kolbuszowa to live in one small section of town. Two of Shulim's grandparents, an uncle and two aunts moved in with his family, making their apartment very crowded. Shulim's twelfth birthday was a milestone--he now had to wear an armband with a Star of David like the other men. He felt proud, and asked his uncle Naftali to take a picture of him wearing the armband. Shulim was assigned to work details with the other men. He cleared snow and repaired the roads.
Shulim was deported to the Rzeszow ghetto on June 25, 1942, and then to the Belzec camp in July. There, Shulim was gassed with his mother, brother and sister. He was 12 years old.
Emanuel and his family lived in the small town of Miechow, north of Krakow. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, persecution of Jews increased. The Germans established a ghetto in Miechow. Emanuel was forced to live in the ghetto. Emanuel, his mother, and his sister escaped from the ghetto before it was destroyed in 1942. He stayed in a monastery, under an assumed identity, along with members of the Polish underground. Emanuel left the monastery after about a year when a teacher began to suspect he was Jewish. Emanuel then became involved in the smuggling of goods to Krakow and Warsaw. He fled to Hungary in the fall of 1943. After the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, Emanuel again attempted to flee but was caught and imprisoned. He survived the war.
The Germans occupied Vilna in June 1941. In October, Rochelle and her family were confined to the Vilna ghetto, where her mother died. Her father, a Jewish council member, was killed in a camp in Estonia. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1943, Rochelle and her sister were deported--first to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof, near Danzig. In 1945, on the sixth week of a death march that forced the sisters to protect their bare feet with rags, the Soviet army liberated them.
Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.
Both of Charlene's parents were local Jewish community leaders, and the family was active in community life. Charlene's father was a professor of philosophy at the State University of Lvov. World War II began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Charlene's town was in the part of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union under the German-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Under the Soviet occupation, the family remained in its home and Charlene's father continued to teach. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and arrested Charlene's father after they occupied the town. She never saw him again. Charlene, her mother, and sister were forced into a ghetto the Germans established in Horochow. In 1942, Charlene and her mother fled from the ghetto after hearing rumors that the Germans were about to destroy it. Her sister attempted to hide separately, but was never heard from again. Charlene and her mother hid in underbrush at the river's edge, and avoided discovery by submerging themselves in the water for part of the time. They hid for several days. One day, Charlene awoke to find that her mother had disappeared. Charlene survived by herself in the forests near Horochow, and was liberated by Soviet troops. She eventually immigrated to the United States.es.
This Singer sewing machine was used by shoemakers in the Lodz ghetto, Poland. As early as May 1940, the Germans began to establish factories in the ghetto and to utilize Jewish residents for forced labor. By August 1942, there were almost 100 factories within the ghetto. The major factories produced textiles, especially uniforms, for the German army.
Millions of Jews lived in eastern Europe. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, more than two million Polish Jews came under German control. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, several million more Jews came under Nazi rule. The Germans aimed to control this sizable Jewish population by forcing Jews to reside in marked-off sections of towns and cities the Nazis called "ghettos" or "Jewish residential quarters." Altogether, the Germans created at least 1,000 ghettos in occupied territories. The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, the Polish capital, where almost half a million Jews were confined.
Many ghettos were set up in cities and towns where Jews were already concentrated. Jews as well as some Roma (Gypsies) were also brought to ghettos from surrounding regions and from western Europe. Between October and December 1941, thousands of German and Austrian Jews were transported to ghettos in eastern Europe. The Germans usually marked off the oldest, most run-down sections of cities for the ghettos. They sometimes had to evict non-Jewish residents from the buildings to make room for Jewish families. Many of the ghettos were enclosed by barbed-wire fences or walls, with entrances guarded by local and German police and SS members. During curfew hours at night the residents were forced to stay inside their apartments.
In the Polish cities of Łódź and Warsaw, trolley lines ran through the middle of the ghetto. Rather than reroute the lines, workers fenced them off, and policemen guarded the area to keep the Jews from escaping on the trolley cars. The passengers from outside the ghetto used the cars to get to work on weekdays, and some rode them on Sunday outings just to gawk and sneer at the ghetto prisoners.
Last Edited: Sep 23, 2025
Author(s):
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
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