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Ghettos separating Jews from the rest of the population were part of the Nazi plan to destroy Europe's Jews. Read about ghettoization during the Holocaust.
During the Holocaust, Jews were forced into ghettos with terrible living conditions, overcrowding, and starvation. Learn more about life in the Lodz ghetto.
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe.
Ghettos separating Jews from the rest of the population were part of the Nazi plan to destroy Europe's Jews. Learn about three types of ghettos: closed, open, and destruction.
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II. 100s of ghetto fighters fought heavily armed and well-trained Germans for nearly a month.
During World War II, the Nazis established ghettos, which were areas of a city where Jews were forced to live. Learn more about ghettos in occupied Poland.
Yizkor (memorial) books document Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Read an excerpt about resistance in the ghetto from the Zhetel memorial book.
Cultural and educational activities, clandestine documentation and religious observances. Learn more about these and other types of spiritual resistance in ghettos in Nazi-occupied areas.
Songs, verses, and writings of writers and poets in the ghettos reflect efforts to preserve culture, humanity, and documentation, as well as acts of defiance. Explore examples.
At its height, the Warsaw ghetto held over 400,000 people living in horrendous and worsening conditions. Learn about deportations both to and from the ghetto.
Leon Jakubowicz began constructing a model of the Lodz ghetto in the spring of 1940, after the ghetto was sealed. Explore the artifact and Leon's story.
Learn more about Jewish resistance efforts in the smaller ghettos of eastern Europe and the obstacles and limitations Jews faced.
Read a summary extract from Eliezer Breslin’s testimony on escaping from the Mir ghetto, given during the WWII war crimes investigation into Semion Serafinowicz.
Under the most adverse conditions, Jewish prisoners initiated resistance and uprisings in some of the ghettos and camps, including Bialystok, Warsaw, Treblinka, and Sobibor.
Diaries bear witness to some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Read excerpts from the diary of an anonymous child in the Lodz ghetto.
During WWII, a few thousand Polish Jewish refugees lived in Japan. Learn more about the wartime relocation into and the conditions of the Shanghai ghetto.
Learn more about the Holocaust Encyclopedia’s key terms and selected youth movements related to resistance in the smaller ghettos of eastern Europe.
The Jewish children of Lodz suffered harsh conditions after the German invasion of Poland. Read excerpts from diaries where they recorded their experiences.
View an animated map showing key events in the history of the Warsaw ghetto, the largest ghetto established by the Germans in occupied Europe.
Residents of the Lublin ghetto. Poland, 1941-1942. (Source record ID: E9 NW 33/IV)
The German army occupied Lodz, Poland, in September 1939. From early February 1940, Jews in Lodz were forced to move to a designated ghetto area, which was sealed on April 30, 1940. This German footage illustrates conditions during winter in the Lodz ghetto. Winter in the ghettos aggravated existing hardships, depleting already sparse supplies of food and fuel.
View an animated map of key events in the history of the Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland, from establishment by the Germans in 1940 until destruction in 1944.
Difficult debates took place within ghettos about whether and how to resist under the most adverse conditions. Read a rare account from the Lokacze ghetto.
The creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe's Jews during the Holocaust. Learn more.
An emaciated child eats in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.
Photograph of a Jewish policeman taken during an International Red Cross visit to the Theresienstadt ghetto. The SS deceived the delegation into believing that the ghetto was a self-administered Jewish settlement. Czechoslovakia, June 23, 1944.
During World War II, the Germans established ghettos mainly in eastern Europe (between 1939 and 1942) and also in Hungary (in 1944). These ghettos were enclosed districts of a city in which the Germans forced the Jewish population to live under miserable conditions. The Germans regarded the establishment of Jewish ghettos as a provisional measure to control, isolate, and segregate Jews. Beginning in 1942, after the decision had been made to kill the Jews, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos,…
A Jewish man attempts to make a living by playing music on a gramophone, which he wheels around in an old baby carriage. Warsaw ghetto, Poland, wartime.
A view of the wall surrounding the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto in German-occupied Poland a few months after the ghetto's destruction. Photograph taken ca. June-October 1943.
Leopold was a teacher in Krakow, Poland, when World War II began in 1939. While serving in the Polish army, he was captured by Germans. Leopold escaped from a prisoner-of-war transport. Soon after, he met the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. The two became friends. Leopold was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto. He later worked in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz. He and the other Jews who worked there were treated relatively well and protected from the Nazis. After the war, Leopold moved to the…
August 15, 1941. On this date, German authorities sealed approximately 30,000 Jews in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania.
Entrance gate to the Riga ghetto. This photograph was taken from outside the ghetto fence. Riga, Latvia, 1941-1943.
A bridge connected areas of the Warsaw ghetto to prevent Jews from entering the streets that were not part of the ghetto. Before the ghetto was sealed, the few entrances and exits had checkpoints. In the early months of the ghetto, life had the appearance of normalcy, but very soon the lack of food and adequate housing began to take its toll.
After the Germans established the Warsaw ghetto in October 1940, conditions deteriorated rapidly. The Germans strictly controlled the movement of goods into and out of the ghetto. There was not enough food to feed the ghetto residents. At great personal risk, many Jews attempted to smuggle in food. The German food ration for Warsaw ghetto inhabitants amounted to less than 10 percent of the ration for a German citizen. Thousands of Jew died in Warsaw each month because of starvation or disease.
November 15, 1940. On this date, German authorities ordered the Warsaw ghetto to be sealed.
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