Atrocities during the Holocaust, orchestrated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, began in 1933 and continued until 1945. In 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto located in Warsaw, Poland was created by Nazis to isolate the Jews off from the outer population. This began a time of fear and uncertainty for the ghetto inhabitants, which eventually sparked an uprising. Personal accounts help illustrate this disturbing time in history. The stories shared by survivors are critical for appreciating this dark time, which must never be forgotten.
The Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants endured an inhuman lifestyle inside these walls fueling an organized resistance, unprecedented during the Holocaust, proving that the Jews when pushed to their limits, will fight back. To understand the Warsaw Ghetto it is important to understand why it was created and what function it served. Beginning in November of 1939, Jews were controlled by the Nazis and ordered to obey harsh demands. Failure to obey would result in violence or death. The Nazis believed that by keeping Jews in the ghetto, they would be able to better control the Jewish population in Poland.
Hitler targeted the Jewish population, mostly due to the fact that at the time Jews were among the minority and many people were Anti-Semitic all around the world. Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats, blaming them for economic problems and perpetuating an impure race. Over the course of the next five years over 400,000 Jews were forced into a small, fenced off area of around 1. 3 square miles, having to fend for their limited resources. This dramatic lifestyle change must have been extremely challenging for Jewish families. The Warsaw Ghetto as the largest amongst the eight other ghettos that existed during World War II. As each day passed in the ghetto, more and more people were dying.
While the Jews were living in fear of the Nazis, they were also faced with many other risks such as starvation and disease. Many Jews were forced into working in horrible factories and workshops to produce textiles for the German army, which lead to infections and disease. Survivors of the Holocaust recall “seeing children die from starvation, eventually curling up into a ball not being able to walk again” If ble to walk again”. If a function of a ghetto was to trap a population and discard them, the Warsaw Ghetto definitely fulfilled that function. For many people living in the Warsaw Ghetto was only a temporary holding tank. The Nazis went out around the towns of Poland hunting for Jewish people to bring back to the ghetto. Some would live in the ghetto for a few days, sometimes a week, before being sent to extermination camps including Treblinka and Auschwitz. Around 6,000 people were forced to leave the ghetto by trains each day.
For most, it was unclear what would become of those 6,000 people once they left the ghetto. It is human nature to believe that those who left maybe going to a better place. Sadly, that was far from the truth. Once someone entered the Warsaw Ghetto, communication from the outside was cut off. The ghetto separated Jews in every way from the outside world. The ghetto dwellers rarely received any information from newspapers, radios, and telephones about what was happening beyond the gates. The civilians on the outside were also uninformed when it came to the inhumane treatment occurring inside the ghetto walls.
This lack of information made it impossible for the Jews in the ghetto and the outsiders who may have wanted to help. Personal accounts reveal the true horror that existed in the walls of the ghetto. Life in the Warsaw Ghetto has been documented by personal accounts and many historians since the ghetto’s time. Janina Dawidowicz, a nine year old Jewish Polish girl taken to the Warsaw Ghetto gives a haunting description of her life growing up in this dire time in history. She recalls reading the posters that were made for the announcement of the ghetto.
No one was excited about the announcement, but no could could predict what was coming. Since they were allowed to bring personal items along with them, many thought they were being sent to work at labor camps. The posters also claimed they would be giving out free food (most likely being bread or sugar), so many were ready to follow the Nazis orders. Once Dawidowicz and her family got to the ghetto they were living in small, cramped apartments along with many other families. She described the walls of the apartments being “so damp, people were able to do sums on them”.
As Janina walked around the streets of the ghetto she heard conversations that came from different languages and cultures from around Europe. She heard conversations between Polish, Hungarian and even German people. Janina and her family were unlike others living in the ghetto because her father began working with the Jewish police. That meant that her father would be moving in and out of the ghetto some days. Once the population in the ghetto grew smaller due to amount of people being sent to extermination camps, Janina noticed the empty apartments around her.
This young girl witnessed the horror of a father committing suicide after his son was sent out on a train. That was the breaking point for Janina and her family, so her father smuggled her out of the ghetto in a cargo truck while working. Janina never reunited with her family again. While Janina’s story is just one account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, it serves as an example of the horrific events families endured during this dark time in history. Ed Herman, another survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto describes his life in the ghetto as “horrible, and still hard to believe”.
Herman was born in Warsaw in 1931, but later moved to Katowice as a child. Days before World War II started, Herman visited his grandparents in Warsaw, and was separated from his parents and lived in the ghetto for the rest of his childhood life. Herman remembers the streets of the ghetto being covered in dead bodies from disease and seeing Jews getting beat up by policemen if they disagreed with anything the police had said. Just like Janina, Ed eventually escaped from the ghetto, running through Poland looking for somewhere to stay. Janina and Ed lost something irretrievable, their innocence.
When conditions are unbearable, as in the Warsaw Ghetto, hard choices must be made. The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had had enough. Having witnessed horrors such as the separation of families against their will and having seen many people around them die of starvation, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto made the courageous decision to fight back. The fight against the Nazis began in April of 1943, with the Nazis invading the ghetto. As the Jews began their fight against the Nazis, many knew the outcome would not be positive for them, but they fought so the treatment in the ghetto would never happen again anywhere around the world.
The Nazis had more than 2,000 soldiers fighting, while the Jews had less than 1,000. While those numbers are similar in size, the way of fighting did not come close to being fair. The Nazis fought with dive bombers, tanks and machine guns, while the Jews fought with homemade grenades and pistols. The Jews were at yet another disadvantage since many fighters had never shot a gun before, unlike the Nazis. Many Jews believed that “dying fighting was better than dying in extermination camps or in the ghetto. ” Almost one third of the Warsaw Ghetto’s population was lost during the uprisings that occurred.
The courage the Jewish fighters had while fighting against the Nazis shows much of the importance of the uprising. When faced with certain death, the Jews made a calculated decision to resist, even when the odds were against them. This decision is proof that strength can be found under the worst circumstances. Were there lessons learned during this cruel historic time? Yes, a staggering amount of Jews affiliated with the Warsaw Ghetto died, contributing to the 6 million people who perished during the Holocaust.
These people’s lives mattered and that is part of the lesson that comes rom the Warsaw Ghetto. One lesson that will forever be remembered is, when faced with death, Jews had the strength to resist. This was not a population that was going to accept their fate. It is important to recognize the importance of stepping in to stop abusive power. While it is not on the same spectrum as the Warsaw Ghetto, parts of the world can still be an unsafe place where certain groups of people are attacked for different ideologies and simply because of the religion they practice. When faced with nonsensical prejudice and aggression, sometimes the only option is to fight back.
