Ghettos Description in Night by Elie Wiesel

The term ghetto, originally derived from Venetian dialect in Italy during the sixteenth century, has multiple variations of meaning. The primary perception of the word is “synonymous with segregation” (Bassi). The first defining moment of the ghetto as a Jewish neighborhood was in sixteenth century Italy; however, the term directly correlates with the beginning of the horror that the Jewish population faced during Adolph Hitler’s reign. “No ancient ghetto knew the terror and suffering of the ghettos under Hitler” (Weisel, After the Darkness 20). Under Hitler’s terror, there were multiple ghettos throughout several cities in numerous countries ranging in size and population. Ghettos also differed in purpose; some were temporary housing until deportation to the final solution while others formed for forced labor. Although life in the ghetto was far better than a concentration camp, it shared the commonality of torment, fear, and death.

Forces pushed the Jewish population by the thousands into segregated areas of a city. These areas, known as ghettos, were small. The large ghetto in Sighet that Elie Wiesel describes in Night consisted of only four streets and originally housed around ten thousand Jews. The families that were required to relocate were only allowed to bring what they could carry, leaving the majority of their belongings and life behind. Forced into the designated districted, “fifteen to twenty-four people occupied a single room” (Fischthal). Living conditions were overcrowded and food was scarce. In the Dąbrowa Górnicza ghetto, lining up for bread rations was the morning routine, but “for Jews and dogs there is no bread available” (qtd. in Fischthal). Cut off from the rest of civilization, Jews relied on the Nazis f...

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...t this way of life was only temporary, they did their work in order to protect others from having to do it. However, there was always the fear of deportation and never returning or worse, shot on spot.

Some of the Jewish population was aware of what ghetto life meant for their futures whereas others were living under a delusion. Sighet’s population, easily influenced early on by the Germans courteous behavior, believed through blind faith that no harm would come to them. However, Hanna Berliner Fischthal best states the truth, “the ghettos into which they [the Jews] are forced are temporary holding grounds enabling the Germans…to easily round up the residents for the final solution.” If only they had known about the final solution, they could have escaped. Instead, the majority was murdered and the rest endured years of pain and misery that forever haunts them.