Elie Wiesel Ghetto

Elie Wiesel stated “it all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.” The ghettos were really nice to Elie and his family before they went to concentration camp. The ghettos were going to take in Elie and his family when they needed to move. The ghettos played an important role in World War II for the Jewish people. The life that people in the ghettos had was pretty insufferable. About 3-4 families lived in one house which was a crowded room . In the article, “life in the ghettos was usually unbearable. Overcrowding was common. One apartment might have several families living in it”(Life 1). In the ghettos

there was too much people for a little bit of houses even more when other people come to the ghettos. The people in the ghettos would starve due to the fact that the Germans would not let them buy enough food for everyone in their family. The article mentions that “people were always hungry.

Germans deliberately tried to starve the residents by allowing them to purchase only a small amount of bread, potatoes, and fat” (Ghettos 1). The Germans would make the people in the ghettos starve on purpose. Lots of people would die because of hunger and of the coldness. Some people in the ghettos did not have the money sometimes to buy food or make a fire when it was really cold outside. During the long winters, they couldn’t prove the heat for their families or for themselves. The article indicates that “people weakened by hunger and exposure to the cold became easy victims of disease; tens of thousands died in the ghettos from illness, starvation, or cold” (Holocaust 1). Everyday children lose their parents, some even have to take care of their siblings before something happens to them. The children that lost their parents would be out on the streets ask people for bread, the people that had a little bit to share. For the children on the streets that wanted to survive, they had to do stuff and make themselves useful. Some of the children would help out by bringing the families their food through narrow openings on the walls. If they got caught bringing food, the Germans would punish

them. Some children would help the adults in the school to follow their education instead of helping other children bring food to the families. In order for the children not to get in trouble by the Nazis they would hide their books under their clothes because the school classes were being held as a secret. The children that didn’t bring toys with them when they moved into the ghettos, the teachers would teach them how to make toys with cloth and wood. Some of the children would turn empty cigarette boxes into playing cards. Most of them invented whatever they could imagine. This is how the people in the ghettos live.