Living In The Ghettos

780 Words2 Pages

Living in the Ghettos Upon entering the barbed-wire fenced confines of a ghetto, all hope was lost; it was a nightmare come true for the Jews. Promised with deceit as they were taken from their homes and carted away to hell on earth, the Jews faced great suffering as they tried in vain to survive. Death was in every nook and cranny, waiting for the next poor fallen soul. Many wished to be anywhere else, but this horrid and godforsaken place. During the Second World War, the Nazis established over four hundred ghettos for the purpose of isolating Jews from the non-Jewish population and other nearby Jewish communities. The ghettos served as a temporary method of controlling and segregating the Jews. Jewish people were segregated to stop them …show more content…

A common issue in the ghettos was extreme overcrowding since several families were forced to live in one apartment that wasn’t large to begin with. Furthermore, ghettos were also very unsanitary. Plumbing constantly broke down, and human waste was thrown out in the streets along with the garbage similar to the medieval times. Diseases such as typhus also spread throughout the ghettos at a rapid rate and many people were starving due to food shortage. The Nazis actually deliberately tried to feed the Jews as little as possible by allowing them to buy only a small amount of potatoes, bread, and fat. Some people possessed some money or valuable items that they could trade for food smuggled into the ghetto while others were forced to beg or steal for the sake of their …show more content…

Jews who were deemed as basically useless by the Nazis were the first to be deported or shot to death. Despite the benefit of Jewish labor for the Nazis, the labor was expendable, and the first thing on their list was to exterminate the Jews. As the Jews were laboring away, the experience was even more unpleasant due to the fact that the Nazis would humiliate, bully, abuse, and even kill Jews for the fun of it. Not only were the Nazis using the Jews for their own benefit before exterminating them, they got a kick out of it. It’s appalling how cruel humans can be; to put another through pain and suffering, to ruthlessly kill another human being without much as a care or thought. How can one do such sick things to their own kind? The Holocaust is surely an event in history that shows the brutality of humans, but thankfully, the huge genocide came to an end on May 8, 1945. The Holocaust left scars in humanity for generations to come. Let such an event never happen

Show More
Related

  • Ghettos Description in Night by Elie Wiesel

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Holocaust

    1898 Words  | 4 Pages

    Imagine having to live behind the close fences of a concentration camp and endeavor for survival. From January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945, the Holocaust was the methodical, bureaucratic, state-supported mistreatment and homicide by the Nazi administration and its colleagues. Specified by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, approximately six million Jews were butchered due to the Nazis blaming them for Germany’s failures. The Jew’s experiences range from the release of extreme propaganda, opening of concentration camps, Kristallnacht, their civil liberties dwindling away, and what the remaining prisoners had suffered through to survive the end of the war.

    Read More

  • The Conditions of Ghettos During the Holocaust

    784 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Nazis established over four hundred ghettos over the course of World War II. The ghettos were used the ghettos to control and segregate the Jews. Nazis viewed the Jews as an inferior race, and wanted to keep them from mixing with their race and degrading the superior race. The ghettos also made it more convenient for the Nazis to round up the Jews and kill them later.

    Read More

  • Lasting Effects of the Holocaust

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Holocaust was a very impressionable period of time. It not only got media attention during that time, but movies, books, websites, and other forms of media still remember the Holocaust. In Richard Brietman’s article, “Lasting Effects of the Holocaust,” he reviews two books and one movie that were created to reflect the Holocaust (BREITMAN 11). He notes that the two books are very realistic and give historical facts and references to display the evils that were happening in concentration camps during the Holocaust. This shows that the atrocities that were committed during the Holocaust have not been forgotten. Through historical writings and records, the harshness and evil that created the Holocaust will live through centuries, so that it may not be repeated again (BREITMAN 14).

    Read More

  • Causes & Effects of the Holocaust

    1411 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are times in history when desperate people plagued by desperate situations blindly give evil men power. These men, once given power, have only their own evil agendas to carry out. The Holocaust was the result of one such man's agenda. In short simplicity, shear terror, brutality, inhumanity, injustice, irresponsibility, immorality, stupidity, hatred, and pure evil are but a few words to describe the Holocaust.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Warsaw Ghetto

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    In particular, the Germans began ghettos like this one, in order to gather and contain Jews until the “Final Solution” could be further implemented. In particular, after the Germans invaded Poland, they knew that it would be necessary to get rid of the Polish Jews, knowing that with 30% Jews, Warsaw had the 2nd greatest Jewish population. An area was needed to contain the Jews as the concentration camps would take time to build and had limited human capacity. As a result, they chose to create a closed ghetto, as it was easier for the Nazis to block off a part of a city than to build more housing for the Jews. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population. In essence, the Warsaw ghetto was a step from capturing and identifying the Jewish to deporting them to another location. So how exactly was the ghetto

    Read More

  • Holocaust Denial and Distortion

    2232 Words  | 5 Pages

    As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.

    Read More

  • Marlie Bogdon

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Nazis began to force Jews into designated areas known as ghettos. These ghettos were not just a place for the Jewish population to stay, but used as a starting point from which the Jews were then placed into concentration and death camps. When placed in these camps, many were killed immediately upon entering the camps by the gas chambers, ovens, or bullets. Some didn’t even make it to the camps, but were shot and dumped into mass graves by the German mobile killing squad called the Einsatzgruppen. Sadly, many of those sent ...

    Read More

  • Destruction Ghetto History

    1673 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Nazis established these ghettos for the Jews temporarily while they decided what the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was going to be. Ghettos were established to isolate the Jews from the non-Jews and from other Jewish communities. There were three types of ghettos: Closed ghettos, Open ghettos, and Destruction ghettos.

    Read More

  • The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

    1444 Words  | 3 Pages

    He declared the Ghetto as an area of the city in which the Jewish population was required to relocate to. There were high walls that surrounded it which segregated any activity between the Jews and the rest of the people who lived in Warsaw. Thus, approximately 350,000 individuals were designated to reside in one area which only took up approximately one square mile of the entire city. Quality of life was poor, morale was low, and people who were living there were left with minimal choices to make on their own; their independence had been completely stripped away from them. Nazi officials systematically manipulated the ghetto by increasing population numbers, decreasing food supply, and deflating the labor market, making almost 60% of the Jewish population unemployed. These events caused exhaustion, panic, fear, and, anger of the Jews who were forced to live in such poor conditions. Two years after the Ghetto was up and running, in the summer of 1942, the Jewish Fighting Organization, or Z.O.B., formed to devise a plan to rebel against the Nazi party, an unheard of movement of any Jew during the

    Read More

  • Essay On Ghettos

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    The term “ghetto” came from the Jewish Quarter in Venice that was made in 1516, when the Venetian experts required the entire city’s Jewish people to live in this area. The Ghettos separated the Jews from the Non-Jews and from other Jewish communities. There were three types of ghettos, closed, open, and destruction ghettos. My thoughts are that the destruction ghettos are concentration or death camps. The ghetto was not a Nazi invention.

    Read More

  • Life In The Ghetto Dbq

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the population of the Ghetto increasing to 400,000 by late 1940 and the beginning of 1941, spacing in the Ghetto became a major problem. The Ghetto took up a space of only about 3.5 square miles, covering only about 2.4 percent of the overall metropolitan area of the city of Warsaw. 400,000 people were living in an area that normally housed only 160,000 people. Eventually, many Jews had to start crowding within the Ghetto resulting in an estimated 7.2 people per room. As a result, life in the ghetto was completely unsanitary. Jews had almost no access to any forms of self-hygiene. Plumbing broke down, and human waste was thrown on the streets along with other garbage making a completely unsanitary environment. With the unsanitary environment

    Read More

  • Life in the Ghettos

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion , the life in the ghettos was unbearable. People were always dying, because they were forced to starve and live in very poor living conditions.Most prisoners lost approximately one-third of their body wight. The Jews in the ghettos suffered a lot. They were forced into labor everyday and would work up to twelve hours a day. Although they were weakened by their everyday lives, they still entertained themselves with anything they could find. Study, music and theater all served as an escape for them. Those who tried to hide in hiding places which they had prepared for their loved ones in cellars were quickly discovered by specially trained dogs. By 1944, when the germans began losing the war the remaining Jews were transported to concentrations camps or death to be murdered.

    Read More

  • Leaving The Ghetto Essay

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Jews were not only cut off from the rest of the city by the means of communication, but they were also physically locked in. A barbed wire fence went up in April 1940 (F 1). Leaving the ghetto now became a much harder task. Jews would be arrested if

    Read More

  • Life in the Ghetto

    539 Words  | 2 Pages

    and know he wouldn't cross that line, because of my mum I can only see

    Read More

More about Living In The Ghettos

Open Document