Narrator: The murder of 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust did not happen overnight. One key step in the Nazi process of separating, controlling and ultimately murdering Jews was the creation of ghettos. Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where authorities forced Jews to live under miserable conditions, separated from the non-Jewish population. These areas were often enclosed by walls, fences or barbed wire. And in many ghettos, Jews found ways to resist Nazi persecution in secret and through public acts of violence. By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews would die in ghettos.
Nazis established the first ghetto in German occupied Poland in October 1939. The Germans and their allies would ultimately force Jews into more than 1000 ghettos, most in occupied Eastern Europe. Rather than operate the ghettos themselves, the Nazis created Jewish councils to carry out their orders. In many ghettos, Jewish councils did their best to provide a variety of social, economic and cultural services under brutal and difficult conditions. Jewish Council leaders faced impossible moral dilemmas, including whether to provide lists of Jews for deportation. Jewish councils remain a controversial subject.
Jewish people tried to maintain their dignity and sense of community in the face of Nazi efforts to dehumanize and degrade them. Even though it was often forbidden to carry out Jewish religious services, many Jews resisted by praying and holding ceremonies in secret. Groups in some ghettos established secret archives. They methodically collected diaries, photographs, artwork and documents about daily life in the ghettos. Their efforts preserved evidence of the experiences of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
In many ghettos, harsh and inhumane conditions often proved to be deadly. Deliberate overcrowding led to the rampant spread of diseases. There was limited access to running water, food and medicine. Fuel for heat in the winter was scarce. And amid these conditions, many Jews were forced to carry out hard labor. Hundreds of thousands of Jews died in ghettos from disease, starvation, cold, unprovoked violence or suicide.
Once the Nazis decided to commit mass murder, the purpose of the ghettos changed. Beginning in 1941, the Germans began destroying ghettos and murdering the inhabitants. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered ghetto residents in mass shooting operations or deported them to killing centers. They also created new ghettos specifically to concentrate Jewish communities prior to their murder.
In April 1943, hundreds of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto fought back as the Nazis attempted to deport Jews to their death. This was the largest act of armed resistance by Jews during the Holocaust. The uprising lasted for more than 30 days, and it inspired other acts of Jewish resistance. But the Nazis eventually crushed the revolt in Warsaw. Ghettos were a key means by which the Nazis and their allies isolated, controlled and ultimately murdered millions of Jews. And the impact on those who managed to survive the ghettos lasted well beyond the end of the war.
Leah Hammerstein Silverstein: The sights of my father and of my grandmother dying from starvation in terrible hygienic conditions is a picture which haunts me till this very day, you know, and this was over half a century ago. And it torments me in terrible nightmares to this very day.
