{"id":3326,"date":"2016-04-19T03:26:56","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T03:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=3326"},"modified":"2026-02-15T11:52:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:52:05","slug":"ghettos-of-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/ghettos-of-the-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghettos of the Holocaust: A Detailed Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The ghettos of the Holocaust<\/a> were established by Nazi Germany<\/a> established ghettos as a means to isolate, control, and oppress Jewish communities across occupied Europe, particularly in Poland, Lithuania, and Eastern Europe. These ghettos were walled-off sections of cities or towns where Jews were forcibly confined, separated from the rest of the population under brutal conditions. The ghettos served as transitional zones where Jews were held before eventual deportation to concentration<\/a> and extermination camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0Holocaust\u00a0is one of the most important events of the 20th century and is perhaps the most significant genocide<\/a> in human history.\u00a0 A genocide is a mass killing of a group of people for ethnic, religious or racial reasons.\u00a0 The term \u2018holocaust\u2019 refers to death by fire in reference to the way that people were executed during the event.\u00a0\u00a0 It unfolded during the reign of\u00a0Adolf Hitler<\/a>\u00a0in Germany and the major events of\u00a0World War II<\/a>.\u00a0 During the Holocaust, which occurred from 1933 to 1945, over 11 million people were executed.\u00a0 In total, 6 million were Jewish people, while the other 5 million included several other groups, including: disabled people, homosexuals, communists, Soviet and Polish prisoners of war, gypsies, and other religious and ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Death
Starved prisoners, nearly dead from hunger, pose in Nazi concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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GHETTOS OF THE HOLOCAUST – BACKGROUND<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A main event of the\u00a0Holocaust\u00a0was the creation of the ghettos in Poland following the start of\u00a0World War II.\u00a0 World War II began on September 1st, 1939, with the\u00a0Nazi invasion of Poland<\/a>.\u00a0 This was an important event, because Poland served an important purpose for Germany and the Holocaust.\u00a0 First,\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0viewed Poland (and the Soviet Union) as \u2018lebensraum\u2019, or living space, for German families.\u00a0 Hitler believed that Germany needed more living space in order to harvest more food to allow the German population to increase at a faster rate.\u00a0 In his book, Mein Kampf<\/a>, he stated his desire to use land to the east of Germany to fulfil this purpose.\u00a0 Second, it was in Poland that the Nazis established ghettos for the Jewish (and others).\u00a0 For example, Polish cities such as Warsaw were used to contain captured Jewish populations.\u00a0 Third, Poland became the site of many of the Nazi death camps that carried out the deaths of millions during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Adolf<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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GHETTOS OF THE HOLOCAUST – SUMMARY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As the German army captured territory (and people) across Europe they deported millions of Jewish people to the ghettos.  Ghettos were city districts in which the Jewish were forced to live, and which were used to isolate them from the rest of the European populations.  The ghettos were surrounded by walls or fences to prevent Jewish and non-Jewish people from interacting and to forcibly contain the Jewish.  In total there were over 800 ghettos established across Nazi controlled Europe during the time period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conditions of the ghettos were miserable.  Jewish families, who were forced to live in them, faced: overcrowding, starvation, lack of medical supplies, lack of proper sanitation and running water, lack of proper clothing to deal with extreme cold, spread of infectious diseases and forced to labor for the Nazis.  A black market emerged in many ghettos as Jewish people used many of their remaining possessions to gain more food or clothing for themselves.  Sometimes, very young children would escape through the ghetto wall in order to trade or scavenge for goods that they could take back to their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there were some resistance movements in the ghettos (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising<\/a>), once the Jewish were contained there they lacked the ability to fight back and prevent the eventual devastation of the Holocaust.\u00a0 From the ghettos, the Jewish were removed and transported aboard trains to the\u00a0concentration and death camps.\u00a0 As well, at the same time as the construction on the ghettos, the Nazis also carried out mass deaths at the hand of the\u00a0einsatzgruppen<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Warsaw
Nazi soldiers escort Jewish people following the events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life in the ghettos of the Holocaust was terrible for the people subjected to them. This article details the history and significance of the ghettos of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,51,47],"tags":[61,15,101,56,22],"class_list":["post-3326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holocaust","category-genocide","category-nazi-germany","tag-genocide","tag-history","tag-holocaust","tag-nazi-germany","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3326"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5299,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions\/5299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}