November 9, 1998

I chose chapter 28 "The Deepening of the European Crisis: World War II". It covers the Second World War with a special emphasis on the Holocaust, which interests me very much. I narrowed the topic of my paper down from the Holocaust to the live of the Jews in the Ghettos. For me it is important to see the American point of view on this issue compared to the German, mainly because I read and learned a lot about this in school in Germany but I have never had it in the United States.

As I said earlier the topic of this chapter is The Holocaust, especially the Jews in the Ghetto. The significance of this topic to history of the western civilization is obvious. The Holocaust set the cold war up as well as the changes that took place in Germany after the war and even today and it also changed the lives of all the Jews of the world. It was certainly not the first religious war, but the one that got the most attention. The process of killing the Jews was changed from a simple killing that occurred in the years before to a factorized process, in which the death or conzentration camps were organized like factories that have to produce a certain output every day. The Ghettos were only a station in the process of a Jew at that point in time. For most of them it was not last station, but quite a few were killed in the Ghettos. The Ghettos also had their own societies, an own lifestyle; they were simply a city in a city. Even today people are fascinated by the brutality with which the Germans operated. Even today it is not been forgotten what has happened behind the barbed wire 50 years ago.

After the Germans occupied Poland in September 1939 many Jews fled. Those who lived in the cities fled to the countryside and those that lived in the countryside fled to the cities. In general the main direction they took was eastward, hoping to find refugee in Russia. Poland and Russia had very high Jewish concentration. Some polish cities had as many Jews as some western European countries. While they were fleeing the Jews were starving and became homeless because the cities became overcrowded and not enough space for living was available. But soon after that Jewish lives got even worse. The Germans reenacted the Reichskristallnacht and death and terror became a normal part of the Jewish lives. They faced the thread of death everyday. The Jews saw their family members and friends disappear. It was the unorganized beginning of the Endloesung or final solution. Instead of bringing them to work or death camps, the Jews were brought outside the towns and executed. As soon as the SS, Schutz Staffel, took over their sadism aggregated the terror. They also burned Jewish Synagogues and made Jews eat pork meat in front of an invited audience. The SS made the Jews go into a barbershop and get shaved or they would even hack their beards off with bayonets. These and many other games were very popular among the Germans. The Jews had to clean the streets or rub the floors of German residences. This forced labor was beyond fatigue and the families often did not know were there husbands or sons were. This was just the beginning and what was yet to come was even worse. Many Jews did not realize in what kind of situation they got into.

On November 23, 1939 the Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, to be recognized as a Jew by everybody. A few weeks earlier the Gestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei; Secret Sate Police) called the Judenrat to a meeting in Warsaw. There they ordered the Jews to move from their residents to a certain area of the town, know as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Judenrat first refused to do so, but did not get any support from the other Jews, because they were afraid, that the punishment of the Gestapo would be worse than moving into the Ghetto. Despite the fact that they did not have any support, the Judenrat send a delegation to General Neuman, the commanding officer in Warsaw, asking him to review his order. But Gen. Neuman did not know anything about the order. He told the Jewish delegation to wait until he has reviewed the order. But by the spring of 1940 the Jews were moved into the Warsaw Ghetto, which was surrounded by barbed wire and disconnected by from the rest of the city. Most of the Ghettos were closed Ghettos, which means the Jews were forbidden to leave their residential area others were open Ghettos, in those the Jews were allowed to leave the Ghetto and go into the rest of the city. This marked the beginning of the Endloesung on the Jewish issue, as Hitler called it.

Over night the problems the Jews had to face changed from those an ordinary citizen has to those of basic survival. Staying warm became the biggest problem in the winter. In the Warsaw Ghetto coal was called "black pearl". It was rare, so rare that staying warm at all cost became the #1 priority in the Ghettos. The isolation from the rest of the population and the familiar environment was one thing many Jews were talking about, even though it seems to be the lesser evil compared to the physical sacrifice they had to make. As a 13 year old boy wrote in his diary:" I feel that I have been robbed, my freedom is being robbed from me, and my home, and the familiar Vilna streets I love so much." The Jews in the Ghetto were not allowed to have telephones and radios were taken away from them, before they moved into the Ghettos. The possession of a radio was punished by death. Rumors were the only way the Jews could communicate. They were limited to the basics one needs to survive. Their fairly wealthy lifestyle changed to the one of a prisoner.

The Ghettos itself were usually the worst parts of the cities. They lacked basic things like pavement, streetlights or sanitary facilities. They were also very small and overcrowded. As a little girl wrote into her diary about the Warsaw Ghetto: "My ears are filled with deafening clamor of crowded streets and cries of people dying on the sidewalks." (Pp. 208) The living conditions of the Jews were worse. It was crowded and dirty. It was inhumane to let any human being live under such conditions.

One of the German policies in the Ghettos was to starve the Jews. The "Jews were to receive half of the weekly maximum, in grams, for a [population which does work not worth mentioning]". The average Jew had about 1100 calories per day to consume – if it was available. Under these conditions the Germans would have succeeded starving the Jews to death, if it was not for the smugglers. They took a very high risk for a very high profit. It was them who supplied the Ghettos with enough food and coal, which was needed to survive. Sometimes they even smuggled a whole cow into the Ghetto. Every Ghetto had some sort of an underworld. It was usually composed of the prewar criminals. The live in the Ghetto was for the most part similar to the live outside the Ghetto, considered that different classes started to appear in the Ghetto society.

Out of those criminals and smugglers a new class arose – the nouveaux riches or the new rich class. Nightclubs, restaurants, and cafes mushroomed in the Ghetto. It was a new society in the Ghetto society. A new carpe diem attitude arose in the Ghetto, mainly because the Jews knew that it was only a matter of time until they would either die of the Ghetto conditions or be deported to a concentration camp. While outside the Ghetto, status was derived from wealth, education, occupation, and family, inside the Ghetto it was only determined by occupation and wealth - both could buy food. The Jews with the highest status were the smugglers, simply because they were wealthy and they had food. But also the employees of the Judenraete were far up in the society hierarchy as well as skilled workers, who were able to work outside the Ghetto. They all received larger food rations than the rest of the population. The personal possession of someone was also very high valued because it could buy food and protection.

In 1940 only 91 people died of hunger, but in 1941 as many as 11000 people died, because they did not get enough food. But this was not the only source of death in the Ghetto. Many diseases were spreading around very quickly due to the fact that the people were living so closed together. In the Warsaw Ghetto, for example, 15% of the people died of typhus. The Germans did not even make an attempt to do anything about this. Although, it would have been fairly easy, basically maintenance of nutrition would have been enough. But typhus was not the most deadly disease. In the Lodz Ghetto heart disease was found to be the most deadly one. Almost one third of the people died of heart disease. Showing that the conditions metaly and physically in a Nazi ghetto were more deadly that diseases spreading around. Especially children and older people had to suffer. They were much weaker when facing hunger and diseases. Many of them felt alone and friendless in that strange new environment, especially when they were separated from their families.

After the Ghettos became overcrowded the Nazis were looking for more space to house them. They found it in old schoolbuildings, which were unoccupied. Those buildings were not build to house hundreds of refugees. It was not very unusual that the plumbing system broke and personal hygiene became impossible. A welfare report made in January 1942 stated: "Hunger, sickness, and want are their constant companions, and death is the only visitor in their homes." (49) The Jews were living in a disgusting environment, far away from humanity.

The question arises how the Jews were able to take this and not give up. The answer lies in their religion. They believed that they sacrifice for god by suffering in the Ghettos. Even though it would have been much easier for many of them just to commit suicide, fewer did it each year. The suicide rate in Lodz was only 65% in 1940-41 than it has been in 1939. Even though nobody would expect any optimism at all in the Ghettos, the Jews there were quite optimistic. They turned their powerlessness around. The Ghettos did not destroy them; they got even stronger and build more unity among them. They invented new strategies of survival. They learned to use their intelligence because they did not have any weapons. Tricks and manipulation helped them fight against their persecutors. When the Germans would ask them to give them all their electrical appliances and furs, the Jews would rather destroy it or give to polish acquaintances, before they would hand it over to the Germans. Those Jews in the labor force would work slow and make the finished product worthless, especially when it was made to supply the German war machinery. Jews would get arrested for a lot of minor offenses, like violating their curfew, even though their punishment was severe. The Jews did not give up instead they tried everything to fight themselves out of the situation they got in.

Living in the Ghettos brought the families closer together. In the time of stress the family became the calm pole of the Jewish lives, the source of comfort and moral support. Families that were lucky enough to become reunited lived together, rather than with strangers. Not only did they share housing, food, and their daily hardship; they also made plans for the time after the war. When the father was working, the mother took over the family. When she was working the oldest child would organize the household. Only in some very poor families did the children have to work or to smuggle, which was normally the case. But it also happened that families became demoralized and started arguing over belongings. Those rare disputes were taken care by the jurisdiction of the ghetto courts. But those cases were the exception. The divorce rate in the Ghettos was below the one outside the Ghettos. On the other hand the marriage rate was very high especially among young people. Most of them felt that they did not have much time left and wanted to get married before they would die. Those spouse died did not wait long to get remarried. The Ghetto environment heightened emotional needs. Hunger and disease decreased the sexual potency. Therefore a desire for tenderness was much greater. Despite their cruel lives in the Ghettos the Jews still tried to live their lives as normal as possible.

There is still the question left why did the Jews not hide among other polish people with fake identification cards. It is hard to understand. One woman in Vilna wrote: It "seems to me like treason against my own people. Here, in the worst awful moments, I am after all among my own. Never have I felt myself so strongly a Jew never was I so united with my brothers as now. Intellectually I admit that hiding out among ‘Aryans’ is perhaps the best, perhaps the only solution. Emotionally, I consider it desertion." (70).

Written for Dr. Moor in 1998

The assignment was to write about a Chapter in the history book and do some further research on the topic. The sources I am referring to are no longer available, because I lost the entire works cited page due to a computer problem.