# UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

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## Ghettos

The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, established in 1516. During World War II, ghettos were city districts (often enclosed) in which the Germans concentrated the Jewish population and forced them to live under miserable conditions. Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from neighboring Jewish communities. The Germans and their Axis partners established more than 800 ghettos throughout eastern Europe. At least one million Jews were imprisoned in ghettos over the course of the war.

The Germans regarded the establishment of ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews. In many places ghettoization lasted a relatively short time. Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years. With the implementation of the "Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed most ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them, usually by train, to killing centers where they were murdered. German SS and police authorities deported a small minority of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and concentration camps.

Many ghettos (situated primarily in German-occupied eastern Europe) were closed off by walls, or fences made of wood and barbed wire. Entire families were imprisoned in ghettos, including the elderly and young children. Ghettos were extremely crowded and unsanitary. Starvation, chronic shortages of food, clothing, medicine, and other supplies, severe winter weather, and the absence of adequate municipal services led to repeated outbreaks of epidemics and to very high mortality rates among residents. Many thousands of Jews died in the ghettos. Those who survived suffered from fear and isolation from the outside world.

The largest ghetto in Poland was the Warsaw ghetto, where approximately 450,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles. Other major ghettos were established in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east.

The Nazis ordered Jews to wear identifying badges or armbands and also required many Jews to perform forced labor for the German Reich. Daily life in the ghettos was administered by Nazi-appointed Jewish councils (Judenraete) and Jewish police, whom the Germans forced to maintain order inside the ghetto and to facilitate deportations to the killing centers.

Jews responded to the ghetto restrictions with a variety of resistance efforts. Illegal activities, such as smuggling food or weapons into the ghettos, joining youth movements, or attending clandestine cultural events, often occurred without the approval of the Jewish councils (though in many cases the Jewish councils did in fact sponsor cultural activity).

In some ghettos, members of Jewish resistance movements staged armed uprisings. The largest of these was the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943. There were also violent revolts in Vilna, Bialystok, Czestochowa, and several smaller ghettos. In August 1944, the Nazis completed the destruction of the last major ghetto, in Lodz.

In Hungary, ghettoization did not begin until the spring of 1944, after the German invasion and occupation of the country. In less than three months, the Hungarian police, in coordination with the Germans, deported nearly 440,000 Jews from ghettos in Hungary. Most were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. In the Hungarian capital, Budapest, Jews were confined to marked houses (so-called Star of David houses). In November 1944, following a German-sponsored coup, the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross party formally established a ghetto in Budapest. About 63,000 Jews were confined to a 0.1 square mile area. The 25,000 Jews holding protective passports (issued in the name of neutral countries) were put in a so-called "international ghetto" at another location in the city. Soviet forces liberated Budapest in January 1945, ending the ghettoization of Hungarian Jews.

During the Holocaust, ghettos were a central step in the Nazi process of control, dehumanization, and mass murder of the Jews.

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