When were ghettos first established?
Nazi ghettos
The first ghetto of World War II was established on 8 October 1939 at Piotrków Trybunalski (38 days after the invasion), with the Tuliszków ghetto established in December 1939. The first large metropolitan ghetto known as the Łódź Ghetto ("Litzmannstadt") followed them in April 1940, and the Warsaw Ghetto in October. Most Jewish ghettos were established in 1940 and 1941. Subsequently, many ghettos were sealed from the outside, walled off with brickwork, or enclosed with barbed wire. In the case of sealed ghettos, any Jew found leaving there could be shot. The Warsaw Ghetto, located in the heart of the city, was the largest ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of . The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 people. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, there were at least 1,000 such ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone.
Sosnowiec Ghetto
Ever since the ghetto was established, numerous deportation actions were organized by the Germans with the help of the Judenrat and Merin, selecting healthy men for slave labor at the camps. Large transfers of Jews took part in May (1,500) and June 1942 (2,000). Around October 1942 - January 1943 the ghetto was moved to the Środula district. Środula also bordered the site of the Będzin Ghetto. At this point about 13,000 Jews still lived in Sosnowiec. The creation of the Sosnowiec ghetto ended on 10 March 1943, when it was finally closed off from the outside world.
History of Poland (1939–1945)
The ghettos were eliminated when their inhabitants were shipped to slave labor and extermination camps. The Łódź Ghetto, one of the largest and most isolated, lasted also the longest (from April 1940 until August 1944), because goods were manufactured there for the Nazi war economy. The deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto began in July 1942. They were facilitated by collaborators, such as the Jewish police, and opposed by the resistance, including the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB). An estimated 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos, and further 250,000 were murdered during their elimination.
Jewish ghettos in Europe
Established in 1546 by the former Republic of Ragusa.
Established in 1738 by the former Republic of Venice.
From its creation to its dissolution at the end of the 18th century, the city councils limited expansion in the Judengasse, resulting in a steady increase in population to the point of overcrowding. The original area of about a dozen houses with around 100 inhabitants, grew to almost 200 houses and some 3,000 inhabitants. The plots, originally quite generous, were successively divided while the total size of the ghetto remained the same. This increased the number of plots but subsequently reduced the size of each plot. In the process, many houses were replaced by two or more houses which were often divided in turn. Many of the houses were designed to be narrow and long, in order to maximize the limited space – the smallest house, the Rote Hase, was only about one and a half meters wide.
Kostopil
A ghetto was established in Kostopol on 5 October 1941. Despite the great over-crowding, there were no epidemics. One hundred Jews, Judenrat members, Jewish Police and key professionals, were exempt and were allowed to live outside the ghetto. The ghetto was liquidated on 25 August 1942. German police surrounded the ghetto. The ghetto was emptied and the remaining inhabitants were transported to Khotinka, a nearby village, and exterminated upon arrival. A few managed to escape but they were caught and returned to the Germans and murdered. In July 1942 the remaining Jews from Rivne (perhaps 7,000 people) were brought by train to Kostopol and were murdered by German police in a quarry near woods outside the town.
Nazi ghettos
In 1942, the Nazis began Operation Reinhard, the systematic deportation of Jews to extermination camps. Nazi authorities throughout Europe deported Jews to ghettos in Eastern Europe or most often directly to extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. Almost 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto alone to Treblinka over the course of 52 days. In some ghettos, local resistance organizations staged ghetto uprisings. None were successful, and the Jewish populations of the ghettos were almost entirely killed. On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps. A few ghettos were re-designated as concentration camps and existed until 1944.
Grodno Ghetto
The Grodno Ghetto (, , ) was a World War II ghetto established in November 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Grodno for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of Jews in Western Belarus.
Jacob Gens
When Germany invaded Lithuania, Gens headed the Jewish hospital in Vilnius before the formation of the ghetto in September 1941. He was appointed chief of the ghetto police force and in July 1942 the Germans appointed him head of the ghetto Jewish government. He attempted to secure better conditions in the ghetto and believed that it was possible to save some Jews by working for the Germans. Gens and his policemen helped Germans in rounding up the Jews for deportation and execution in Ponary in October–December 1941 and in liquidating several smaller ghettos from late 1942 to early 1943. His policies, including the attempt to save some Jews by surrendering others for deportation or execution, continue to be a subject of debate and controversy.
Ghetto
Following the emergence of anti-discrimination policies in housing and labor sparked by the civil rights movement, members of the black middle class moved out of the ghetto. The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. This was the first federal law that outlawed discrimination in the sale and rental of housing on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and later sex, familial status, and disability. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity was charged with administering and enforcing the law. Since housing discrimination became illegal, new housing opportunities were made available to the black community and many left the ghetto. Urban sociologists frequently title this historical event as "black middle class exodus" (also see black flight). Elijah Anderson describes a process by which members of the black middle class begin to distance themselves socially and culturally from ghetto residents during the later half of the twentieth century, "eventually expressing this distance by literally moving away." This is followed by the exodus of black working-class families. As a result, the ghetto becomes primarily occupied by what sociologists and journalists of the 1980s and 1990s frequently title the "underclass." William Julius Wilson suggests this exodus worsens the isolation of the black underclass – not only are they socially and physically distanced from whites, they are also isolated from the black middle class.
History of the Jews in Florence
Life in the Florence ghetto was compulsory for most but not all Jews. However, within the ghetto, the Jews had a certain amount of legal and governmental autonomy. They established synagogues, schools, kosher markets, and ritual bath houses. By the 1600s, the Italian Jews of Florence began to feel disenfranchised by the growing number of Spanish/Portuguese Jews. Tensions between the two groups rose as Sephardic rite congregations began to compete with the native Italian rite congregations. Despite the rift, both groups lived peacefully side by side. By the 18th century, there were about a thousand Jews living the ghetto of Florence. At this time, a small Hebrew printing shop began to publish works such as Aaron ben Jacob ha-Kohen's "Orot Hayyim."
Josefov
Jews are believed to have settled in Prague as early as the 10th century. The first pogrom was in 1096 (the first crusade) and eventually they were concentrated within a walled Ghetto. In 1262, Přemysl Otakar II issued a "Statuta Judaeorum" which granted the community a degree of self-administration. In 1389, one of the worst pogroms saw some 1,500 massacred at Easter Sunday. The ghetto was most prosperous towards the end of the 16th century when the Jewish Mayor, Mordecai Maisel, became the Minister of Finance and a very wealthy man. His money helped develop the ghetto.
Islam in India
Ghettoisation among Indian Muslims began in the mid-1970s when first communal riots occurred. It got heightened after the 1989 Bhagalpur violence in Bihar and became a trend after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Soon several major cities developed ghettos, or segregated areas, where the Muslim population moved in. This trend however, did not help for the anticipated security the anonymity of ghetto was thought to have provided. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, several such ghettos became easy targets for the rioting mobs, as they enabled the profiling of residential colonies. This kind of ghettoisation can be seen in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and many cities of Gujarat where a clear socio-cultural demarcation exists between Hindu-dominated and Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods.
Grodno Ghetto
The ghetto, run by Nazi German SS, consisted of two interconnected units about 2 km apart. Ghetto One was established in the Old Town district, around the synagogue ("Shulhoif"), with some 15,000 Jews crammed into an area less than half a square kilometre. Ghetto Two was created in the Słobódka suburb, with around 10,000 Jews incarcerated in it. Ghetto Two was larger than the main ghetto but far more ruined. The reason for the split was determined by the concentration of Jews within the city and less need to transfer them from place to place. Their situation however, had considerably worsened with the ghettos' locations highly inadequate in terms of sanitation, water and electricity. The separation of the ghettos would later enable the Germans to exterminate their population with greater ease. The larger ghetto was liquidated in 1943, a year-and-a-half after its establishment, and the smaller one, a few months earlier.
Ghetto
Many of these neighborhoods are located in Northern and Western cities where African-Americans moved during the Great Migration (1914–1970), a period when over a million African-Americans moved out of the rural Southern United States to escape the widespread racism of the South, to seek out employment opportunities in urban environments, and to pursue what was widely perceived to be a better quality of life in the North and West, such as New York City, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle.
Gay village
The neighbourhood of Schöneberg in Berlin was the first gay village in the world, developing in the 1920s. Prior to the 1960s and '70s, specialized LGBT communities did not exist as gay villages in the United States; bars were usually where LGBT social networks developed, and they were located in certain urban areas where police zoning would implicitly allow so-called "deviant entertainment" under close surveillance. In New York, for example, the congregation of gay men had not been illegal since 1965; however, no openly gay bar had been granted a license to serve alcohol. The police raid of a private gay club called the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969, led to a series of minor disturbances in the neighborhood of the bar over the course of the subsequent three days involving more than 1,000 people. The Stonewall Rebellion managed to change not only the profile of the gay community but the dynamic within the community itself. This, along with several other similar incidents, precipitated the appearance of gay ghettos throughout North America, as spatial organization shifted from bars and street-cruising to specific neighbourhoods. This transition "from the bars to the streets, from nightlife to daytime, from 'sexual deviance' to an alternative lifestyle" was the critical moment in the development of the gay community. On June 23, 2015, the Stonewall Inn was the first landmark in New York City to be recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on the basis of its status in LGBT history, and on June 24, 2016, the Stonewall National Monument was named the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to the LGBTQ-rights movement.
Online communities had developed globally by the early 2000s as resource connecting gay villagers worldwide to provide information for arts, travel, business, gay counseling, and legal services, aiming to provide safe and gay-friendly environments for members of LGBTQ communities in general.
Kremenets
In the summer of 1942, the Germans began the systematic liquidation of the ghettos in the provincial towns. In some of them revolts broke out, the ghetto inmates resisting their deportation, setting the ghetto houses on fire and making mass attempts to escape to the forests. Nesvizh, Mir, Lachva, Kletsk, and Kremenets were some of the places where ghetto revolts occurred.
Lubartów Ghetto
Lubartów Ghetto was established by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II, and existed officially from 1941 until October 1942. The Polish Jews of the town of Lubartów were confined there initially. The ghetto inmates also included Jews deported from other cities in the vicinity including Lublin and Ciechanów and the rest of German occupied Europe for the total of 3,500 Jews in its initial stages including 2,000 Jews from Slovakia. In May 1942 additional transport from Slovakia with 2,421 Jews arrived.
Eduard Roschmann
The first ghetto was the Latvian ghetto, sometimes called the "Big Ghetto", which was only in existence for 35 days, from late October to 30 November 1941. Men, women and children were forced into the ghetto, where at least for a short time they lived as families. On 30 November and on 8 December 1941, 24,000 Jews were force-marched out of the ghetto and shot at the nearby forest of Rumbula. Except for Babi Yar, this was the biggest two-day massacre in the genocides until the construction of the death camps in 1942. A few thousand Latvian Jews, mostly men, who were not murdered at Rumbula, were confined to a much smaller area of the former Latvia ghetto. This became known as the men's ghetto; about 500 Latvian Jewish women, who were also not selected for murder, were similarly confined to an adjacent but separated smaller ghetto, known as the women's ghetto.
History of the Jews in Poland
The German Nazis established six extermination camps throughout occupied Poland by 1942. All of these – at Chełmno (Kulmhof), Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz (Oświęcim) – were located near the rail network so that the victims could be easily transported. The system of the camps was expanded over the course of the German occupation of Poland and their purposes were diversified; some served as transit camps, some as forced labor camps and the majority as death camps. While in the death camps, the victims were usually killed shortly after arrival, in the other camps able-bodied Jews were worked and beaten to death. The operation of concentration camps depended on Kapos, the collaborator-prisoners. Some of them were Jewish themselves, and their prosecution after the war created an ethical dilemma.
Between October 1939 and July 1942 a system of ghettos was imposed for the confinement of Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest in all of World War II, with 380,000 people crammed into an area of . The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 prisoners. Other large Jewish ghettos in leading Polish cities included Białystok Ghetto in Białystok, Częstochowa Ghetto, Kielce Ghetto, Kraków Ghetto in Kraków, Lublin Ghetto, Lwów Ghetto in present-day Lviv, Stanisławów Ghetto also in present-day Ukraine, Brześć Ghetto in presend-day Belarus, and Radom Ghetto among others. Ghettos were also established in hundreds of smaller settlements and villages around the country. The overcrowding, dirt, lice, lethal epidemics such as typhoid and hunger all resulted in countless deaths.
Venetian Ghetto
The Venetian Ghetto was the area of Venice in which Jews were compelled to live by the government of the Venetian Republic. The English word "ghetto" is derived from the Jewish ghetto in Venice. The Venetian Ghetto was instituted on 29 March 1516 and is the oldest Jewish ghetto in the world. It was not the first time that Jews in Venice were compelled to live in a segregated area of the city.
Grotto-heavens
Grotto-heavens () are a type of sacred Taoist site. Grotto-heavens are usually caves, grottoes, mountain hollows, or other underground spaces. Because every community was supposed to have access to at least one grotto, there were many of them all over China. They were first organized systematically in the Tang Dynasty by Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎 (647–735, see Zuowanglun) and Du Guangting 杜光庭 (850-933). The most sacred of these sites were divided into two types: The ten greater grotto-heavens and the thirty-six lesser grotto-heavens.
History of the Jews in 20th-century Poland
The Germans established hundreds of ghettos in which Jews were confined and starved although cruelly offered hopes of survival before eventually being subjected to genocide. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest, with 380,000 people and the Łódź Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Białystok, Częstochowa, Kielce, Kraków, Lublin, Lwów, and Radom. Ghettos were also established in smaller settlements. Living conditions in the Ghettos were terrible. Jews who tried to escape were shot to death with their bullet-riddled bodies to be left in public view until dusk as a warning. Many of those who fled to the Aryan side without connections with Christian Poles willing to risked their lives in order to help, returned to the ghettos when they were unable to find a place to hide. Hundreds of four- to five-year-old Jewish children went across en masse to the Aryan side, sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did. Smuggling was sometimes the only source of subsistence for these children and their parents, who would otherwise have died of starvation. Shooting of Jews who were caught trying to smuggle in food became routine. People were shot to death for bringing in a chicken or a liter of milk. Poles from the Aryan side found assisting Jews in obtained food were subject to the death penalty.
Ghetto
A "mellah" (Arabic ملاح, probably from the word ملح, Arabic for "salt") is a walled Jewish quarter of a city in Morocco, an analogue of the European ghetto. Jewish populations were confined to "mellahs" in Morocco beginning from the 15th century and especially since the early 19th century. In cities, a "mellah" was surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway. Usually, the Jewish quarter was situated near the royal palace or the residence of the governor in order to protect its inhabitants from recurring riots. In contrast, rural "mellahs" were separate villages inhabited solely by the Jews.
Horto
The community was first established in 1808 when King João VI invited the slaves and workers building the botanical garden to live on the property. Employees of the garden along with their families and descendants have lived there ever since. During the 2016 Rio Olympics residents of Horto were served with eviction notices; with the Garden claiming the land was needed for a research institute. The residents felt they were being evicted due to being poor black people in a wealthy neighborhood; and no arrangements have been made for them to receive compensation or alternate housing. Residents are planning to resist the evictions, much the way the residents of Vila Autódromo also resisted the destruction of their favela.
Jacob Gens
Gens started a theater in the ghetto, where poetry readings as well as the production of new and old plays took place. Gens continued the policy of supporting the ghetto library and in March 1943 he ordered that all ghetto residents should turn their privately owned books over to the library, except for textbooks and prayer books. He also set up a ghetto publishing house. Nothing was ever published, but the authors were paid for their manuscripts. An archive of historical documents relating to the ghetto was set up. The ghetto had a symphony orchestra, the formation of which owed some impetus to Gens and his police force. Gens justified these cultural activities by claiming that the Jewish administration "wanted to give man the chance to be free of the ghetto for a few hours, and we succeeded in this. Our days here are harsh and grim. Our body is here in the ghetto, but they have not broken our spirit."
Jewish ghettos in Europe
A more complete list of over 260 ghettos with approximate number of prisoners, date of creation and liquidation, as well as known deportation route to death camps, is available at Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland.
Starting in 1939, Adolf Eichmann, a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer who was head of the "Final Solution" program, began to systematically move Polish Jews away from their homes and into designated areas of large Polish cities. The first large ghetto of World War II at Piotrków Trybunalski was established on October 8, 1939, followed by the Łódź Ghetto in April 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940, and many other ghettos established throughout 1940 and 1941. The Ghettos were walled off, and any Jew found leaving them was shot.
Jewish ghettos in Europe
The Ghetto system began in Renaissance Italy in July of 1555 with Pope Paul IV's issuing of the Cum nimis absurdum. This change in papal policy implemented a series of restrictions on Jewish life that dramatically reshaped their place in society. Among these restrictions were the requirement of Jews to identify themselves by wearing a Yellow badge, restrictions on the ownership of property, restrictions in commerce, and tighter regulations on banking. However, the most visible of these restrictions was the requirement of Jewish communities to reside in sectioned off, sanctioned neighborhoods known as ghettos. The formation of the ghetto system also brought changes to Jewish economic activity. As a result of the "Cum nimis absurdum" regulations and the increasing complexity of the early modern economy, the role of Jews as money lenders became more difficult and less profitable. This as well as the fact that ghettos were often located at the town commercial centers drove Jews away from money lending and towards the role of second-hand merchants. In this role, Jews were forbidden from selling anything considered vital to life such as food or other high value commodities, so they gravitated towards reselling secondhand goods in the form of pawn shops. Some scholars, however, have argued that this shift in papal policy inadvertently ended up improving some aspects of the Jewish experience relative to the medieval period. Jewish Historian Robert Bonfil has argued that the formation of ghettos acted as a sort of middle ground between acceptance and expulsion by the Christian authorities. Following the formation of the ghetto system, there was a sharp decline in incidents such as Pogroms, forced expulsion, and accusation of ritual murder that were common during the medieval period.
List of Nazi ghettos
Large Nazi ghettos in which Jews were confined existed across the continent. These ghettos were liquidated mostly by Holocaust transports to concentration and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland.The Ghettos. Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
Siedlce Ghetto
The Siedlce Ghetto (), was a World War II Jewish ghetto set up by Nazi Germany in the city of Siedlce in occupied Poland, east of Warsaw. The ghetto was closed from the outside in early October 1941. Some 12,000 Polish Jews were imprisoned there for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. Conditions were appalling; epidemics of typhus and scarlet fever raged. Beginning 22 August 1942 during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland, around 10,000 Jews were rounded up – men, women and children – gathered at the "Umschlagplatz", and deported to Treblinka extermination camp aboard Holocaust trains. Thousands of Jews were brought in from the ghettos in other cities and towns. In total, at least 17,000 Jews were annihilated in the process of ghetto liquidation. Hundreds of Jews were shot on the spot during the house-to-house searches, along with staff and patients of the Jewish hospital.
Łuck Ghetto
The draconian restrictions on Jews were imposed in August 1941. In October, a group of 500 Jewish carpenters and craftsmen (including 50 seamstresses) were moved to a new forced labour camp set up in the Jewish school building. The Łuck Ghetto was established by the German occupation authorities in December 1941, and sealed from the outside with the provision of only starvation food rations. The Ghetto population was about 20,000 people. The newly formed "Judenrat", a council of Jewish leaders for the Ghetto, made every effort to feed the hungry and control epidemics.Dr Pawel Goldstein, Lutsk (Luck) Ghetto. Geni.com. "In the spring of 1942 a group of young Jews attempted to escape from the ghetto to the forests, but most of them were caught and murdered by the Ukrainians. A few, however, managed to join the Soviet partisans and fought the Germans as part of the Kowpak units." The Jewish Ghetto Police was also organized by the "Judenrat".
Rumbula massacre
When the columns were dispersed on Saturday, November 29, the ghetto inhabitants believed, to their relief, that there would be no evacuation. This proved wrong. The first action in the ghetto began at 4:00 a.m., well before dawn, on Sunday, November 30, 1941. Working from west to east (that is, towards Rumbula), squads of the SD, the Protective Police, the Araji commando, and about 80 Jewish ghetto police rousted people from their sleep and told them to report for assembly in half an hour. Max Kaufmann describes the raid as beginning in the middle of the night on the 29th. He describes "thousands" of "absolutely drunk" Germans and Latvians invading the ghettos, bursting into apartments, and hunting down the occupants while shouting wildly. He states that children were thrown from third floor windows. Detachments cut special openings in the fence to allow more rapid access to the highway south to the forest site. (Detailed maps of the ghetto are provided by Ezergailis and Kaufmann.)
History of the Jews in 20th-century Poland
The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. The German authorities allowed a Jewish Council ("Judenrat") of 24 men, led by Adam Czerniaków, to form its own police to maintain order in the ghetto. Judenrat was also responsible for organizing the labour battalions demanded by the Germans. At this time, the population of the ghetto was estimated to be about 380,000 people, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4% of the size of Warsaw. The Germans then closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16 of that year, building a wall around it. During the next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages were brought into the Warsaw Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhoid) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 253 kcal and 669 kcal for Poles as opposed to 2,613 kcal for Germans.
History of Poland (1939–1945)
While many Jews reacted to their fate with disbelief and passivity, revolts did take place, including at the Treblinka and Sobibór camps and at a number of ghettos. The leftist ŻOB was established in the Warsaw Ghetto in July 1942 and was soon commanded by Mordechai Anielewicz. As the final liquidation of the remaining ghetto population was commenced by the Nazis on 19 April 1943, hundreds of Jewish fighters revolted. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted until May 16 and resulted in thousands of Jews killed and tens of thousands transported to Treblinka. The Polish underground and some Warsaw residents assisted the ghetto fighters.
Opatów Ghetto
Initially, the Opatów Ghetto, set up by Nazi Germany in 1940, was an open type ghetto, along the Joselewicza, Zatylna, Wąska and Starowałowa Steets. The newly appointed German "Kreishauptman" Otto Ritter ordered all Christian Poles to relocate elsewhere from the area, and formed the Judenrat in order to help designate Jews ready for work. The new Jewish Ghetto Police ("Judenpolizei") were moved to electric company building, dressed in uniforms of the Blue Police, and equipped with rubber truncheons. All stores were kept open, but food stamps were introduced to limit the distribution of regulated foods such as meat and grain. The ghetto population at the time was around 7,000 people. Expellees were brought in from smaller towns, but also from Vienna. Severe overcrowding led to steadily increasing number of deaths.
Radom Ghetto
The city of Radom received Jews expelled from other locations in Poland including the Jewish inmates of the Kraków Ghetto because Kraków – according to the wishes of "Gauleiter" Hans Frank – was to become the "racially cleanest" city of the General Government territory to serve as its German capital. The Governor-General Frank issued an order to create Radom ghetto in March 1941. A week earlier the Jewish Ghetto Police was formed by the new Nazi administration to aid with the relocations. The Jews were given ten days in which to vacate their prewar homes and settle within the ghetto zone along with their families. The area was split in two like in many other Polish cities. The ghetto gates were closed from the outside on 7 April 1941. About 33,000 Polish Jews were gathered there; 27,000 at the main ghetto, and about 5,000 at a smaller ghetto in the suburb. Most of the ghetto area was not walled; the barriers were formed by the buildings themselves and the exits were managed by Jewish and Polish police. The "large ghetto" was set up at Wałowa street in central Śródmieście District and the "small ghetto" at the Glinice District.
As with many other ghettos across occupied Poland, starvation was not uncommon. The German-allotted rations for a person in the ghetto were 100 grams (3.5 oz) of bread per day. Nonetheless the conditions in the Radom Ghetto were on average better than in many other contemporary ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe.
History of the Jews in Poland
The Warsaw Ghetto and its 1943 Uprising represents what is likely the most known episode of the wartime history of the Polish Jews. The ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on 16 October 1940. Initially, almost 140,000 Jews were moved into the ghetto from all parts of Warsaw. At the same time approximately 110,000 Poles had been forcibly evicted from the area. The Germans selected Adam Czerniakow to take charge of the Jewish Council called Judenrat made up of 24 Jewish men ordered to organize Jewish labor battalions as well as Jewish Ghetto Police which would be responsible for maintaining order within the Ghetto walls. A number of Jewish policemen were corrupt and immoral. Soon the Nazis demanded even more from the Judenrat and the demands were much more cruel. Death was the punishment for the slightest indication of noncompliance by the Judenrat. Sometimes the Judenrat refused to collaborate in which case its members were consequently executed and replaced by the new group of people. Adam Czerniakow who was the head of the Warsaw Judenrat committed suicide when he was forced to collect daily lists of Jews to be deported to Treblinka extermination camp at the onset of Grossaktion Warsaw.
Raid of the Ghetto of Rome
The Ghetto of Rome had been established in 1555. By the time of the raid, it was almost 400 years old and consisted of four cramped blocks around the Portico d’Ottavia, wedged between the Theatre of Marcellus, the Fontana delle Tartarughe, Palazzo Cenci, and the river Tiber.
Jewish ghettos in Europe
While not exactly ghettos, the "giudecche" of southern Italy were medieval and Early Modern Jewish quarters. The Jews of the region often lived in these neighborhoods either for safety reasons or by the compulsion of Christian authorities. After the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Naples in 1541, these neighborhoods lost their distinctive Jewish character, and now only traces of evidence remain of the original inhabitants. There were Jewish quarters known as "Giudecche" in Abruzzo, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Molise and Apulia.
Kraków Ghetto
The ghetto was populated by approximately 16,000 Jews when it was first formed. Before the ghetto was cordoned off, it was home to around 3,500 residents. The ghetto consisted of 320 buildings. To accommodate the density, apartments within the ghetto were divided on a 2m² per person basis or by a standard of three people to one window. The Jewish Council (Judenrat) was responsible for determining the new housing assignments. Within the Kraków ghetto, Yiddish was the official language, not Polish. On 1 December 1939, an order was announced mandating that all Jews within the General Government wear an armband identifying them as Jewish. The white armbands with the blue Star of David were still required once Jews were moved into the ghetto.
Pińsk Ghetto
The ghetto in Pińsk existed only for half a year, officially between 20 April and 29 October 1942, much shorter than most Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. The relocation action took place on 1 May 1942. Food was rationed, and a barbed-wire fence erected. The following month, in June 1942, the first murder operation took place there, with 3,500 Jews rounded up in Pińsk and nearby Kobryń, and transported to Bronna Góra (the Bronna Mount) to be shot. This was the location of secluded massacres of Jews transported by Holocaust trains from the Brześć Ghetto as well. 
The Pińsk Ghetto's population swelled, with Jews deported en masse from all neighbouring settlements until food ran out. The liquidation of the ghetto began on 28 October 1942. The German motorized battalion met armed resistance from underground fighters, which came as a complete shock to the German police. The insurgents were shooting from secretly set-up bunkers, so reinforcements were brought in and massacres followed. According to the Nazi-issued final report, 17,000 Jews were killed during the insurgency, bringing the total to 26,200 victims before the ghetto's closure. Ten thousand were murdered in one day and the rest on the next day, with few managing to escape into the forest. The ghetto ceased to exist entirely. Not a single house was burned down.
Białystok Ghetto
The Ghetto was officially created on July 26, 1941, by the order of German military authorities. The transfer of Jews to a designated area was handled by the "Judenrat" (formed on June 30). All Poles who lived there were ordered to move out. Up to three Jewish families were placed in single rooms divided by curtains. There were two gates leading out of the ghetto initially, one on Jurowiecka and one on Kupiecka street. The ghetto encompassed the streets of Lipowa, Przejazd, Poleska and Sienkiewicza. It was closed from the outside on August 1, 1941, with 43,000 people trapped inside. The "Judenrat", composed of 24 Jews, held its first meeting on August 2, and set up 13 departments split into divisions. Ephraim Barash (or Efraim Barasz in Polish), a mechanical engineer age 49, was elected as an acting president. The Council was chaired by Rabi Gedalyah (Gedalia) Rosenman. The soup kitchens were set up, along with infirmaries, schools, Jewish Ghetto Police stations, bathhouses, and other amenities. The "Judenrat" promoted hard work as key to survival. Its main obligation was to provide quotas of laborers for the Germans. Within a brief period of time the Ghetto grew to over 50,000 Jewish captives. It was surrounded by a wooden wall topped by barb wire, with three entrances manned by the Jewish Police overseen by the Germans. Textile and armament factories were established with the help of the "Judenrat". Food rations were strictly enforced.
Šiauliai Ghetto
The Šiauliai or Shavli Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established in July 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Šiauliai (, "Shavl") in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during the Holocaust. The ghetto comprised two areas – one in the Kaukazas suburb and one on Trakai Street. Both were liquidated by July 1944, and their inhabitants were killed or transferred to Nazi concentration camps. In 1939, one quarter of the population of Šiauliai was Jewish, about 8,000 persons. By the end of World War II, only about 500 Jews of the city had survived.
Kraków Ghetto
The Kraków Ghetto was formally established on 3 March 1941 in the Podgórze district and not, as often believed, in the historic Jewish district of Kazimierz. Displaced Polish families from Podgórze took up residences in the former Jewish dwellings outside the newly established Ghetto. Meanwhile, 15,000 Jews were crammed into an area previously inhabited by 3,000 people who used to live in a district consisting of 30 streets, 320 residential buildings, and 3,167 rooms. As a result, one apartment was allocated to every four Jewish families, and many less fortunate lived on the street.
Głowno
The German authorities established a Jewish ghetto in Głowno in May 1940, in order to confine its Jewish population for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. The ghetto was liquidated in March 1941, when all its 5,600 inhabitants were transported in cattle trucks to Łowicz and from there to the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of , or 7.2 persons per room. By the time Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated, not a single Jewish ghetto remained on Polish lands.
Brzesko Ghetto
German Gendarmerie from Brzesko murdered Jews from Brzesko and region and ethnic Poles.
When the ghetto was first created in 1940 it was an open ghetto. It was marked by signs, but had no barriers to keep the Jewish people inside the town. The Jews were not allowed to leave and any movement in or out of the city was monitored. Having the ghetto opened allowed for smuggling of food in by nearby Aryan community. After it was closed, this responsibility fell on the Jewish Police. This section of Jewish Police was led by Diestler. Trades between the Jewish residents and the Jewish Police occurred at night. The Jewish people living in the ghetto were also low on winter apparel and supplies because the German Troops took it in preparation for the invasion of Russia. In 1941 the open ghetto became a closed ghetto when a fence surrounded the town. Overpopulation became a problem when the ghetto was fenced off. The camp had about ten people per window which decreased sanitation throughout the camp. This led to an outbreak of typhoid. Typhoid was one of the major causes of death within the ghetto along with starvation. One of the doctors helping those with Typhoid fever was Maurycy Gross. Even with the outbreak of typhoid. the main source of death within the ghetto was the German forces. When a Jew was shot by someone in the Nazi party, they would force other Jews within the community to sign a document stating they died from natural causes. In addition, the Jews had to pay for any ammunition used to shoot other Jewish people within Brzesko. During the year of 1942, three Aktions took place within the Brzesko Ghetto. These killed about 300 Jews total and were conducted by the Order Police which included people such as Lapsch, Wagner, and Mikler. In 1943 about 2,000 Jewish people were sent to the Belzec death camp, about 150 miles from Brzesko. Another 4,000 Jewish people were sent to the Auschwitz death camp that same year. In order to accomplish the deportation, all the Jews living in Brzesko were gathered in the square of the town. Throughout the process of deportation to the death camps, any citizens considered too weak to travel were shot in the town square. This could be due to illness, age, or injury. Those left behind after the deportation were sent to Tarnów or killed. Kirkut cemetery was the site of many executions from the Brzesko Ghetto. The cemetery still contains the graves of those who died during WWII. There is now a monument in place to mark the mass grave of the Jews that died in Brzesko.
Grodno Ghetto
Mass executions were conducted in Grodno on 2 November 1942. On the same day, both ghettos were sealed off from the outside. The first deportation action took place at the Słobódka Ghetto two weeks later on 15 November 1942. Some 4,000 Jewish tradesmen were transferred to Ghetto One, and all remaining prisoners were marched to the "Sammellager" in Kiełbasin for departure aboard Holocaust trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The successive liquidation of the ghetto was performed with the participation of Orpo battalions and all available men from Gestapo, SiPo, Kripo, and Schupo, reinforced by units of the Belarusian Auxiliary Police. The first deportation train arrived at Birkenau three days later on 18 November. Before death, some Jews were ordered to sign postcards in German that read "Being treated well, we are working and everything is fine".
Jewish ghettos in Europe
In 1590, Vincenzo Gonzaga expelled all foreign-born Jews from Mantua; in 1602, he forbade Jewish physicians from treating Christian patients without special permission; in 1610 he established a ghetto, and in 1612 compelled all Jews to live in it. In 1610 Jews constituted about 7.5 percent of the population of Mantua. In 1630 the Mantua ghetto was sacked by imperial troops and destroyed. Among the Jewish dead or missing were the composer Salamone Rossi and his sister the opera singer Madama Europa.Established in 1627. 
The Roman Ghetto was created in 1555 by Pope Paul IV. His papal bull "Cum nimis absurdum" confined Jews of Rome to live in a part of the rione Sant'Angelo, the most undesirable area of the city, being subject to constant flooding by the Tiber River. At the time of its founding, the four-block area contained about 1,000 inhabitants. However, over time, the Jewish community grew, which caused severe overcrowding. Since the area could not expand horizontally (the ghetto was surrounded by high walls), the Jews built upwards, which blocked the sun from reaching the already dank and narrow streets. Life in the Roman Ghetto was one of crushing poverty, due to the severe restrictions placed upon the professions and occupations that Jews were allowed to perform. The Roman Ghetto was the last of the original ghettos to be abolished in Western Europe. In 1882, the Kingdom of Italy took Rome from the Pope and the ghetto was finally opened, with the walls themselves being torn down in 1888.
Established in 1631
History of the Jews in Gdańsk
After the invasion of Poland by Wehrmacht and SS Heimwehr Danzig, followed by the German annexation of Danzig Free City, about 130 Jews were held in a "ghetto" in a building on Milchkannengasse street (today's ulica Stągiewna), and another group was imprisoned, along with the city's Poles, at the Victoriaschule, an old gymnasium building, where they were beaten and tortured. There were also camps at Westerplatte and Ohra (modern Orunia). Jews from Zoppot were executed in the Piaśnica forest murders. In 1940 another ghetto was created, which held about 600 individuals.
Łódź Ghetto
The Litzmannstadt Ghetto was a World War II ghetto established by the Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the 1939 invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe after the Warsaw Ghetto. Situated in the city of Łódź, and originally intended as a preliminary step upon a more extensive plan of creating the "Judenfrei" province of Warthegau, the ghetto was transformed into a major industrial centre, manufacturing much needed war supplies for Nazi Germany and especially for the German Army. The number of people incarcerated in it was augmented further by the Jews deported from the Reich territories.
Myory
The town was first mentioned in 1514.
From July 1941 till July 1944, Germans occupied the area. A ghetto was set up in the town where all Jews were kept imprisoned. However, about 70 or 80 people managed to escape and a part of them joined the guerrilla group. In July 1942, Jews were ordered to gather in the square and then they were taken in the direction of Krukówka village. The Germans shot 678 people and their bodies were buried at the place of their execution. The final liquidation of the ghetto in Miory took place in December 1942. A monument was built at the site of the massacre
Lwów Ghetto
The Lwów Ghetto was one of the largest Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany after the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. The city was a home to over 110,000 Jews before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and by the time the Nazis occupied the city in 1941 that number had increased to over 220,000 Jews, since Jews fled for their lives from Nazi-occupied western Poland into the then relative safety of Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, which included Lwów. The ghetto, set up in the second half of 1941 after the Germans arrived, was liquidated in June 1943 with all its inhabitants who survived prior killings, sent to their deaths in cattle trucks at Bełżec extermination camp and the Janowska concentration camp.
Ghetto Brothers
The Ghetto Brothers were a gang (or club) and music group founded in New York City's South Bronx in the late 1960s. The gang eventually spread to much of the Northeastern United States. Like the Young Lords, they were involved in Puerto Rican nationalism, including, in the case of the Ghetto Brothers, an association with the then-new Puerto Rican Socialist Party. This gang had political motivation to uplift young Latino and Black men in the community.
Borshchiv Ghetto
The ghetto was formed in Borshchiv on 1 April 1942 and operated until July 1943. The number of inhabitants was about 4,000 people. At first there was no fence around it, but the Jewish inhabitants were not allowed to go outside. The occupants came from Borshchiv and with Ozeryany, Melnytsia-Podilska, Skala-Podilska, Kryvche, Korolivka partly Chortkiv and Zolochiv.
Marcinkonys Ghetto
According to a Lithuanian report of 26 July 1941, there were 324 Jews, including 50 children under the age of 6, living in Marcinkonys. Most likely in early November 1941 (other sources provide spring 1942 after the Passover), an order was given to establish the Jewish ghetto near the train station of the Saint Petersburg – Warsaw Railway. After bribes by the Judenrat, the ghetto area was expanded from three houses to 14. The ghetto covered the area of surrounded by barbed wire and housed several dozens of Jews from nearby towns and villages, including Rudnia, Kabeliai, Valkininkai, Butrimonys, Varėna.
Frankfurter Judengasse
After another order from the Emperor Frederick III, in 1458, the council finally began building houses outside the city wall and moat. In 1462 the Jews were forced to relocate into these houses. This was the beginning of the isolated and closed off ghetto. In 1464 the city established eleven houses, one dance hall, two pubs, and a community center at its own expense. The cold bath and synagogue were built by the Jewish community.
Częstochowa Ghetto
The Częstochowa Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of local Jews in the city of Częstochowa during the German occupation of Poland. The approximate number of people confined to the ghetto was around 40,000 at the beginning and in late 1942 at its peak – right before mass deportations – 48,000. Most ghetto inmates were delivered by the Holocaust trains to their deaths at the Treblinka extermination camp. In June 1943, the remaining ghetto inhabitants launched the Częstochowa Ghetto uprising, which was extinguished by the "SS" after a few days of fighting.
Jewish ghettos in Europe
Phase-wise segregation of the Jewish population from an intermixed settling throughout the Middle Ages until the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
Tuliszków
Soon after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, on October 8, 1939 the first ever ghetto of World War II was set up at Piotrków Trybunalski. There were only 230 Jews in Tuliszków at the onset of war, around 10% of the general population. In December 1939 the invading Germans ordered the creation of a "Judenrat" and forced all adult Jews to wear the Star of David; the community was stripped of money and valuables. Within weeks the ghetto was formed, and electricity was cut off from it in the dead of winter. Stronger Jews were pressed to forced labour. The ghetto was liquidated in October 1941 and all prisoners – men, women and children – deported to transit ghetto in Kowale Pańskie. From there, they were sent to Chełmno extermination camp.
The Holocaust in Latvia
The Daugavpils Ghetto was set up in Grīva at the end of July, 1941, when all surviving Jews in the city were moved there. Jews from other towns and villages of Latgale and even Vidzeme were also brought there. Altogether the ghetto had about 15,000 prisoners. The engineer Misha Movshenson ran the Council of the ghetto. His father had headed the city of Daugavpils in 1918 during the previous period of German occupation.
War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos located in the territory of General Government during World War II, established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, the pre-war capital of Poland. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and mass deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps such as during the Gross-aktion Warschau, reduced the population of the ghetto from an estimated 445,000 to approximately 71,000. In 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The ghetto was reduced to rubble.
History of Johannesburg
The first Group Areas Act was promulgated on 7 July 1950, and it was implemented over a period of several years. The Act empowered the Governor-General to declare certain geographical areas to be for the exclusive occupation of specific racial groups. In particular the statute identified three such racial groups: whites, coloureds and natives. The Act permitted the removal of person from an area reserved for persons of a different racial group. This Act was repealed and re-enacted in consolidated form as the Group Areas Act, 1957. The townships of Meadowlands and Diepkloof were built by the central government. Between 1956 and the early 1960s 23,995 houses were built, particularly for those Blacks evicted from Sophiatown, Martindale, Newclare and Western Native Township in terms of the Group Areas Act. The Johannesburg City Council (controlled by the opposition United Party) would have nothing to do with the forced removals. So it was done by the government's Natives Resettlement Board. Subsequently, the Board administered those two townships.
Jewish partisans
The Soviet Union was late in having partisan groups. The first ones started around 1941-1942. These groups mainly appeared in forests, as 6,000-8,000 Jews were able to escape to the forests. Many did not make it, but if they did they joined Soviet partisan detachments. One partisan group in the Soviet area was the Minsk Ghetto. The Minsk Ghetto was the fourth largest ghetto in Europe. The group was led by the Jewish communists. The group within the Minsk ghetto was supported by the Jewish council which allowed them to organize a mass escape into the surrounding woods. This escape released between 6,000-8,000 Jews, who tried to join existing partisan groups. They were known for their resistance movements. There were a large number of partisan groups in the Soviet Union but not much information can be found on them due to Soviet record keeping.
Jewish ghettos in Europe
Nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community took place during the German and Soviet occupation of Poland and the ensuing Holocaust. The World War II ghetto-system had been imposed by Nazi Germany roughly between October 1939 and July 1942 in order to confine Poland's Jewish population of 3.5 million for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of , or 7.2 persons per room. The Łódź Ghetto (set up in the city of Łódź, renamed "Litzmannstadt", in the territories of Poland annexed by Nazi Germany) was the second largest, holding about 160,000 inmates. Over three million Polish Jews perished in World War II, resulting in the destruction of an entire civilization.
Venetian Ghetto
*Donatella Calabi, Faculty Member of IUAV University Venice, Architecture, Construction and Conservation, explained in the documentary "Venice and the Ghetto" (2017, Klaus T. Steindl) that "ghetto" comes from the Italian word "gettare" [dʒet·ˈta:·re] which means "throw away", because the area, where the Jews had to live since 1516 separately from the rest of the population was before then a trash dump for foundries. The first jewish arrivals were Germans and they pronounced the word [ˈɡɛto] - the spelling followed ("h" after "g" changes [dʒ] to [ˈɡ]). The same opinion she held in her Book "Venezia e il ghetto. Cinquecento anni del "recinto deli ebrei".
Ghetto
During the Great Depression, many people would congregate in large open parking lots. They built shelters out of whatever materials they could find at the time. These congregations of shelters were also called "ghettos".
Jewish ghettos in Europe
In 1944 the Pest Ghetto was built here in the neighborhood bordered by Király Street, Csányi Street, Klauzál Square, Kisdiófa Street, Dohány Street and Károly Boulevard, crowding 70,000 people together. One of the borders of the ghetto was the Row of Archways on the Wesselényi Street side. In 2002 this area was named the old Jewish neighborhood of Pest and was entered into the Budapest world heritage conservation zone. This area features most of the Jewish heritage sites of the Pest side, including the famous "Synagogue Triangle."
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland were established during World War II in hundreds of locations across occupied Poland. Most Jewish ghettos had been created by Nazi Germany between October 1939 and July 1942 in order to confine and segregate Poland's Jewish population of about 3.5 million for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. In smaller towns, ghettos often served as staging points for Jewish and mass deportation actions, while in the urban centers they resembled walled-off prison-islands described by some historians as little more than instruments of "slow, passive murder", with dead bodies littering the streets.
Roman Ghetto
The Roman Ghetto was established as a result of Papal bull "Cum nimis absurdum", promulgated by Pope Paul IV on 14 July 1555. The bull also required the Jews of Rome, which had existed as a community since before Christian times and which numbered about 2,000 at the time, to live in the ghetto. The ghetto was a walled quarter with its gates locked at night. The wall was built under the direction of the architect Giovanni Sallustio Peruzzi. The cost of the wall's construction, 300 Roman scudi, had to be paid by the Jewish community. The area of Rome chosen for the ghetto was one of the most undesirable quarters of the city, subject to constant flooding by the Tiber River, but where Jews amounted already to 80% of the population. At the time of its founding, the area was a trapezoid whose bases (parallel to the river) measured respectively (near the Tiber) and , and whose sides was about long. The wall started from Ponte Fabricio reaching the Portico d'Ottavia; from there it run along today's Via del Portico d'Ottavia (not including the ancient fish market (); at Piazza Giudea (which was cut in two) it bent again running along Vicolo Cenci (today Via del Progresso) until it reached the Tiber again. The total area amounted to three hectares. At the time of Sixtus V (late 1580s), roughly 3,500 inhabitants were living in inhuman conditions.
Kraków
The formation of ghettos began in the District in December 1939. Before the forced transport of the Jews to the ghettos, they were encouraged to flee the city. Shortly thereafter in March 1941, the Jewish population was confined to a ghetto within the city of Kraków in which many died of illness or starvation. Initially, a majority of the ghettos were open and Jews were allowed to enter and exit freely. However, as the Nazi Regime became more powerful, many of these ghettos were closed and security became tighter. Those in the ghetto were later murdered or sent to concentration camps, including Bełżec, Płaszów and Auschwitz. The largest deportations within the District occurred from June to September 1942. More specifically, the Kraków ghetto deportation occurred from 1 to 8 June 1942.
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
In total, according to archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "The Germans established at least 1000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone." The list of locations of the Jewish ghettos within the borders of pre-war and post-war Poland is compiled with the understanding that their inhabitants were either of Polish nationality from before the invasion, or had strong historical ties with Poland. Also, not all ghettos are listed here due to their transient nature. Permanent ghettos were created only in settlements with rail connections, because the food aid (paid by the Jews themselves) was completely dependent on the Germans, making even the potato-peels a hot commodity. Throughout 1940 and 1941, most ghettos were sealed off from the outside, walled off or enclosed with barbed wire, and any Jews found outside them could be shot on sight. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of , or 7.2 persons per room. The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 inmates. In documents and signage, the Nazis usually referred to the ghettos they created as "Jüdischer Wohnbezirk" or "Wohngebiet der Juden", meaning "Jewish Quarter". By the end of 1941, most Polish Jews were already ghettoized, even though the Germans knew that the system was unsustainable; most inmates had no chance of earning their own keep, and no savings left to pay the SS for further deliveries. The quagmire was resolved at the Wannsee conference of 20 January 1942 near Berlin, where the "Final Solution" (die Endlösung der Judenfrage) was set in place.
Lubartów Ghetto
The Lubartów Ghetto was one of hundreds of such ghettos established in the course of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. The maximum number of prisoners at any one time was 4,500 according to Virtual Shtetl. The ghetto was dissolved when all its prisoners – men, women, and children – were sent to the Belzec extermination camp among other secretive killing centres established by the SS, to be murdered under the guise of "resettlement".
The first mention of the Jewish community in Lubartów comes from 1592. By 1676 there were 80 Jews in the town, operating 15 breweries. The Beth din rabbinical court was also established. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Jews received numerous privileges consecutively from Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki (in 1678), Józef Lubomirski (in 1688) and Janusz Aleksander Sanguszko family (in 1780, and 1796). There were three synagogues and two Jewish cemeteries, one of which had not been used since the 19th century. In the interwar period the town's population was 53.6 percent Jewish according to the national census with 3,269 Jews living there in 1921. By the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939 that number has already gone down to 42 percent due to migration flows.
Rovno Ghetto
The remaining 5,000 Jews who possessed the necessary for the occupation administration professions, were taken away from their families and placed in the ghetto. The ghetto was created in December 1941.
Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto
The Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto was one of the World War II ghettos established by Nazi Germany for the local Jewish population of Międzyrzec Podlaski in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. The ghetto was liquidated in stages between 1942 and 1943 as part of the Final Solution, with all Jews either killed on the spot in mass shooting actions or deported to Treblinka and Majdanek death camps.
Rawa Mazowiecka
The Nazis established a Jewish ghetto in Rawa Mazowiecka in March 1941. As Krzysztof Urbański informs in his monograph "Zagłada Żydów w dystrykcie radomskim", the ghetto consisted of two parts: one area consisted of a district called Jewish, and the second part was located at Łowicka Street. The two zones spread across the eastern part of town from the bridge on Rawka river to the bridge on Rylka river near the hospital. At the same time the area included the streets of Studzienna, Zatylna, Starościanska, Bóźnicza and Zamkowa Wola.
Piaseczno
In 1940, during the Nazi Occupation of Poland, German authorities established a Jewish ghetto in Piaseczno, in order to confine its Jewish population for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. The ghetto was liquidated in January 1941, when all its 2,500 inhabitants were transported in cattle trucks to the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of . From there, most victims were sent to Treblinka extermination camp.
The original Town Hall was burned down in 1655 by the Swedes during the deluge. The second accidentally burned down in 1730. A third Town Hall was constructed in the middle of the 18th century but was burned down during the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794. In 1815 the Russians began rebuilding it and the current Town hall was built in a classical style between 1823-1824.
Jewish ghettos in Europe
At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, in violation of international law (in particular, the Hague Convention IV 1907). Nazi Germany organized ghettos in many occupied countries, but the ghettos in the new "Reichsgaue" including "Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia" and "Reichsgau Wartheland" were particularly notorious. The "Łódź/Litzmannstadt Ghetto" holding 204,000 prisoners existed in a Polish city annexed to Germany; numerous others included Będzin Ghetto, Sosnowiec Ghetto, and the ghetto in Koło.
History of the Jews in Asti
The Jewish Ghetto was formally established in the third decade of the 18th century, as a result of the 1723 constitution of Savoy. Though most Jews had already lived close to each other, from 1730 till 1798 (the publication of the Napoleonic decree), it was mandatory to do so. The gates to the ghetto were probably located on both sides of the current Via Alberti. On the other side it was limited by Via Ottolenghi.
Ghetto benches
This setback for the segregationist cause did not stop attempts to establish ghetto benches in other Polish universities. Demands for segregated seating were again raised by the OZON-led Union of Young Poland (""), the "ND" All-Polish Youth, and other nationalist youth organizations. The Ministry of Education in Warsaw was opposed to the ghetto benches, declaring "numerus clausus" a violation of the constitution, and Polish Minister of Education stated that: "Student ghettos would not be introduced at the Polish Universities". However, in light of the continuing serious riots at the university, which the Ministry condemned as "zoological patriotism", the Ministry slowly gave in and decided to withdraw its opposition, hoping that the introduction of the ghettos would end the riots. The ethno-nationalists finally won their campaign for ghetto benches in 1937 when by Ministry decision universities were granted the right to regulate the seating of Polish and Jewish students. On October 5, 1937, the Rector of Warsaw Polytechnic ordered the establishment of the institution of ghetto benches in the lecture halls. Within a few days, similar orders were given in other universities of Poland.
Izbica Ghetto
The Izbica ghetto was a Jewish ghetto created by Nazi Germany in Izbica in occupied Poland during World War II, serving as a transfer point for deportation of Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Bełżec and Sobibór extermination camps. The ghetto was created in 1941, although the first transports of Jews from the German Reich started arriving there as early as 1940. Izbica was the largest transit ghetto in the Lublin reservation, with death rate almost equal to that of the Warsaw ghetto. "SS-Hauptsturmführer" Kurt Engels, known for his exceptional cruelty, served as its only commandant. 
The Jews who lived in Izbica were kept separate from the new arrivals. They were housed on the other side of the railroad tracks. Also, the Jews shipped in from Germany and Austria were differentiated from Polish Jews by the color of the obligatory star of David signs, yellow for German, and blue for the Polish Jews. In order to make space for the incoming transports, 2,200 local Jews were sent to the Belzec death camp on March 24, 1942. Between March and May 1942, approximately 12,000 to 15,000 new Jews were transported to Izbica from across Europe as part of secretive Operation Reinhard; among them engineers, doctors, economists, army generals and professors from Vienna, Hague, Heidelberg and Breslau, including the vice-president of Prague. They were housed in a few wooden barracks which could accommodate about half of the prisoners, pressed against each other like sardines. The rest were forced to subsist outdoors. Jews stayed in the barracks usually for no more than four days, with almost nothing to eat. Many victims succumbed to typhus due to poor sanitary conditions in the ghetto. The foreigners, many of whom were proficient in German, had an easier time identifying with their Nazi oppressors than the Polish Jews from inside the ghetto. Denunciations were commonplace.
Grodno Ghetto
Ghetto One was established in the city's centre, close to the castle and around the synagogue. Jews had already concentrated in that area before the founding of the ghetto, but the space was greatly reduced nonetheless. All 15,000 Jews living nearby were forced into an area less than half a square kilometer, between Wilenska Street on one side, and Zamkowa Street (renamed Burg Strasse) on the other. The ghetto was surrounded by a 2-metre fence. The entrance to the ghetto was on Zamkowa Street between the sidewalk and the road. Some of the houses on that street were demolished. The total area of the ghetto would shrink in time; as the transports of the Jews went on to the transit camp in Kiełbasin, and then on to the death camp in Treblinka. Just before its closure, "Ghetto One" included only a few buildings on Zamkowa Street.
Money transfers in the Generalgouvernement
Many Poles were deported to ghettos after the German invasion. Over 1000 ghettos were created by the Germans in occupied territories. The largest ghetto was placed in Warsaw, Poland and held almost half a million Jews. After the deporations, Germans would confiscate the property and sold it or sent it back to Germany.
Daugavpils Ghetto
The ghetto was not a ghetto in the sense of a city district mandated or set aside by custom for Jews. It was an improvised prison, to hold the Jews until they could be done away with. The Jews formed their own "committee" ("komitet", sometimes translated "council") of about 12 inmates, mostly professional and well-known people, to run the internal affairs of the ghetto, which at first had more than 14,000 people. Misha Movshenzon (also spelled Mowshenson), an engineer, was the leader of the committee. (Another source says Movshenzon was on the committee but gives Mosche Galpern as the chairman.) Movshenzon's father had been in charge of the city of Daugavpils in 1918, when the Germans occupied the city during World War I. Jews from other towns and villages of Latgalia and as far away as Vidzeme province were forced into the ghetto. Men and women were separated in the ghetto. Some income from the labor of the Jews was allocated to the Jewish Council.
History of Zionism
In 1516 the Republic of Venice decreed that Jews would only be allowed to reside in a walled-in area of town called the ghetto. Ghetto residents had to pay a daily poll tax and could only stay a limited amount of time. In 1555 the Pope decreed that Jews in Rome were to face similar restrictions. The requirement for Jews to live in Ghettos spread across Europe and Ghettos were frequently highly overcrowded and heavily taxed. They also provided a convenient target for mobs (pogrom). Jews were expelled from England in 1290. A ban remained in force that was only lifted when Oliver Cromwell overthrew the monarchy in 1649 (see Resettlement of the Jews in England).
Będzin Ghetto
The Będzin Ghetto (a.k.a. the Bendzin Ghetto, , Bendiner geto; ) was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the Polish Jews in the town of Będzin in occupied south-western Poland. The formation of the 'Jewish Quarter' was pronounced by the German authorities in July 1940. Over 20,000 local Jews from Będzin, along with additional 10,000 Jews expelled from neighbouring communities, were forced to subsist there until the end of the Ghetto history during the Holocaust. Most of the able-bodied poor were forced to work in German military factories before being transported aboard Holocaust trains to the nearby concentration camp at Auschwitz where they were exterminated. The last major deportation of the ghetto inmates by the German SS – men, women and children – between 1 and 3 August 1943 was marked by the ghetto uprising by members of the Jewish Combat Organization.
Wołomin
During World War II, the Jews of Wołomin were forced into a ghetto set up by Nazi German administration on 15 November 1940, along the railway line between the streets of Kobyłka, Wspólna, Wiejska, Glinka and Cementowa. The ghetto inmates numbered about 2,700 people including Jews expelled from other locations. The "Judenrat" was established in the building at 17 Nałkowskiego Street. Deportations aboard Holocaust trains to Treblinka extermination camp began on 19 August 1942. The ghetto was liquidated on 6 October 1942. A few hundred people (416-620 according to different sources) were shot in the ghetto, including many elderly and sick people. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave near the J. Korsaka Road. Some Jews were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto as slave labour and exterminated during the "Grossaktion Warsaw".
Ghetto uprisings
The ghetto uprisings during World War II were a series of armed revolts against the regime of Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1943 in the newly established Jewish ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe. Following the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Polish Jews were targeted from the outset. Within months inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos in which they forced the Jews to live. The new ghettos were part of the German official policy of removing Jews from public life with the aim of economic exploitation. The combination of excess numbers of inmates, unsanitary conditions and lack of food resulted in a high death rate among them. In most cities the Jewish underground resistance movements developed almost instantly, although ghettoization had severely limited their access to resources.
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945
Volume II, which profiles 1,150 ghettos in German-occupied Eastern Europe, was published in 2012. It is introduced by an essay by Christopher Browning, detailing the history and historiography of the ghetto system. Browning criticizes "the temptation to see Nazi ghettoization as a uniform, centralized and calculated preparatory step for the Final Solution", arguing that local conditions played a major role in the establishment of ghettos and that the ghettoization began before the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews. The book does not include extensive survivor testimony, instead covering each ghetto from a variety of available sources and perspectives. Along with entries on the ghettos, the encyclopedia also contains extensive maps. Beyond the implementation of ghettoization, the entries also cover massacres, other atrocities, Jewish resistance, and rescue attempts.
Rovno Ghetto
The Ghetto in Równe, or the Rovno Ghetto, was a Jewish World War II ghetto established in October 1941 by Nazi Germany in the prewar Polish city of Równe in the territory of Nazi-administered "Reichskommissariat Ukraine" (now Rivne, sovereign Ukraine). On November 6, 1941, about 21,000 Jews of Równe were led to a pine grove in Sosenki by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and massacred there by "Einsatzgruppe C" and their Ukrainian collaborators. The remaining Polish Jews were packed into a Nazi ghetto. Several months later, in July 1942 all 5,000 local Jews were trucked to a stone quarry near Kostopol and murdered there.
Liepāja massacres
In June 1942, when the Liepāja ghetto was established, there were only about 814 surviving Jews. The ghetto itself consisted of only 11 houses on four streets. Until the ghetto was closed in October 1943, the inhabitants were used as a pool of forced labor for the occupying authorities. During that time 102 people died and 54 were executed. The ghetto guards were Latvians wearing black uniforms. Conditions were harsh and food was short. On October 8, 1943, Yom Kippur, the survivors of the Liepāja ghetto were loaded into cattle cars and shipped to Riga and the ghetto was closed. Only three Jews, who were barely alive, were left behind, two shoemakers and one goldsmith.
Ghetto
The word "ghetto" comes from the Jewish area of Venice, the Venetian Ghetto in Cannaregio, traced to a special use of Venetian "ghèto", or "foundry" (there was one near the site of that city's ghetto in 1516). By 1899 the term had been extended to crowded urban quarters of other minority groups.
Racial segregation
Jews and Roma were subjected to genocide as "undesirable" racial groups in the Holocaust. The Nazis established ghettos to confine Jews and sometimes Romas into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe, turning them into "de facto" concentration camps. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of these ghettos, with 400,000 people. The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000.
Frankfurter Judengasse
Initially, some 15 families with about 110 members lived in Frankfurt's Judengasse when they were forcibly removed from the city and relocated to the ghetto by decree of Frederick III in 1462. By the 16th century, the number of inhabitants rose to over 3,000, living in 195 houses. The ghetto had one of the highest population densities in Europe. Contemporary documents described it as narrow, oppressive and dirty.
History of Poland (1939–1945)
Persecution of the Jews by the Nazi occupation government, particularly in the urban areas, began immediately after the commencement of the occupation. In the first year and a half, the Germans confined themselves to stripping the Jews of their property, herding them into ghettos (approximately 400 were established beginning in October 1939) and putting them into forced labor in war-related industries. Thousands of Jews survived by managing to stay outside the ghettos. During this period, a Jewish so-called community leadership, Judenrat, was required by the Germans in every town with a substantial Jewish population and was able to some extent to bargain with the Germans. Already during this initial stage tens of thousands of Jews died because of factors such as overcrowding, disease and starvation. Others survived, supported by the Jewish social self-help agency and the informal trading and smuggling of food and necessities into the ghettos.
Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto
The Piotrków Ghetto was the first wartime ghetto of its kind. Set up in one of Poland's oldest cities with a thriving Jewish community, it took until late January 1940 for the new inmates to move into it. First, the Judenrat (Jewish Council) was established and ordered to issue an announcement about the relocation, but this had no effect. Consequently, the Germans themselves evicted the Jews from their homes, transferring them to the ghetto by force. Eventually, up to 28,000 Jews were squeezed into a part of town where only 6,000 people previously lived. The homes vacated by the Jews were assigned to Christians and members of the German minority who took over their businesses after the relocation. It was an open type ghetto –- an early variant of Nazi ghettoization -– without the barbed wire fences introduced later throughout all of occupied Poland. Only warning signs with skulls were placed along the boundaries, and the main gate erected. The ghetto was pronounced closed from the outside on .
The Holocaust
After invading Poland, the Germans established ghettos in the incorporated territories and General Government to confine Jews. The ghettos were formed and closed off from the outside world at different times and for different reasons. For example, the Łódź ghetto was closed in April 1940, to force the Jews inside to give up money and valuables; the Warsaw ghetto was closed for health considerations (for the people outside, not inside, the ghetto), but this did not happen until November 1940; and the Kraków ghetto was not established until March 1941. The Warsaw Ghetto contained 380,000 people and was the largest ghetto in Poland; the Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding between 160,000 to 223,000. Because of the long drawn-out process of establishing ghettos, it is unlikely that they were originally considered part of a systematic attempt to eliminate Jews completely.
Łachwa Ghetto
Łachwa (or Lakhva) Ghetto was a World War II ghetto created by Nazi Germany on 1 April 1942 in the town of Łachwa in occupied eastern Poland (now Lakhva, Belarus), with the aim of persecution, terror and exploitation of the local Jews. The ghetto existed only until September 1942. It was the location of one of the first, and possibly "the" first, Jewish ghetto uprising following the Nazi–Soviet Invasion of Poland.
The Holocaust
Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, most prominently the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. Starting in 1933, the Nazis built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and people deemed "undesirable". After the invasion of Poland in 1939, the regime set up ghettos to segregate Jews. Over 42,000 camps, ghettos, and other detention sites were established.
Budapest Ghetto
The area consisted of several blocks of the old Jewish quarter which included the two main synagogues of the city, the Neolog Dohány Street Synagogue and Orthodox Kazinczy Street Synagogue. The ghetto was created on November 29, 1944, by a decree of the Royal Hungarian Government. It was surrounded by a high fence and stone wall that was guarded so that contraband could not be sneaked in, and people could not get out. The Nazi occupation of Budapest (Operation Margarethe) started on March 19, 1944. The ghetto was established in November 1944, and lasted for less than two months, until the liberation of Budapest on January 17, 1945 by the Soviet Army during the Battle of Budapest.
As with other ghettos that had been set up in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe the area was completely cut off from the outside world: no food was allowed in, rubbish and waste were not collected, the dead lay on the streets and piled up in the bombed-out store fronts and the buildings were overcrowded, leading to the spread of diseases such as typhoid.
Jewish Museum Frankfurt
In 1987 the foundations of 19 houses on what used to be called the Judengasse were discovered during construction work on an administrative building. The Frankfurt Judengasse was the first Jewish ghetto in Europe. It was founded in 1460 and developed into an important European Jewish cultural centre. The archaeological finds gave rise to a controversial debate as to how these witnesses of Jewish history in Frankfurt should be handled. The conflict resulted in a compromise: five of the unearthed house foundations were dismantled and reconstructed at the cellar level of the new administration building. In 1992 the Museum Judengasse was then opened among these ruins, as it were. The presentation there centres on the history and culture of Frankfurt’s Jews from the Middle Ages to Jewish Emancipation. The Museum Judengasse borders both on a memorial site for the Frankfurt Jews murdered during the National Socialist era and on the second oldest Jewish cemetery in Germany. In 2016 the museum was reopened after reconstruction with a re-designed exhibition.
Roman Ghetto
In common with many other Italian ghettoes, the ghetto of Rome was not initially so called, but was variously referred to in documents as or , both meaning "enclosure of the Hebrews". Various forms of the word "ghetto" came into use in the late 16th century. The modern Roman Jewish usage is .
Jewish ghettos in Europe
Jewish ghettos in Europe were neighborhoods of European cities in which Jews were permitted to live. In addition to being confined to the ghettos, Jews were placed under strict regulations as well as restrictions in many European cities. The character of ghettos fluctuated over the centuries. In some cases, they comprised a Jewish quarter, the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. In many instances, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and small, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving at those times.
In the 19th century, with the coming of Jewish emancipation, Jewish ghettos were progressively abolished, and their walls taken down. However, in the course of World War II the Third Reich created a totally new Jewish ghetto-system for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation of Jews, mostly in Eastern Europe. According to USHMM archives, "The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone."