Holocaust Ghettos

 A summary of the book The Holocaust Ghettos By Linda Jacobs Altman

 

The holocaust ghettos are where the Jewish population was forced to live before they were dead or cent to concentration camps. They were forced to where a Star of David and if they caught with out it they are killed or arrested on the spot. They also had to have their papers to tell who they were and if they did not have their papers they could be arrested. There are nine ghettos that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum recognizes, Bialystok (Poland), Lodz (Poland), Lvov ( Kovno (Lithuania), Poland),Riga (Latvia), Minsk (Czechoslovakia), Vilna (Lithuania),and Warsaw(Poland).

In the Ghetto they had a Jewish police and Judenrat. When a Jew had a criminal record that he had killed a polish police officer. The German authorities made the whole Jewish community pay for what he has done by giving them a fine and to insure the payment they took 53 hostages. Once the German authorities got the payment they killed all 53 hostages.

 

In the Ghettos work permits were the things that was the difference between life and death. Another way to stay alive was to join the Jewish Police force and that would allow more food for their family and they would also escape the brutal slave labor camps. Ghetto was a terrible duty and it brought out the worst in all people who performed it. Corruption spread through all the departments and new recruits had to pay the Chief of Police to be recruited. The policemen were also trapped between an enemy that hated them and a community that they could not protect.

Jews each had a ration card that barley supplied them with enough nutrients. “Every thing revolves around bread or death”’ claims an old Jewish proverb. That statement is so true in the Ghettos. People would hold off reporting deaths so they could use there ration card as long as possible. They also had soup kitchens in which the food was much better and a person would give there in tire ration card for just one meal there.

 

Children had to learn in secret because of the German never-ending laws. Children hid their books from the Nazis. They had to learn in houses or kitchens or even bombed houses. The Germans did not know that there were a lot of unemployed teachers in the soup kitchens and in the Ghettos. This made it that much easier for them to learn not by one person but by different people.

 

The regulations or rules were never ending toward the Jewish community. Some of the rules were that the Jewish population was forbidden to walk on the sidewalks. Jews must walk on the right side of the street and go one behind another. Another rule like, The Jewish population is forbidden to use public means of transportation. Such as taxi cabs , Horse and Carriage, buses, passenger steamers, and similar vehicles. Later the laws kept getting more and more ridiculous. The new laws were such as, forbidden to walk with there hands in there pockets, go to public markets before 10:00 am, and it was even forbidden for Jews to have small electrical appliances in there homes. Some Ghettos often required Jewish men to remove there hats when the encountered a Jewish officer. In Lubin, they made a rule that if they do not salute in the nazi fashion they would be beaten. Those who take off their hats are dragged over to the nearest poster and shown that they are not supposed to.

 

Smuggling was very common in the ghettos. Knowing that the food ration was used for slow starvation and the Jewish council allowed and even encouraged smuggling. This is one thing that helped Jews stay alive. Legal imports cost about two million zlotys and the illegal ones cost as much as eighty million zlotys. John and Heller smugglers that operated one of the most successful import and export business of food and medicine to the Ghettos. They also operated hoarse drawn streetcars which was the only form of public transportation. Those who sold or barred food over the wall were killed. Most of these smugglers were not highly skilled professionals, they were just ordinary people that would transport and smuggle food and other illegal goods. Many were young children that could slip through tiny cracks and or walls and barricades.

 

As the war ended the Jews were sent to death camps. This happened because the tables have turned against the nazi party and the Jews were sent to gas chambers in last ditch efforts to kill the remaining Jews. As we know today that did not happen there a Jewish families around the world bettering them selves andare stronger through the death and destruction towards there race.