Areas With Large Jewish Ghettos example essay topic

Jewish ghettos: The basic history of the formation of the Jewish ghettos, including the everyday life and economic hardships faced by the communities. By definition, a ghetto is an area, usually characterized by poverty and poor living conditions, which houses many people of a similar religion, race or nationality. They served to confine these groups of people and isolate them from the rest of the community because of political or social differences. However, the Jewish ghettos established throughout Europe were more than just a way for the Germans to isolate the Jewish community. They were the first step in making Hitler's final solution possible. The ghettos were the means of organizing all of the Jews together and preparing them to be shipped to concentration camps.

However, these ghettos soon evolved into political, religious and social entities that served the community and began to resemble a form of self-ruling government. Furthermore, many of these ghettos were different from one another because of different internal structures of the Jewish community or the diversity of the personalities of the leaders of the council in the Jewish community. However, the ghettos must be analyzed as if they are all "one history". (Holocaust) In fact, many of the communities were the same with regards to Jewish perceptions and reactions concerning life and the difficulties being faced by each community in its occupied territory. This research paper discusses the common everyday trials and tribulations faced by all the ghettos and looks at the ghettos from a political and socio-economic point of view. (Holocaust) First, it is important to understand the history behind the ghettos and discuss their centralization in Poland.

Hitler incorporated the western part of Poland into Germany according to race doctrine. He intended that Poles were to become the slaves of Germany and that the two million Jews therein were to be concentrated in ghettos in Poland's larger cities. Later this would simplify transport to the death camps. Nazi occupation authorities officially told the story that Jews were natural carriers of all types of diseases, especially typhus, and that it was necessary to isolate Jews from the Polish community. Jewish neighborhoods thus were transformed into prisons. The five major ghettos were located in Warsaw, L'odz, Krak " ow, Lublin, and Lvov (a history 170).

(Holocaust, Holocaust time line) In total, the Nazis established 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945. However, there was no real uniformity to these ghettos. The ghettos usually varied with respect to the size of the city in which they were located. The ghettos in small towns were generally not sealed off, which was often a temporary measure used until the Jewish occupants could be sent to a bigger ghetto. Larger cities had closed ghettos, with brick or stone walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire defining the boundaries. In the larger ghettos, guards were strategically placed at gateways and other boundary openings for policing the area.

In these larger ghettos, Jews were not allowed to leave the Jewish residential districts (Holocaust), under penalty of severe punishment, often including death. As mentioned earlier, all of the ghettos had the most appalling, inhuman living conditions. The smallest ghetto housed about 3,000 Jews. Warsaw, probably the largest ghetto, held close to 400,000 people. Lodz, the second largest, held about 160,000 (Phillips 304-12). Other areas (mainly Poland) with large Jewish ghettos included Bialystok, Czestochowa, Kielce, Krakow, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, and Vilna (a history 170).

Many of the ghetto dwellers were from the local area; others were from neighboring villages. In October 1941, general deportations began from Germany to major ghettos in Poland and further east. Also, Jews from Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were sent to the ghettos. Ghetto life was wretched. The ghettos were filthy, with poor sanitation. Extreme overcrowding forced many people to share a room.

Disease was rampant. Staying warm was difficult during bitter cold winters without adequate warm clothes and heating fuel. Food was in such short supply that many slowly starved to death. However, even in the midst of these horrible conditions, many ghetto dwellers resisted dehumanization sought by the Germans. Parents continued to educate their children, although it was considered an illegal activity. Some residents secretly continued to hold religious services and observe Jewish holidays.

In this way, the Jewish ghetto rose above the daily difficulties and began to establish themselves as governments with strong political and social ties inside the community. (Holocaust, holocaust time line, Phillips) The principle underlying theme of the ghettos from a political standpoint was its segregation of the inhabitants from the surrounding German population. The Jewish ghetto was a closed-off community, disparaging any free traffic moving in and out of the ghetto. However, within the smaller Jewish communities work parties were allowed to leave and perform jobs outside of the ghetto.

This is not to say that pre-existing contracts with the Germans did not still hold. The ghettos still needed water, gas, electricity, means of communication, removal of human waste and the importing of raw materials and food. This does bring to the fore front that only functions necessary to the maintenance of the ghetto were permitted and any out side business relationships were quickly terminated. And in time, even those were tossed aside as the Jews were relocated to the concentration camps. (Holocaust) From a political standpoint, even the corroboration of Jewish ghetto authorities with German officials was largely constricted. The only remaining lines of communication were direct lines running from the Jewish council to the superior German authorities.

The structural make-up of these Jewish councils was decidedly vertical, with German authorities passing down orders through Jewish officials to the ghetto population. It is important to note that the success of this Jewish council relied heavily on the support of German authorities. These council members could also exercise control over the helpless in the ghetto. They could enforce rules with the Jewish police and send people to jail for not complying with German regulations. Coupled with the German support, the vertical structure is the next important factor that supported the Jewish structure. By allowing only immediate inferiors and superiors to hold conversation and relay messages, the German officials were able to keep a tight control on the issues of the ghetto.

These vertical structures could be complex, as seen in Warsaw, and extremely direct and simple, as seen in many outlying communities. (Holocaust) These physical and administrative constrictions of the ghetto drastically reduced its space and depressed its atmosphere, but at the same time it intensified the Jewish need for organizational activity. "While the Germans outside became invisible, the Jewish community machinery evolved within into the government of a captive city-state". (Holocaust) This need for organization stems from two basic problems inside the Jewish ghetto.

The first is the basic need for supplies to carry out the everyday municipal and economic needs of the Jewish government. The second is the burden put on the Jewish council by the German officials. These two evolutions coupled with poverty and unemployment caused a government with many positions. These positions were paid and unpaid, and in some larger ghettos (featuring public enterprise) these paid positions resulted in a generous proportion of the councils payrolls. Although it is understood that Jewish government officials did not do very much some officials wielded almost undisturbed power in the Jewish community, from which the self-governing aspect of the ghetto is seen by the Jewish freedom in the judicial area of the government. Here, Jewish litigation could take place and be controlled by Jewish judges without the interference of German officials.

(Holocaust) As mentioned earlier, the ghettos were slowly becoming their own political entity with government responsibilities much larger and more dynamic than most of the social, cultural, or religious functions carried out by the community. Unfortunately, these new responsibilities carried out by the Jewish council were forced to meet the demands of German officials which often forced them to fall short on commitments made to the community. The council could not reasonably meet the demands of the German authorities and those of the ghetto. This rendered the council almost completely ineffective often resulting in numerous useless offerings including payoffs, free labor supplied by the ghetto, and finally with the lives of the inhabitants themselves. This situation would deteriorate until the deportation of the Jews to concentration camps.

(Holocaust, holocaust. com) In a couple of class discussions, we talked about the presence of God during such periods of turmoil such as the holocaust. One important question that is often asked to strong believers of the Jewish and Christian religion is: Where is God? He could not possibly exist if all this hate and pain is befalling his people. This question is impossible to even start to consider because I think the answer lies in the faith of individual people. Many survivors of the Holocaust still go to temple and choose to believe in God and put faith in his word.

Furthermore, the concept of God being used to support the Nazi interests confuses things further. Hitler supported his "final solution" with faith in God and the belief that God supports the Aryan nation. He expressed this in his speeches and made the German people aware of the power bestowed on them by God. This concept seems to applicable today with respect to September eleventh and the use of religion to support terrorist's organizations. The nation was shocked when the terrorist attack on downtown New York City was perpetrated. However, we can not be so in-the-closet to think that a group of people would not go far enough to commit acts of terrorism simply because of Faith.

Jihad, or holy war, is the sole emotion, not act, which strengthens the will to perform horrible crimes on humanity. Simply saying that a faith-based idea can go as far as the perpetrator is willing. In conclusion, we have studied the history and present events surrounding the Holocaust. We have studied the ideology and the reasons behind both the Jewish and the German involvement.

In the end, I found that I still feel the same way about the Holocaust that I did before taking this class. I think that it takes a certain kind of person to commit those murderous acts and the idea of "just following orders" is ridiculous because it assumes that free will is no longer considered strong enough to prevent the ordered killing of millions of people. The important aspects of today's society in relation to the existence of God in our lives are disturbed by the lack of faith in God for not being around when his people are suffering the most. How can these acts, like the Holocaust and the genocidal feud in Rwanda, be analyzed without accepting the absence of God in relation to these events?