Conclusion and Bibliography
The ghettos acted as an intermediary step between the Nazis’ antisemitic policies and the killing centers. In 1933, the Reich began its formal persecution with a law preventing Jews from holding governmental positions, which was followed by laws capping the number of Jewish students that could attend schools, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and Kristallnacht in 1938. The Czestochowa Ghetto, which first functioned as a place to isolate Jews from society and evolved into a holding center for Jews who would be deported to the camps, provided the necessary bridge between isolated acts of violence and mass genocide. The passive extermination that occurred in the ghetto was not just physical but psychological, as Jewish life deteriorated economically, socially, and even morally. The ghetto was a bridge between earliest Nazi plans to exclude Jews from European life and the mass killings that characterized the last few years of war, an intermediate step that unfortunately made the Final Solution possible. Nonetheless, in learning about life in the ghetto, one must recognize Jews’–both those that survived and those that perished–ability to continue fighting and propping up their community, as each subtle gesture of one’s humanity acted as a form of resistance to Nazi persecution.
Works Cited:
Ahren, Raphael. “Remembering the Holocaust, Poland Blots out Any Mention of Its Complicity.” The Times of Israel, Jan. 2019. https://www.timesofisrael.com/remembering-the-holocaust-poland-blots-out-any-mention-of-its-complicity/
Bloch, Brandon. “HIST 1049: Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Lecture 15, 16, 17.” 31 March. 2020, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dorf, Nina and Abe Danko. “Interview of Abe Danko about His Experience during the Holocaust.” USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 6 Aug. 1995, https://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=4760&returnIndex=0. Accessed April 15, 2020
Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996)
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: If this is a Man. New York: Summit Books, 1986.
McAuley, James. “Poland’s new ‘Holocaust law’ comes up against massacre of Jews in 1941.” Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/polands-new-holocaust-law-comes-up-against-massacre-of-jews-in-1941/2018/02/22/ee9f22d4-10e4-11e8-a68c-e9374188170e_story.html
Prado, Raul and Barabara Gerson. “Interview of Barbara Gerson about Her Experience during the Holocaust.” USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 4 Dec. 1997, https://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=38929&returnIndex=0. Accessed April 15, 2020
Rosenblum, Susan, and Benjamin Bender. “Interview of Benjamin Bender about His Experience during the Holocaust.” USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 23 Feb. 1996, https://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=12213&returnIndex=0#. Accessed April 15, 2020
Talansky, Sue and Jakob Zylberberg. “Interview of Jakob Zylberberg about His Experience during the Holocaust.” USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 6 Nov. 1996, https://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=23699&returnIndex=0#. Accessed April 15, 2020
“Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow.” Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, by Raul Hilberg, Publisher Not Identified, 1982, pp. 304–385.