Warsaw Ghetto History

Prior to World War II, Warsaw was the capital of Poland, with a population of 1.3 million and the largest Jewish community in Europe at the time with 380,567 Jewish inhabitants (Warsaw). The Nazi’s occupied Warsaw on September 29th, 1939, four weeks after invading Poland. Following the invasion of Poland, the Nazi’s gained control of three million Jews, which did not fit their antisemitic goal for having the newly acquired land be Jew free. Therefore, in response, the Nazi’s began segregating the Jews from the rest of the Polish population by developing ghettos to forcibly detain them. The ghettos were originally meant to be temporary holding spaces as the Nazi’s original plan was to completely remove the Jews from Poland and deport them all to the island of Madagascar. Reinhard Heydrich—a high ranking German SS official—issued an order known as the Schnellbrief (Ghetto). This order required that all Polish Jews to be rounded up and concentrated in large towns and cities near railway lines. There were no details in Heydrich’s order outlining what to do with the Jews when they got to the concentrating cities, which caused each local authority to basically improvise. Because each authority responded to this problem differently, each ghetto operated differently.  

The war against the Jews in Poland began far before the start of World War II or opening of the Polish ghettos. According to Celia S. Heller, “a direct line has been drawn between [the relationship between Jews and Poles] and the Holocaust” (Crowe, 164). The Polish depression and weakening of Poland’s democratic institutions hurt the Jew’s economic status and political influence, which exacerbated the problems beginning after the death of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski—the most dominant figure in Polish politics during the interwar people. Many Jews viewed Pilsudski as their “friend and benefactor” (Crowe, 165). Pilsudski’s death in 1935 brought with it a new wave of public and official anti-Semitism: “his successors adopted anti-Semitic economic policies designed to weaken the role of Jews in the economy and professionals” (Crowe, 165). The first clear line to be drawn was when the Polish government placed “numerus clausus restrictions on Jewish university students” (Crowe, 165). The total of Jewish students enrolled in universities dropped from 20.4% in 1928 to 9.9% in 1937 (Crowe, 165). The violence that Jewish students faced in some universities was a precursor to what was to come. Many Jewish students were forced to sit in ‘ghetto’ seats and received threats from gentile classmates and teachers. Much of the resurgence in anti-Semitic violence—even before Nazi occupation—can be explained (at least partially) as a reaction to the social and economic dislocations caused by the depression: similar to what German Jews faced. However, the root of Polish anti-Semitism goes far beyond the ramifications of the depression and is found in a deep religious hatred of Jews and fears that “the Poles might become a nation of peasants, proletarians, and official while the Jews flooded commerce and the free professions” (Crowe, 165). The most disheartening of it all is that when push-came-to-shove, the Polish Jews backed up their country, and when Germany invaded Poland in the fall of 1939, “200,000 Jewish soldiers fought against the Germans” (Crowe, 165), and after Poland fell, the Poles watched as millions of their fellow countrymen perished at the hands of the Nazi’s.  

The creation of ghettos in German-occupied Poland came with many plans and criteria. Before creating the ghettos, the Germans believed it to be very important to set up “liaisons between party and government functionaries in occupied Poland” in the form of Jewish community leaders—also known as Judenrat, or Jewish Councils (Crowe, 171). The creation of these councils was ratified on September 28th, 1939 by Hans Frank, where he orders their creation throughout the General Government: “Jewish communities of fewer than 10,000 people would have a 12-member Judenrat, and those of more than 10,000 would have a 24-member council” (Crowe, 171). Following the creation of the Jewish Councils, Germans had to then locate all of the Jews (through which they ordered the Jewish Councils to mandate a Jewish census) in order to determine how many ghettos were needed.  

On October 12th, 1940 the Warsaw Ghetto was officially decreed. The ghetto was segregated from the rest of the population by a wall sealing off the ghetto from the outside world (see "Warsaw Ghetto Image”). Over 400,000 people were imprisoned in Warsaw (Warsaw). This was the largest ghetto in occupied Poland. Initial attempts to open the ghetto was met with fierce Jewish resistance, but on “September 12th, 1940, Hans Frank ordered that the Warsaw ghetto be created to prevent the spread of diseases into the general Polish population” (Crowe, 176). During the following months, the Germans forced 113,000 Poles to move out of the future ghetto to make room for more Jews, and by “early 1941, 445,000 Jews were crammed into 2.4% of the city’s living space” (Crowe, 176)(see “Warsaw Ghetto Map”). Warsaw differed from Lodz (a previously created Polish ghetto) because it was viewed as a temporary solution rather than a permanent Jewish settlement.  

Adam Czerniakow, the head of Warsaw’s Judenrat, did everything in his power to maintain (as much as possible) civilized life in the ghetto (Czerniaków). Initially, the Germans banned religious services and education. Later in 1941, Czerniakow convinced the Germans to allow him to restart a public-school system, however the most dynamic life centered around the illegal cultural, intellectual and political organizations (Czerniaków). “All of prewar Poland’s most important political organizations were active in the ghetto” (Crowe, 178). Jewish resistance in Warsaw occurred with every illegal meeting, conversation, or activity which eventually lead to greater resistance efforts. 

Over the course of the war the Warsaw ghetto served the purpose of being a ‘contained Jewish community’, a waypoint for Jews on their way to death and concentration camps—specifically for Treblinka extermination camp. Warsaw was a prominent cultural city before Nazi occupation and before becoming a ghetto and the Jewish Council made a point to try to maintain at least to some degree ‘normalcy’ in culture and other activities. 

Nearly every action that the Jews made in the ghetto could be interpreted as resistance, and for many, this was the point. Silent, and subtle forms of resistance against their persecutors. The short ‘peaceful’ period (with silent acts of resistance) abruptly stopped with the beginning of the mass deportations out of the ghetto, which started in July 1942 and triggered the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. After four weeks of fighting, the Germans responded with the complete liquidation and burning of the ghetto in May 1943 (Holländer). After the Warsaw Uprising in August of 1944, the ghetto was liquidated and destroyed (Ugc.). There is currently a memorial commemorating the Uprising. It is the Ghetto Heroes Monument, in Warsaw, Poland that is in the former Warsaw Ghetto on the spot where the first armed fight during the uprising occurred. The monument was unveiled in 1989 (Ugc.)(see “The Warsaw Uprising Monument”).