The Concept of a Ghetto

Historically speaking, the term ghetto has been around for a very long time. As early as 1084, many cities and towns throughout Europe had these restricted areas that were designated specifically for Jews. Jews were viewed as a cultural minority due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Renaissance Christian environment. Many governing bodies wanted Jewish Ghettos in their lands because they generated funding and often lent a lot of money to governmental officials, yet the ghetto was restricted and could be closed off to prevent Jews from leaving (especially during Christian holidays). If debts ran too high to the Jews, a common practice in Europe was to kill the Jews in the ghetto or pass laws making Jewish life in ghettos difficult. The enforcement of Jews having to live in ghettos fell out of favor during the 1800’s and by 1882 the last ghetto was abolished in Italy.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they sought to isolate Jews. Starting with restrictive laws and moving on to property damage and theft, the Nazis wanted to make the Jewish population leave Germany. When this process did not work as quickly they would have liked, they began to think of more effective ways of isolating Jews. This caused Nazi officials to revisit the Medieval concept of a ghetto. The Reich’s Minister and General Field Marshall Hermann Goring and the Chief of Security Police Reinhard Heydrich (who was referred to as the “Butcher of Prague” and had thousands of assassination attempts before someone was finally successful) met in the Reich's Aviation Ministry after the Night of the Broken Glass in November of 1938 to discuss the creation of ghettos.




The Reich’s Aviation Ministry building(across from the former Gestapo’s offices and the Berlin Wall)




The side of the church where the assassins of Heydrich were shot after their location was disclosed and they were betrayed.








When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 (less than a year after Goring and Heydrich met), the Nazis set up ghettos for Jews in Poznan and Lodz. The exhibit that I saw focused on the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, which was located in the city of Lodz. The Litzmannstadt Ghetto was the second largest ghetto created by the Nazis (after Warsaw’s Ghetto that was completely destroyed during the war after the Warsaw Uprising). The city of Lodz had a Jewish population of 230,000 before the war; only a few thousand survived the Holocaust.

The Litzmannstadt Ghetto (as well as the other ghettos established by Germans) was not intended to be a permanent solution to what was viewed as the “Jewish problem.” The ghettos were just a stop in the road so that Germans could better pace the destruction of the Jewish population. The ghettos provided the Nazis with a large concentration of labor that could be exploited (as Oscar Shindler did with good intentions) and as a means to organize the Jewish population before deporting them to death camps. Despite the temporary nature of the camps, Jews strived to maintain aspects of normal life. Jewish councils in camps created schools, police forces, and medical offices.

The pictures below are from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. They were taken by a group of inmates that were appointed by the Jewish Elder, Mordechi Chaim Rumkowski. He faced many difficult decisions. Despite being in charge of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, he had to follow all of the rules put forward by the Nazis. One example of a difficult choice he had to make was selecting 20,000 victims to be deported and murdered. The pictures reflect an effort to maintain normalcy in the face of insurmountable odds (just as art was used by the children in Terezin).