On October 2, 1940, the governor of the Warsaw district, Ludwig Fischer, signed an order establishing a “Jewish district” in the capital of occupied Poland. The news was made public only on October 12, on Yom Kippur – the most important Jewish holiday. That day, loudspeakers on the streets of Warsaw broadcast words that would forever change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. “A ghetto for the Jews is slowly being created,” wrote Emanuel Ringelblum, chronicler of the Holocaust, in his diary.
Forced resettlement and chaos
The ghetto's boundaries were drawn over an area of about 307 hectares. All Jews living in Warsaw – over 350,000 people – were ordered to move inside it, and non-Jewish residents had to leave. The relocations took place in haste and uncertainty. Successive German decrees changed the rules, shifted the ghetto boundaries, and decided what could be taken and what had to be left behind. In the tenement houses, despair and fear prevailed; people lost the work of a lifetime, and many lost homes their families had lived in for generations.
Wall and isolation
In November 1940, the Germans began building a wall that eventually isolated the Jewish district from the rest of the city. From November 16, the ghetto was sealed – its residents became prisoners in their own city. Living conditions deteriorated dramatically: overcrowding, hunger, disease, and the terror of the German administration claimed lives daily.
Aid in the shadow of the Holocaust
Although most Jews in Warsaw remained in the ghetto, thousands managed to escape to the so-called “Aryan” side of the city. Gunnar Paulsson, in his book Secret City. The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940–1945, estimates that by August 1, 1944, about 28,000 people were hiding in Warsaw, of whom 11,500 survived the war. Paulsson emphasizes that not only organizations, but also private initiatives, played a key role in rescuing Jews.
One such example is Stanisław Chmielewski, who, within his circle of private contacts, helped, among others, Janina Bauman with her mother and sister. Paulsson calculates that between October 1942 and August 1944, 5,000 hiding places and 11,500 caretakers were needed at any given time, and over the entire occupation period these numbers could have reached 35,000 shelters and even 80,500 Poles involved in providing help. Among the well-known names of those who helped and saved Jews are, among others, Irena Sendler and Jan and Antonina Żabińscy, who hid hundreds of Jews in the Warsaw Zoo and in their home – the villa “Under the Crazy Star.”
Paulsson’s conclusions regarding the percentage of Warsaw Jews who survived (about 40%) are questioned by, among others, Dr. habil. Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov. The researcher points out that this would be a similar figure to the Netherlands, where the situation of Jews was not as dire as in occupied Poland.
A place of remembrance
The Warsaw Ghetto became a symbol of suffering and resistance – in 1943, an uprising broke out there, the first urban armed operation against the Germans in occupied Europe. Today, 85 years after its establishment, remembering the hundreds of thousands of Jews – victims and heroes – remains essential. The total number of victims of German crimes against the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto is estimated at around 400,000 people. Nearly one-fourth of that number were victims of hunger, disease, and crimes within the ghetto itself, and around 300,000 were murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp and during two deportation actions.
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