136 THE WIDENING WAR 1942
On October 12, 1940, all
Jewish residents of Warsaw
and others from outlying
districts were forced to move
to an area of just 1.3 sq miles
(3.4 sq km) in the north of
the city. High walls made
of stone and barbed wire
enclosed the ghetto, and
armed guards kept watch;
any Jew found outside the
walls could be shot. In such
a confined space, chronic overcrowding and malnutrition were rife. An
estimated 400,000 Jews struggled daily for survival with an average of
eight to ten people sharing a single room. The threat of starvation was
constant, since the food rations were not sufficient to sustain life.
Typhus and other deadly illnesses became endemic.The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Mass deportations of Polish Jews to concentration camps and
extermination camps began in July 1942. They resumed in January
1943 and again in early April. This time, the Jews fought back against
the Germans, with Jewish resistance fighters giving battle for four
weeks. However, they were vastly outnumbered, and the ghetto was
incinerated and reduced to rubble. By the time the fighting ended
on May 16, 7,000 Jews had been slaughtered on the streets and
another 42,000 had been taken captive and deported. The Warsaw
concentration camp complex was built on the site of the old ghetto.THE WARSAW
GHETTO
In the 1930s, Warsaw was home to 375,000 Jews—the
second largest single Jewish population in the world after
New York. Following Germany’s invasion of Poland in
1939, the Nazis imposed a multitude of restrictions on
Jews, including their enforced relocation to a ghetto.
△ Identification mark
Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were forced to wear
a white armband featuring a blue Star of David on
their right arm so they could be identified easily.THE NAZI CAMPS
Shown here on a contemporary
map, concentration and
extermination camps were
spread throughout the territory
of the Third Reich during World
War II. Auschwitz-Birkenau in
Poland became the most
notorious: between 1.1 and
1.3 million Jews were sent
there, and at least 960,000 were
executed in the gas chambers.
An estimated 750,000 perished
at Treblinka, also in Poland.US_136-137_F_The_Warsaw_Ghetto.indd 136 05/03/19 2:32 PM