The Ghettos of Nazi-Occupied Poland

Ian Baxter

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781526761804
• eBook ISBN: 9781526761811
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History

This pictorial history presents a vivid and harrowing exploration of Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland during WWII.
Following the 1940 invasion of Poland, the Nazis established ghettos in cities and towns across the country with the initial aim of isolating the Jewish community. These closed sectors were referred to as Judischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden (Jewish Quarters). Drawing on a wealth of historical images, this volume shows the harsh and deteriorating conditions of daily life in these restricted areas.
In reality, these ghettos were holding areas where Jews were kept before being transferred to concentration, extermination, and work camps. Aware of their imminent fate, which included the threat of family separation, enslavement, and death, underground resistance groups sprung up staged numerous uprisings which were brutally and callously suppressed.
The Nazis' ultimate aim was the liquidation of the ghettos and the extermination of their inhabitants in furtherance of The Final Solution. This may seem unthinkable today but, as this book graphically reveals, they worked to achieve their objective regardless of human suffering.

Chapter One

Ghettoization

Designated areas of larger Polish cities were outlined in a massive programme of ghettoization. The programme was headed by Hans Frank who became Governor General of the occupied Polish territories with responsibility for the administration of the General Government. It was he who put into action the segregation of the Jews and their ‘ghettoization’.

Frank’s plan was to uproot all Polish Jews from their homes and businesses through compulsory expulsions. Entire Jewish communities were to be deported by train from their places of origin into special closed-off zones using Order Police Battalions. These battalions were subordinated to the SS and deployed specifically in army group rear areas and territories under German civilian administration. The police units were given strict orders to target the civilian population throughout the General Government and specifically to carry out the expulsion of Poles from the Reichsgau Wartheland under the new Lebensraum policies. They were told to be as brutal as necessary to expedite what they referred to as ‘Resettlement Actions’.

The Police Battalions, often supported by army units, moved into selected areas and removed the local population from their flats and houses, confiscating them. These areas were then marked off to become separated from the rest of society. Between late 1939 and 1940 there were also expulsions from German-occupied ‘Greater Poland’. Some 680,000 Poles were expelled from the city of Poznanό in Reichsgau Wartheland alone, of whom approximately 70,000 were moved into the General Government. These deportations were conducted under the leadership of SS-Obergruppenfu¨hrer Wilhelm Koppe.

The first deportations of the Jewish community into the newly-created ghetto system began in October 1939. All Jewish homes and businesses were vacated through forcible expulsions in a very short period of time. On the day of their removal notice, Jews received orders to present themselves at special assembly points so that they could be ‘evacuated further east’. Each person was issued with an evacuation number – a number which would give the authorities details of where they would be transported. So as not to create panic, the deportees were allowed to take 50kg of luggage. They also had to pay for their own railway tickets.

The first major transports began with the removal of some 70,000 to 80,000 Jews from Ostrava district in Moravia (now in eastern Czech Republic) and in Katowice district in the recently annexed portion of Poland. SS-Obersturmfu¨hrer Adolf Eichmann was tasked with managing the logistics of the mass deportation of Jews to the ghettos from these areas, and later to the extermination camps. His priority in 1939 was to remove Jews from the conquered territory of Greater Poland and transport them into the General Government economically and with minimal disruption to Germany’s ongoing military operations. By the end of 1941 some 3.5 million Polish Jews had been segregated and ghettoized by Eichmann in his massive deportation action involving the use of hundreds of freight trains.

In October 1941 the first transports of German Jews were sent by rail to either labour camps in Poland or the General Government to be ghettoized. The freight cars (Gu¨terwagen) were packed with 150 deportees, although 50 was the number initially proposed by deportation regulations. There was no food or water. An average transport took four days. Many died from hunger or exposure to the elements, and inadequate ventilation resulted in many deaths from suffocation. Often when the trains arrived at their destination and the doors were opened, everyone was dead.

Those that had survived the journey were removed from the trains under armed guard and either marched on foot or transported by vehicle to the ghetto. Even as they arrived inside the ghetto, many still believed this was only a stopover on the way to their new lives further east. They had no idea that they would soon see their ghettos destroyed, often barbarically, and that they would be forced into nearby forests or fields to be murdered, or be transported either to labour camps or death camps around Europe.

German soldiers beat Polish Jews in the vicinity of Łódź during the invasion of Poland. The persecution of the Jews of Poland began almost immediately after the German invasion. (USHMM: Mary Jane Farley)

Hans Biebow, German head of the Łódź ghetto administration, at his ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the author
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Ghettoization
• Chapter 2 Life in the Ghettos
• Chapter 3 Liquidation of the Ghettos
• Chapter 4 The Warsaw Uprising
• Appendix
• Plate section