Before World War II, Warsaw was the main center of Jewish life and culture in Poland. In 1939, the city's Jewish population numbered 368,394, or 29.1% of the city's total population. Warsaw's Jewish community was the largest not only in Poland but in all of Europe. It was second only to New York in terms of population.
After the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, Warsaw was subjected to devastating air raids and artillery bombardments. On 28 September 1939, German troops captured the city. As a result of deportations from occupied Polish territories carried out by the Nazis between November 1939 and October 1940, the Jewish community increased by approximately 90,000 people.
The persecution of the Jewish population began immediately after the German army entered the city. The first manifestations of this were mockery and beatings; Jews had their beards cut in public, were harnessed to carts, and were forced to perform gymnastic exercises. Then, according to Nazi decrees, economic, social, and cultural restrictions were imposed on the Jewish community. Jews over the age of 10 were required to wear an armband with the Star of David on their right forearm. In January 1940, synagogues were closed, and collective prayers in private homes were prohibited. In the same month, Jews were prohibited from visiting public libraries and using the railway, and in February, entrepreneurs were ordered to fire their Jewish workers. Jews were also excluded from the social security system.
On October 4, 1939, the Nazi authorities established the Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Warsaw. The first chairman of the Council, which consisted of 24 councilors, was Adam Czerniakow. And already in January 1940, in the “Warsaw District” (as part of the General Government), a Resettlement Department (Umsiedlung) was established, headed by SA Standartenführer Waldemar Schön. This department coordinated activities related to the creation of a ghetto. It was decided to create a closed area in the northwestern part of the city center, which since the 19th century had been predominantly inhabited by Jews. The process of isolating this part of Warsaw due to the threat of an alleged epidemic began in the winter of 1939–1940, when signs in Polish and German were placed on the border streets of the district, warning against the presence of Jews in these settlements due to the risk of contracting typhus. In the spring of 1940, the Nazis decided to build walls around the “epidemic zone”, inhabited mainly by Jews, which were to serve as protection for the inhabitants of the rest of the city.
On October 2, 1940, the German authorities issued a decree requiring all Jewish residents of Warsaw to relocate to a specially designated area. In November 1940, the occupation administration physically fenced off the area with a wall over 3 m high, topped with barbed wire, and established strict security to prevent any contact with the rest of the city. The population of the ghetto, to which Jews from neighboring cities were forcibly relocated, was over 400,000. The German authorities forced the ghetto residents to live in an area of 3.4 km2, with an average of 7.2 people per room.
The food rations that the occupiers issued to the ghetto were insufficient to sustain life. In the second half of 1941, the food ration for Jews was only 184 kilocalories. Most of the inhabitants suffered from malnutrition. From 1940 to mid-1942, 83,000 people died of hunger and disease. The widespread smuggling of food and medicine into the ghetto supplemented the meager official rations and somewhat restrained the increase in mortality.
Some of the inhabitants were employed in German production. For example, about 18 thousand Jews worked at the sewing enterprises of Walter Tebbens. The working day lasted 12 hours without days off or holidays. Of the 110 thousand workers in the ghetto, only 27 thousand had permanent jobs.
As a result of a large-scale transfer operation that lasted from July 22 to September 21, 1942, about 75% of the ghetto's inhabitants were deported and killed in the Treblinka death camp. Less than a year later, on April 19, 1943, the Nazis began the final liquidation of the "Jewish Residential District of Warsaw" (this is what the Warsaw Ghetto was called in official German documents). Then the uprising began, which lasted four weeks. During the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, 13,000 Jews died because of fighting, executions and fires, and another 7,000 were sent to Treblinka. About 36,000 Jews were taken to other concentration camps, to Auschwitz and Majdanek. Soon, the Germans carried out mass executions of Warsaw residents - Polish political prisoners and members of the Jewish community – in the ghetto.
The total number of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto was approximately 400,000 people, of whom about 92,000 died in Warsaw, mainly from hunger and disease, and about 300,000 in the Treblinka death camp and during two relocation campaigns.
Daria Yesina