Wartime Warsaw.
A city divided.
The borders of the Warsaw Ghetto were closed on 16 November 1940.
Approximately one-third of the inhabitants were isolated overnight. One
hundred and thirty-eight thousand Jews were resettled in the area
designated by the German occupant, while one hundred and thirteen
thousand Poles were displaced. On the 80th anniversary of this event, we
recall the tragic situation of hundreds of thousands of citizens, forced to live
and die in inhumane conditions.
Photo: Warsaw Ghetto Museum
Miłka Skalska, Warsaw Ghetto Museum
As early as November 1939, barbed-wire fences and plaques were erected at the exit of some streets of the district predominantly inhabited by Jews. “Plague, entry prohibited.” The official reason for creating the ghetto was to stop the typhus epidemic, which was to spread in parts of the town inhabited mainly by Jews.
“In so doing, the authorities wanted to isolate the carriers of dangerous diseases. People who called themselves doctors of medicine justified this statement. Science has long since eliminated medieval quarantines not only as cruel but as pointless. Pointless? After all, it is not about eradicating an epidemic; it is about eradicating Jews. Therefore, they are very intentional.” - said doctor, Ludwik Hirszfeld, an immunologist.
Practically every week humiliating prohibitions and restrictions of freedom were introduced against Jewish residents of Warsaw. It was the harbinger of the ghetto. On 1 April 1940, following an order from the occupying authorities, the Judenrat (‘Jewish Council’) began building walls around the territory of the ‘epidemic area’ with its funds.
“… Here - at the intersection of Żelazna and Krochmalna Streets - the border wall started springing up right under the windows of tenement houses. From dawn to dusk, the screams of the bricklayers were heard, and water from the hydrant, open at the side, surged onto the roadway. In two shifts, the rolled wheelbarrows whimpered vigorously, and the wet thumping of the trowel and mortar pressed on the bricks spread. They were building the wall. It reached the knees, then the arms of the bricklayers. They measured, laid the bricks, and carried on. When it was twice the height of man, they reinforced the top of the wall with broken bottle glass, densely tossed on damp cement. The frost was drawing on, the mortar stiffened in the wooden tub, and the bricklayers hurried the assisting boys while rubbing the cold off their hands,” wrote Bogdan Wojdowski, a ghetto survivor, in his autobiographical novel “Bread Thrown to the Dead”.
The wall was completed on 1 April, and on 16 November 1940, the “Jewish residential district” was closed. The ghetto was established by the decree of 2 October 1940 issued by the Warsaw District Governor Ludwig Fischer. German police stations were set up at the exit of the designated area. Passes were introduced for movement between the ghetto and the so-called Aryan section. The ghetto covered an area of 307 hectares. Approximately 460 000 Jews from Warsaw, including refugees and displaced persons from other cities, were forced to live in the area.
“Jewish bricklayers supervised by Nazi soldiers lay brick after brick. Those who do not work fast enough are beaten by the supervisors. It reminds me of the biblical description of our captivity in Egypt. But where is Moses who would free us from this new oppression? - Mary Berg (Miriam Wattenberg) noted in the “Diary from the Warsaw Ghetto”.