Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Remembering, Representing, Reframing presented by ENGL 7239: The Nazi Ghetto System: Isolation and Destruction in the Holocaust

The term “ghetto” can be traced to numerous theories of etymological origin. In 1516, it was applied to the segregated area of Venice for the Jewish population. Prior to 1939, the conditions of these Jewish-occupied areas varied from affluent to impoverished. 

Ghetto: The History of a Word (2019) by Daniel Schwartz traces the ghetto from its early history to Postwar America. “The historical odyssey of this particular term affords new ways of thinking about how we approach the problem of defining the ghetto and discovering its significance in the Jewish experience” (2)

Nešarim: Child Survivors of Terezín (2004) by Thelma Gruenbaum provides this look at life prior to the Nazi invasion: “Jewish families spent much of their time together and with their extended families. When family members moved away, they might resettle in a near by town. Recreation on the weekends consisted of outings to parks or hiking in the woods” (12).

However, in October 1939, Piotrków Trybunalski was established as the first segregated area enforced by Nazi command. 

The Nazi Ghetto system worked to isolate Jews from all forms of outside life. Access to correspondence, news, medical care, and food was severely limited or altogether forbidden. 

While the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos are among the most well-known, there were over 400 ghettos created under the Nazi regime. 

Destruction of the ghettos began after 1941 as part of “The Final Solution.” Jews were murdered in the ghetto or transported to killing centers or concentration camps. 

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has an encyclopedia page dedicated to the origins and outcomes of the Nazi Ghetto system. It explains that the “Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population.”

While scholarly sources function well in researching and documenting the Nazi Ghetto system, their capacity to highlight, preserve, and promote individual accounts is somewhat limited. This is truer when considering women's individual experiences. 

Haunted Memories: Portraits of Women in the Holocaust (2011) is a memoir written by Lucille Eichengreen in which she weaves through stories of other women in various Jewish Ghettos and Concentration Camps. 

“The German attitude toward Jewish women was a strange mix of cruelty and restraint. They made us work hard, they beat us, they starved us, they shot us. We endured rain and snow dressed in rags. They exploited us beyond endurance. Yet, compared to the Jewish men, our lot was easy. The men were beaten, starved, and made to work incredibly hard, often beyond human strength, carrying heavy loads and performing inhuman labor in underground mines, factories and stone quarries.” (14-15) 

The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt (2009) by Hannelore Brenner (translated by John E. Woods and Shelley Frisch) tells the stories of some of the women and children caught in this extermination system.  

“Indeed, the women are like sisters, bound by a special fate: Between 1942 and 1944, when they were twelve to fourteen years old, they lived in Room 28, Girls’ Home, L 410, Theresienstadt, a fortress town near Prague. They were prisoners of the ghetto, a small group of the 75,666 Jews from the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia…Time and again, some of the girls would suddenly be torn from their midst and forced to join one of the dreaded transports…the word itself a metaphor for the constant fear that dominated their daily lives” (3-4)

Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive by Samuel D. Kassow is a study of Emanuel Ringelblum’s attempt to record the daily life inside the ghetto and other facets of Jewish life under the Nazi regime. While much of the Oyneg Shabes archive was destroyed in the war, what remains offers valuable insight into the silenced voices of the Holocaust.