The Warsaw Ghetto
Imagine waking up everyday in fear that you might be stolen away from your home; away from the people you loved, away from the only scarce bit of hope you held on to. That’s how the residents in the Warsaw ghetto lived. Always in fear, always fighting for freedom, but never giving up. Their homes became rooms packed with other Jewish families. Three course meals got reduced to mere bread crumbs a day. Clothes were tarnished, living conditions were harsh, and yet the Warsaw residents never gave up hope. Instead they kept fighting, playing, joking, organizing, resisting; but most importantly they kept dreaming. Warsaw is an important part of Holocaust history because, it was a major city for Jewish life and culture before the war, living conditions were some of the worse, some of the most active organizations were based out of Warsaw, it had many famous uprising. Before the war Warsaw, Poland was a major city for Jewish life and culture. According to an article by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum they stated that, “The Jewish population of more than 350,000 constituted about 30 percent of the city's total population.” Warsaw was the most Jewish populated city in both Poland and Europe. Only second in the world to New York, New York. January 1934, “Hitler was to sign a nonaggression pact with Poland in order to neutralize the chance of a French-Polish alliance before Germany had the chance to rearm” (USHMM, Invasion of Poland, Fall 1939) In the mid-late 1930’s neither France nor Britain were not prepared to go to war with Germany. By August 1939 the German-Soviet pact, which divided Poland into two separate territories, was signed allowing the Germans to invade Poland without Soviet interference. September 1, 1939, the Invasion of Poland began. Aron Derman described the Polish invasion with these words, “And it’s shooting going on, and one after the other, and it’s getting stronger...So here, I’m a young fellow, I’ve lost my home...and now I’m