Atrocities During The Holocaust: Life In The Warsaw Ghetto

Atrocities during the Holocaust, orchestrated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, began in 1933 and continued until 1945. In 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto located in Warsaw, Poland was created by Nazis to isolate the Jews off from the outer population. This began a time of fear and uncertainty for the ghetto inhabitants, which eventually sparked an uprising. Personal accounts help illustrate this disturbing time in history. The stories shared by survivors are critical for appreciating this dark time, which must never be forgotten. The Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants endured an inhuman lifestyle inside these walls fueling an organized resistance, unprecedented during the Holocaust, proving that the Jews when pushed to their limits, will fight back.
To understand the
Life in the Warsaw Ghetto has been documented by personal accounts and many historians since the ghetto’s time. Janina Dawidowicz, a nine year old Jewish Polish girl taken to the Warsaw Ghetto gives a haunting description of her life growing up in this dire time in history. She recalls reading the posters that were made for the announcement of the ghetto. No one was excited about the announcement, but no could could predict what was coming. Since they were allowed to bring personal items along with them, many thought they were being sent to work at labor camps. The posters also claimed they would be giving out free food (most likely being bread or sugar), so many were ready to follow the Nazis orders. Once Dawidowicz and her family got to the ghetto they were living in small, cramped apartments along with many other families. She described the walls of the apartments being “so damp, people were able to do sums on them”. As Janina walked around the streets of the ghetto she heard conversations that came from different languages and cultures from around Europe. She heard conversations between Polish, Hungarian and even German