Jewish Ghettos: Deception, Genocide, and Survival - Essay Example

? Jewish Ghettos: Deception, Genocide, and Survival 19 September Introduction The ghettoization of the Jews during the Holocaust urges many people to ask a fundamental question: Why did the Jews not immediately resist the oppressive conditions of these ghettos through an uprising? Several studies1 of ghettos, where resistance occurred and not occurred, showed that most of the Jews were so cut off from the outside world2 that they did not perceive any real threat to their survival.3 The German Nazis imposed generally effective communication controls that convinced majority of the Jews that they were not in real mortal danger. The Nazis were particularly skilled in manipulating the Jews, who believed that they were merely being transported to other concentration camps or ghettos for work.4 This paper aims to describe the Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust and begins with an overview of its purposes and characteristics. It also describes the transportation to the ghettos, the everyday conditions in it, and its effects on the Jews. The ghettos served to deceive the Jews, as it became the first step of dehumanizing and exterminating the Jewish race, but not all Jews succumbed to despair. Instead, Jewish survivors used hope, faith, ingenuity, and creativity to survive inhumane conditions in the ghettos. The ghettoization of the Jews The ghettos are different from concentration camps in several respects: they were used as temporary Jewish settlements that were prepared for work or death in concentration camps; they served to break the spirits of the Jews, so that they could no longer mount a strong resistance against the Germans; they provided free labor for Germans who needed the workforce to sustain the war; and they supported German plan for the dehumanization and extermination of the Jews.5 The ghettos forced Jews to work in squalid conditions, including the middle class and upper-class, who were professionals, thereby defeating their spirit and ensuring better control over them.6 Though the Nazis ordered self-regulation in the form of Jewish councils, the former still controlled details of everyday life in the ghettos, including forcing the Jews to wear six-pointed stars in their clothing, reducing access to food and other essentials, and controlling their mobility, as well as their access to news outside the ghettos.7 Not every ghetto is the same, however, and conditions varied greatly, depending on the nature and efforts of the ghetto leaders and several economic and social factors. Other ghettos lacked access to basic commodities, such as food and clothing, and services, such as hospitals, schools, and churches. Some examples are the Minsk and Lubcz ghettos.8 Other ghettos fared better, in terms of the Jews having opportunities to continue education and the practice of their religion in varying extents. Several examples are the Warsaw ghetto9 and Jewish ghetto in East Upper Silesia.10 Despite some advantages provided in a number of ghettos, the Jews remained slaves to their German captors. Because of their cramped houses and appalling work conditions, many Jews yielded to hopelessness too, especially after witnessing massive deaths, rapes, and plunder of their homes and communities.11 Transportation to the ghettos The Jews were mostly transported to the ghettos by train.12 When transferred to nearby ghettos, they walked on foot.13 The transportation stage triggered the process of dehumanizing the Jews. In Night, Elie Weisel was only fifteen years old, when he experienced several ghettos and concentration camps. He remembers the cramped conditions of the trains that signaled their loss of human rights and liberties. Moreover, the train was a place of violence and despondency: “Anti-Semitic acts take place every day in the streets, on the trains.”14 Even affluent Jews did not escape the hardships of transportation. As they were forced to leave their homes, they were stripped of their properties. Their relocation to the slums held symbolic meaning: they were no longer human beings, no longer individuals, for they were the herd of the Nazis.15 Scholars asserted that moving the Jews into the ghettos had the main goal of dehumanizing them by stripping them of their wealth, social connections, and identities.16 Hilberg believes that the ghettos expressed both “Jewish presence” and “Jewish absence” because of the relocation of the Jews from their communities to Nazi-imposed ghettos.17 Their transportation served to demarcate the Jews from the non-Jews, where the Jews were labeled as the “other.”18 Hence, the transportation of the Jews heralded an era of sufferings, and for many, a series of deaths, that the Jews would endure for a long time, a long time at least for those who survive every wave of physical labor and extermination activities. Conditions in the ghettos The cramped spaces of the ghettos represented their cramped lives. In one house, three to four families were forced to live together, for instance.19 Here, they lived with expectations that they would soon be released from their miserable circumstances.20 Wiesel is right to describe what ghetto conditions were in general- they were places of “delusion.”21 Most of the ghettos were places where hard labor, hunger, disease, and death collided. In the ghettos, the Nazis often collect people from every family to work in the coal mines or factories.22 In these workplaces, the prisoners worked day and night, and it was not surprising that many people died from fatigue and hunger. The existence of killing Aktions, or Germans who massacred the Jews, increased the uncertainty of survival in the ghettos.23 Moreover, because of the grueling conditions in these ghettos, most people had weakened immune systems and became susceptible to typhus.24 Children instantly became orphans after their parents, sometime almost the entire kin, died from typhus.25 These children were shoved into orphanages and hospitals, which already had strained personnel and resources. In the Minsk ghetto, during the pogrom of March 2 to 3, 1942, the Nazis went to its orphanage and stabbed all children to death.26 Evidently, the ghettos were no different from concentration camps that served to directly slaughter the Jews. Physical conditions bred despondency for many Jews. In Night, hunger, the darkness of the night, thirst, and heat challenged the Jewish spirit. Night provides time for both hope and despair. One night in the ghetto, en route to his first concentration camp, Elie studies the stars: “The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us.”27 The stars usually give people hope and direction, but because of the ghettos they turned into the fires of hell. The night is a motif for despair because its darkness fits the darkness around the Jews. Elie hates the uncertainty of the ghettos. They do not know where they will go and when their tribulations will end. Elie depicts his first night in Birkenau: “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.”28 The night darkens not only his environment, but his soul. Elie’s constant reference to heat, hunger, thirst, and pain demonstrates his transformation from a human being to a physical body. Indeed, this is what the Germans wanted- to alter how the Jews saw themselves and beat them to submission through emaciation and pain.29 Hunger has physically and psychologically dented many Jewish ghetto dwellers. Elie feels that because of the ghettos, he is merely a hollow “body,” particularly a “famished stomach.”30 His ability to think and to perform other “higher” abilities disappeared at the brink of everyday hunger. Thirst in the novel stands for thirst for freedom and independence. For affluent Jews, what they took for granted before, they realized their significance in the ghettos. Suddenly, food and having a bed to sleep became strong motivators for the Jews, motivators that affected their behaviors. Elie describes how the strong stole food and clothing from the weak. In fact, he himself wanted to so much to live that he harbored ill feelings for his father, whose food he coveted. One of the most unforgettable memories of Wiesel is his father’s death. His father calls him, but the latter ignores his pleas. He is more frightened of the “wrath of the SS” than responding to his father.31 Moreover, during this time, he felt relieved of the idea that his father was dying. With him gone, his chances for survival grew, since he did not have to sacrifice his safety and food for his father anymore. He feels the guilt of these ideas up to now, as his father’s calling continues to haunt him: “His last word has been my name. A summons. And I had not responded.”32 His guilt is common to many other Jews, who felt the collective trauma of survival. They experienced inhumane conditions, which in numerous times, they felt that they failed to remain as humans with dignity. Survival in the ghettos Some Jews managed to keep their humanity intact in the ghettos through keeping their faith, education, and culture alive. In the Warsaw ghetto, curricula of all kinds were developed to continue the education of the youth. “The Yiddish theater and other cultural institutions thrived, and schools, through forbidden, secretly served child and adult alike in attics, cellars, and public kitchens, courtesy of the youth and welfare organizations.”33 Defying the will of the Nazis, Janusz Korczak kept similar routine and structure in the ghetto orphanage before the war.34 In addition, he formed an underground school that taught Hebrew in the curriculum, because of his conviction that these children could go to “Palestine in the future.”35 Some members of the community tried to preserve normalcy in their lives. Under the leadership of Nazi-created Judenrate (Jewish Councils), organizations were made to feed the hungry and care for the sick.36 Political life managed to survive too in some ghettos. Several political organizations that came from different political ideologies were formed in the Warsaw and Minsk ghettos, frequently using soup kitchens as a place for organizing.37 These groups resulted to the uprisings in the Warsaw and Minsk ghettos.38 These activities soon diminished and eventually were stopped, when mass roundups and deportations to the death camps started.39 Nevertheless, these examples prove that even in the most inhumane conditions, humanity can still survive. Conclusion Life in the ghettos, especially at the start of the war, represented spaces for reconfiguring Jewish life. The Jews were cramped in small spaces that living with integrity did not exist anymore. They suffered from hunger, thirst, fatigue, and diseases from their crowded and overworked conditions. Soon, many were massacred inside the ghettos or brought to deaths camps for genocide. Reports and testimonies expressed the horrors and hardships in the Jewish ghettos. Women, the elderly, and the children were not spared from atrocities. Despite these ghastly circumstances, plentiful Jews maintained their desire for survival. In some ghettos, uprisings led to the escape of others, although many died too. Hence, the Jewish ghettos served as places for despair and survival, one of the chapters of Jewish history that demonstrated humanity’s capacity for hope and survival. Bibliography Berger, Susan J. “Hope, Survival, and Determination.” American Educational History Journal 33, no. 1 (2006): 147-154. Bloomberg, Jon. The Jewish World in the Modern Age. New Jersey: KTAV Publishing, 2004. Cole, Tim. Holocaust City: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto. New York: Routledge, 2003. Dean, Martin. “Minsk.” In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Edited by Geoffrey P. Megargee, Christopher Browning, and Martin Dean, 1233-1236. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012. Einwohner, Rachel L. “The Need to Know: Cultured Ignorance and Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Lodz.” Sociological Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2009): 407-430. Einwohner, Rachel, and Thomas Maher. “Assessments of Threat and Collective Action: Jewish Resistance in Ghettos and Death Camps during the Holocaust.” American Sociological Association Conference Papers (2009): 1-40. Kruglov, Alexander, and Martin Dean. “Lubcz.” In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Edited by Geoffrey P. Megargee, Christopher Browning, and Martin Dean, 1228-1232. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012. Lehnstaedt, Stephan. “Coercion and Incentive: Jewish Ghetto Labor in East Upper Silesia.” Holocaust & Genocide Studies 24, no. 3 (2010): 400-430. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York, New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Read More