Ghettos in German-occupied Europe (1939-1944)
| Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe | |
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Large Nazi ghettos in which Jews were confined existed across the continent. Ghettos were liquidated mostly by Holocaust transports to concentration and extermination camps built by Germany in occupied Poland
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| Also known as | Jüdischer Wohnbezirk in German, or "waiting camps" |
| Location | German-occupied Europe |
| Date | 1939–45 |
| Incident type | Total of more than 1,000 ghettos created mostly in Central and Eastern Europe |
| Perpetrators | Schutzstaffel (SS), Orpo |
| Ghetto |
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Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the regime of Nazi Germany set up ghettos across occupied Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Gypsies, into small sections of towns and cities furthering their exploitation. In German documents, and signage at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them as Jüdischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden, both of which translate as the Jewish Quarter. There were several distinct types including open ghettos, closed ghettos, work, transit, and destruction ghettos, as defined by the Holocaust historians. In a number of cases, they were the place of Jewish underground resistance against the German occupation, known collectively as the ghetto uprisings.
The first anti-Jewish measures were enacted in Germany with the onset of Nazism, without the actual ghettoization planning for the German Jews which was rejected in the post-Kristallnacht period. However, soon after the 1939 German invasion of the Polish Second Republic, the Nazis began to designate areas of larger Polish cities and towns as exclusively Jewish, and within weeks, embarked on a massive programme of uprooting Polish Jews from their homes and businesses through forcible expulsions. The entire Jewish communities were deported into these closed off zones by train from their places of origin systematically, using Orpo battalions, first in the Reichsgaue, and then throughout the Generalgouvernement territory. Most of the ghettos these people were sent to were about 3 streets in length and of the poorest areas in the towns chosen.
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