Warsaw Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto
Brick wall of the Warsaw Ghetto dividing the Iron-Gate Square, with view of bombed out Lubomirski Palace (left) on the "Aryan" side of the city, May 24, 1941.
Also known as	German: Ghetto Warschau
Location	Warsaw: Muranów, Powązki, Nowolipki, Śródmieście Północne, Mirów (German-occupied Poland)
Date	October 1940 to May 1943
Incident type	Imprisonment, mass shootings, forced labor, starvation, mass deportations to Treblinka and labour camps in the Lublin Reservation
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany
Participants	SS-Totenkopfverbände, Gestapo, Orpo battalions, Einsatzgruppen, Trawnikis, Waffen-SS
Organizations	Schutzstaffel (SS), RSHA
Camp	Treblinka, Majdanek
Victims	265,000 at Treblinka 42,000 at Majdanek 92,000 inside the Ghetto with expellees from Germany, Czechoslovakia and other occupied countries.
Documentation	Jewish Historical Institute Museum of the History of the Polish Jews
Memorials	Monument to the Ghetto Heroes Umschlagplatz Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers

Borders of the Warsaw Ghetto in November 1940 (see ), with location of Umschlagplatz for awaiting death trains

The Warsaw Ghetto (German: Warschauer Ghetto, officially Jüdischer Wohnbezirk in Warschau; Polish: getto warszawskie) was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Muranów neighborhood of the Polish capital between October and November 16, 1940; within the new General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. There were over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3.4 km² (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 7.2 persons per room; barely subsisting on meager food rations. From the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942 at least 254,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer.

The death toll among the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of rampant hunger and hunger-related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the Ghetto.

Warsaw was one of the most diverse cities in the Second Polish Republic before the war began. The majority of Polish Jews lived in the merchant districts of Muranów, Powązki, and Stara Praga, while most ethnic Germans and Russians lived in Śródmieście. Over 90% of Catholics lived further away from the bustling commercial and vital centre of the capital. The Jewish community was the most prominent there, constituting over 88% of the inhabitants of Muranów; with the total of about 32,7% of the population of the left-bank and 14,9% of the right-bank Warsaw, or 332,938 people in total according to 1931 census. Many Jews left the city during the depression, which was more severe and longer-lasting in Poland than elsewhere in Europe. In 1938 the Jewish population of the Polish capital was estimated at 270,000 people.