Warsaw Ghetto (Speech)
Slides 1-2:
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 16, 1940, in the territory of the General Government of German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity residing in an area of 3.4 km2. From there, at least 254,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp over the course of two months in the summer of 1942.
Slides 3: In 1939, German occupational authorities began to concentrate Poland's population of over three million Jews into a number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated…show more content… The ghetto was made by a German by the name of Hans Frank, he ordered all Jews in Warsaw and its suburbs rounded up and herded into the Ghetto.
Slides 5: Like many of the Ghetto’s in Poland, the Germans had the administration to a (a council of the Jews. In Warsaw this role was attributed to Adam Czerniaków, who chose a policy of collaboration with the Nazis rather than revolt.
Slides 6: During the next year and a half, thousands of Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller cities and the countryside were brought into the Ghetto, while diseases and other and starvation kept the numbers even.
Slides 7: Unemployment was a major issue in the ghetto. Many illegal manufacturing of goods was taking place and sold. They were often smuggled in by hundreds of four- to eight-year-old Jewish children went across to the "Aryan side," sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did.
Slides 8: On January 18, 1943, after almost four months without any deportations, the Germans suddenly entered the Warsaw ghetto intent upon a further deportation. Within hours, some 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 others rounded up. The Germans did not expect resistance, but there were plans to resist and had been for quite some…show more content… The Jewish fighters had some success: the expulsion stopped after four days and the resistance organizations took control building shelters and operating against Jewish collaborators.
Slides 10: The walls of the ghetto could not silence the cultural activity of its inhabitants, however, and despite the appalling living conditions in the ghetto, artists and intellectuals continued their creative endeavors. Moreover, the Nazi occupation and deportation to the ghetto served as an opportunity for artists to find some form of expression for the destruction upon their life’s.
Slides 11: In the ghetto there were underground libraries, an underground archive youth movements and even a symphony orchestra. Books, study, music and theater served as an escape from the harsh reality surrounding them and as a reminder of their previous lives.
Slides 12: The Ghetto ties with the outside world were handled via an agency called the Transferstelle, this agency was in charge of the traffic of goods entering and leaving the ghetto. The first official in charge of this office was Alexander Palfinger, who was succeeded by Helmut