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Ghettos

Last Update 8 September 2006

  




Ghettos *
The concept of separating the living quarters of Jews from that of the rest of the population originated in the early middle ages. It was based upon a form of theological and economic anti-Semitism that attempted to restrict contact between Jews and Christians, although then as now, Jews had a natural tendency to live in close proximity because of religious, social and cultural requirements. In this they were, and are, no different from other religious and ethnic minorities. The essential distinction was that whilst Jews may have previously chosen to live in specific neighbourhoods, the creation of the ghetto forced them to do so.

The first ghettos appeared in Germany, Spain and Portugal in the 13th century. In medieval Central Europe they existed in Prague, Frankfurt am Main, Mainz, and elsewhere. The 16th century Venice Ghetto was situated in part of the city that had previously been an iron foundry (getto in Italian).
Other terms as source of the word "ghetto" have been suggested:
"Ghetonia" - a Griko word for neighbourhood (Griko is a Greek dialect spoken in the Grecia Salentina area of Apulia in Southern Italy)
"borghetto" - which means "small neighbourhood" in Italian
"get" - "bill of divorce" in Hebrew.

The "Age of Enlightenment" and the social transformations that followed the French Revolution saw the gradual abolition of the ghettos, until their reintroduction as part of the Nazis "New Order" in Europe. Ghettos had never previously existed as such in Poland or in eastern Europe before 1939.
However, until 1861 in many larger Polish towns, especially those that until the end of the 18th century were the property of Polish kings, there were special Jewish districts called "Jewish towns". The Jews could only live in these districts and in the suburbs of these towns but they could not live inside the towns' walls, in the so-called "Christian towns". The Jews were permitted to trade with Christians and to even rent small shops in the Christian sector. This situation existed in Krakow, Warsaw, Vilnius, Lublin and Lwow, for example. In the smaller provincial towns, which in many cases were the private property of aristocratic families, Jews were never permitted to live in the restricted districts or areas.

Glogow Malopolski
Glogow Malopolski
Although the more radical Nazis were in favour of creating ghettos in Germany and Austria, the idea was vetoed. Instead, Jews were concentrated in so-called "Jew Houses" (Judenhäuser), which although very far from pleasant, did not involve quite the same restrictions as residing in a ghetto. It was with the invasion of Poland that the first Jewish ghettos of the 20th century appeared. Their source was an instruction issued by Reinhard Heydrich to the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland on 21 September 1939, in which he stated, among other things:
"For the time being, the first prerequisite for the final aim is the concentration of the Jews from the countryside into the larger cities."
At a conference held in Berlin that day, Heydrich had explained that the concentration was to be in ghettos, in order to ensure "a better possibility of control and later deportation." There were to be as few "concentration centres" as possible, and only cities with good rail connections were to be selected. From inception the ghettos were thus never intended to be more than a temporary solution to what the Nazis termed the "Jewish Problem". Heydrich's instructions made this clear, distinguishing between the "final aim", which would require extended periods of time, and the stages leading to the fulfilment of the "final aim", which would be carried out in the short term. The ghettos formed part of the short-term solution. The "final aim" was as yet undefined.

Having stipulated the creation of the ghettos, albeit in vague terms, thereafter Heydrich was content to leave their administration largely in the hands of local German managers. Operating through the Transferstelle of the Ghettoverwaltung, or similar bodies, responsible for both the maintenance and exploitation of the ghetto populace, these officials offered two quite differing policies. On the one hand the "attritionists" viewed the elimination of the Jews as the desired goal. Supposed Jewish wealth was to be extracted by means of deliberate starvation. In the process, the more Jews that died the better. In Lodz (renamed Litzmannstadt by the Germans), in the Warthegau (Polish territory incorporated into the Reich), Alexander Palfinger, deputy to Hans Biebow, head of the Ghettoverwaltung, declared:
"The rapid dying out of the Jews is for us a matter of total indifference, if not to say desirable, as long as the concomitant effects leave the public interest of the German people untouched; inasmuch, however, as these people in accordance with the instructions of the Reichsführer-SS are to be made to serve the state interest, the most primitive conditions for this must be created."

On the other hand, the "productionists" saw the benefit of utilising the incarcerated Jews as a source of cost-free labour. The Jews would become self-sufficient, or even a source of profit. In contrast to Palfinger, Walter Emmerich, head of the Economic Division of the Generalgouvernement, stated in Warsaw:
"The starting point for all economic measures has to be the idea of maintaining the capacity of the Jews to live. The question is whether one can succeed in solving this problem in a productive manner, that is, to create so much work for the ghetto and to withdraw so much output from the ghetto, that a balance is produced."

Both policies approached the same problem from different directions, for both were motivated by the same economic consideration – that the Jews were not to become a financial burden on the Reich. In time, the "productionist" view gradually prevailed and Jewish labour became an essential, if temporary, component of the German war effort in many ghettos (see Aktion Reinhard Economics).

Assembled for Forced Labour
Assembled for Forced Labour
The same economic considerations were evident in all Nazi anti-Semitic policy. It is important to remember that there was no budget for genocide. The Jews were to pay for their own destruction. In the Reich, emigration had been possible – for a price. In the ghettos, the inmates were forced to finance the erection of the walls and fences that surrounded them, to buy the food, fuel and medicine they consumed, eventually even to discharge the fares for the trains that deported them to the death camps. Denied the right to sustain themselves and their families by engaging in financially productive employment and their professions, or to operate their previously owned businesses, their only legitimate source of income was to utilise what little remained of their monetary and material capital not already embezzled by the invaders, or to become labourers, working for, at best, a pittance. The Jews were not kept alive to work – they worked in order to remain alive.

Heydrich had ordered that the ghettos be functioning within 3-4 weeks following the occupation of Poland. In practice, their establishment took much longer. The first decree creating a ghetto (later considered unsuccessful by the Nazis) was issued in Piotrkow Trybunalski as early as 8 October 1939. Another early ghetto was that of Pulawy in the Lublin district, which was established at the end of November 1939 but was very quickly liquidated. The following month the Jews from Pulawy were resettled to other towns, mainly to Opole Lubelskie.
The first permanent ghetto was established in Tuliszkow in December 1939 or January 1940. Thereafter ghettos were only slowly introduced – Lodz in April 1940, Warsaw October 1940, Krakow March 1941, Lublin April 1941. After the invasion of the Soviet Union and the incorporation of Galicia into the Generalgouvernement, the Lwow Ghetto was established in December 1941. By the end of 1941, ghettoisation in the Generalgouvernement was virtually complete, and with the benefit of their experience in Poland, the Germans had introduced ghettos in the newly conquered territories of the Soviet Union. Yet even here the process was often slow; the last ghettos in Byelorussia were only established in May 1942, nearly a year after the occupation, and when tens of thousands of Byelorussian Jews had already been murdered.

The creation of the ghettos proved more difficult in reality than it had been in theory. Uprooting the Jewish population, relocating them to a different city, then to a designated area within that city, transferring the non-Jewish residents from the ghetto location, all combined to produce a host of problems. The ghettos were only considered a temporary phenomenon and their dissolution was initially perceived to be a matter of expulsion, although there is little doubt that this would have equally resulted in the extermination of the Jews, albeit in a different geographical setting and at a slower pace than subsequently ensued. As late as the summer of 1941, the chimera of forced emigration of the Jews, first to the Lublin region, then to Madagascar and finally to the furthest reaches of the Soviet Union, successively dangled tantalizingly before the Nazis. None of these grandiose plans were realised; the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" was to take a different form.

Przemysl
Przemysl
If the timing of the formation of the ghettos was irregular, the category of ghetto was equally inconsistent. Some ghettos were sealed; others were open. In rural areas numerous quasi-ghettos were established. For example, in Mielniki near Sieniawa, a few Jewish families were housed at a farm and employed in a nearby forest. They were unguarded and in the summer of 1942 were executed and buried at the farm grounds. Some Jewish communities, such as Szydlowiec, were transformed into what were, in effect, ghetto towns. Elsewhere, ghettos were not formed at all. But wherever they did appear, there was one element of consistency. The districts chosen to house the ghetto were inevitably situated in the most impoverished parts of cities and towns. The housing was dilapidated, often with no piped water or electricity. The number of people packed into the ghetto produced staggering levels of population density. In Warsaw, 30% of the population were forced to live in 2.4% of the city's area; the ghetto district occupied about 425 acres, of which 375 acres (approx. 152 hectares) was residential space. The Germans calculated a density of 6-7 people per room in the Warsaw Ghetto. According to calculations made after the war the density actually reached 9.2 people per room, while the population density of the ghetto as a whole rose to 128,000 per km2. The allocated living space of the ghetto in the town of Checiny was fixed at 2-2.5 m2 per person. In the small ghetto of Odrzywol, 700 people lived in an area previously occupied by 5 families, so that between 12 and 30 people had to share a single small room.

Warsaw and Lodz were the two largest ghettos, together housing nearly one-third of Polish Jews under Nazi control. Because of their size, the lack of food was a greater problem in these cities than in some of the smaller conurbations, where the Jewish labour force was employed outside the ghettos and trading with the local Polish population was possible. Nonetheless, malnutrition and disease stalked the ghettos. Rations were deliberately fixed at a level impossible to sustain life, and were often not delivered. When they were, they were frequently of the lowest possible quality and inedible. Only the smuggling of food and other essentials made survival possible.

In the Bialobrzegi Ghetto, Hillel Chill Igielman recalled:
"The only way to get food was to get out of the Jewish area, and try to get to farmhouses, but if you were caught by the Germans you were shot. We were very cold as we could not get any firewood to heat the house, so we tried to sneak out at night to break up wooden fences, but if you were caught doing this the Germans would shoot you. The Germans knew Jews were managing to escape to neighbouring villages, so they offered a reward of two pounds of sugar to any Pole who would point out a Jew they knew had sneaked out. This meant it was not just Germans we had to be on the lookout for but also Poles, especially young ones."

Begging for Food
Begging for Food
While an order of Adolf Hitler kept the Polish population at a minimal level of subsistence, the Jews, as the lowest rung on the Nazi's racial hierarchy, were officially denied even that degree of sustenance. Lodz provides a telling example. In October 1940, it was suggested that the Jews be provided with "prison fare." A few months later the auditor examining the ghetto administration's records calculated that Jews were being fed at the rate of 23 Pfennig (less than 1/4 RM) per person, per day, under half of the cost of prison fare. The situation became so desperate in January 1941 that potato scraps that had been delivered for horse fodder were diverted to the factory soup kitchens. In Warsaw, the military Oberfeldkommandant reported on 20 May 1941:
"The situation in the Jewish quarter is catastrophic. The corpses of those who have died of starvation lie in the streets. The death rate, 80% from malnutrition, has tripled since February. The only thing that is issued to the Jews is 1.5 pounds of bread per week. No one has yet been able to deliver potatoes, for which the Jewish council made a prepayment of several millions..."

It was no better in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. In his directive concerning the treatment of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ostland of 13 August 1941, Hinrich Lohse, the Reichskommissar, ordered:
"In the ghettos the Jews are to receive only as much food as the rest of the population can spare, but not more than is required for their bare subsistence. The same applies to the allocation of other essential goods."

The intolerable population density, inadequate hygienic and sanitary facilities – in the Lodz Ghetto 95% of apartments had no sanitation, piped water or sewers – almost complete lack of medical supplies, absence of fuel for heating, and starvation rations, combined to produce conditions in which sickness and epidemics were inevitable. Lice plagued the ghetto population. In the Kutno Ghetto, which the Germans nicknamed Krepierlager ("Pegging out Camp"), between March and December 1941, 42% of all deaths were typhus patients. The overall mortality rate during that period in Kutno was almost ten times the pre-war rate, for other contagious diseases were also commonplace. On 16 December 1941, Wilhelm Kube, Generalkommissar of Byelorussia wrote to Lohse, pointing out that there were 22 epidemics prevalent in Byelorussia at that time. No serum was available for their treatment. In Nazi ideology, the Jews had always been regarded as the bearers of disease. Now, because of the conditions the Nazis had themselves created, this took on the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Czestochowa
Czestochowa
If the pattern of establishment of the ghettos had been leisurely and lacked uniformity, that of the Judenräte (Jewish Councils) was both rapid and consistent. The Nazis had learned from the treatment of Jews in Germany the necessity of forming centralized Jewish organizations, through which their orders and decrees could be implemented. Heydrich's instructions of 21 September 1939 contained details of how the Judenräte were to be established, where possible from "authoritative personalities and rabbis." A decree of Hans Frank of 28 November 1939 stipulated that in communities numbering less than 10,000 Jews the Judenrat should consist of 12 members; in communities of more than 10,000 Jews there were to be 24 members. Many prominent Jews were reluctant to become members of a Judenrat. This was hardly surprising. It was evident that, insofar as the Judenräte were to have any authority, that authority would be derived from the Germans. In Grodno, for example, the Jewish community proposed that a body of representative Jews should not be formed, since this would only make it easier for the authorities to carry out their policy of persecution. Others advanced the argument that representatives were necessary to alleviate that very persecution. Where it was found impossible to find Jews prepared to serve on the Judenrat, as was the case in Lwow, the Germans themselves nominated the members. In Tarnopol (District Galicia) the first council members of the Judenrat were nominated three times. The selected members of the first and second councils were unacceptable to the Germans and almost all of these nominees, mainly pre-war Jewish activists and intellectuals, were executed.

The first responsibilities of the Judenräte were to conduct a census of the Jewish population, arrange the delivery of confiscated property and "fines", and provide a supply of Jewish forced labour. With the creation of the ghettos these duties expanded to include the provision of food, the management of housing, industry, and health, as well as the appointment of a ghetto police force (Ordnungsdienst). As incarceration changed to extermination, the Judenräte were forced to prepare lists of those to be transported to the death camps.
At first the Councils had no indication whatsoever of the true meaning of "resettlement". The Germans practised elaborate deceptions both before and during the Aktionen. In Rejowiec, the Council, assured by the authorities, calmed the people, saying that nothing untoward was going to happen to them. A few hours later the Council was ordered to call the Jews together on the outskirts of the town. All except the Council chairman were then deported. Where liquidation of the ghetto was accomplished in instalments, the Germans would lie reassuringly that the last Aktion was the final one.
As knowledge of the death camps spread, many Judenräte paid huge amounts in bribes in an attempt to avoid the deportations, sometimes succeeding in deferring these for a few days or weeks. But nothing could change the fate of the Jews.

The demand by the Germans for lists of deportees faced the Judenräte with an impossible dilemma. If they refused to provide the lists required, the Germans would simply choose those to be deported themselves in a random and doubtless brutal fashion. It was apparent that the ghetto as a whole could not be saved. Many Judenräte concluded that it was better to try and preserve the young, who would have a better chance of survival than the elderly and the sick, or large families with small children. The anguished choices involved are graphically illustrated by the description of the vice-chairman of the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto:
"The Council faced problems of conscience and responsibility at the same time… There were two alternatives… Either to comply, announce the Gestapo order to the ghetto inhabitants, and issue proper instructions to the Ghetto police; or openly to sabotage the order by disregarding it. The Council felt that if it followed the first alternative, part, or perhaps the majority, of the ghetto might yet be rescued at least for a time. Should however, the other alternative be chosen, heavy measures of persecution would follow against the entire ghetto, and possibly its immediate liquidation might result."

The Judenräte thus found themselves with an increasing number of terrible choices. Who was to be saved, who sacrificed? The members of the Councils were human beings, and accordingly subject to a common range of human frailties and virtues. Some co-operated with the Germans for reasons of personal advantage or ambition; others struggled for rational answers to irrational problems and in some cases forfeited their own lives rather than become accomplices to murder. One example among many; the vice-chairman of the Bilgoraj Judenrat, Hilel Janover, and three council members, Szymon Bin, Shmuel Leib Olender, and Ephraim Waksszul, were shot on 3 May 1942 for not executing an order to prepare a list of people for deportation to Belzec. Ultimately, whether they chose to co-operate or to resist, the fate of the Judenräte and the communities they served was to be the same, for nothing was to impede their annihilation.

The ghetto population was not static, particularly in the Generalgouvernement districts of Krakow, Radom and Lublin. Jews were transported to many ghettos from neighbouring smaller towns and villages, from other regions of Poland, and as the Aktion Reinhard camps emptied the ghettos of their original occupants, from other countries, such as Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, and Slovakia. A striking example is the city of Zamosc, where of the pre-war population of about 12,000 Jews, all bar an estimated 5,000 fled to the Soviet Union at the time of the German occupation. They were immediately replaced, however, by Jews from neighbouring villages and 8,000 Jews from the incorporated territories. As the deportations to Belzec began, other Jews were transported to the city from Germany and the Protectorate. Only a few of the Jews who had lived in Zamosc before the war survived until the liquidation of the ghetto and the last deportation to Izbica and subsequently to Belzec.
Despite the immensely harsh conditions and the extraordinary difficulties involved, Jewish religious and cultural life in the ghettos continued to be pursued, particularly in the larger cities. There are accounts of musical, operatic and theatrical performances, and many examples of poetry and artwork have survived to provide eloquent testimony to the terrible conditions of ghetto existence. Libraries were maintained and in Vilnius (Wilna) a museum was established. Although education was forbidden, children secretly attended school and adults continued to study religious texts. Jewish festivals and religious holidays were covertly observed, marriages celebrated and ritual circumcision performed on newly born male children.

Deportation
Deportation
The life span of the ghettos varied from place to place. Some existed for only a few months, others for more than two years. Lodz, the first major ghetto to be established in April 1940 was the last to be liquidated in August 1944. By the time of the final act, countless thousands had already died in the ghettos or had been executed on the outskirts of the towns in which they had lived.
On 19 July 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer / HSSPF Krakau) and Odilo Globocnik (SSPF Lublin) to eliminate the residual Jews of the Generalgouvernement. By 31 December 1942, no Jews were to remain unless they were in the ghettos of Warsaw, Krakow, Czestochowa, Radom and Lublin. By virtue of Himmler's order these ghettos were to become Sammellager, de facto concentration camps.
The Aktion Reinhard squad from Lublin, acting on Globocnik's orders and led by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, ordered the Jewish administration in the ghettos to select their fellow Jews for deportation. Hundreds were killed in every location during the course of these Aktionen. Long columns of starving victims marched to the assembly places, called Umschlagplatz. There the people were ordered to enter cattle cars, 100 or more to each wagon. The trains, consisting of as many as 50 wagons, transported the victims to the death camps every day. Hunger in the ghettos had reached unimaginable proportions. To encourage the Jews to voluntarily report for "evacuation", the Germans offered to provide those doing so with a bread ration. In Warsaw, 3kg (6.6 lbs) of bread and 1kg (2.2lbs) of marmalade or jam was the inducement to report for deportation. Thousands did so. Even the few who had led a life of relative comfort in the ghettos were unable to escape the murderous Aktionen. The deportees were largely ignorant of the destination of the transports, or of what awaited them, for the Nazis would use expressions such as "evacuation" or "resettlement to the East" in order to avoid panic. In time, a few Jews were able to escape from the death camps and tell about the true destination of the trains and the fate of those deported.

Some ghettos were only established in the second half of 1942, after the first deportations to the death camps. The ghettos that were organised at that time were in most cases closed, and officially were only for those people who had been selected for work. In fact, these ghettos were used as concentration points for those who had survived the first deportations in hiding places, and who had tried to find shelter outside of the Jewish districts. The "rest-ghettos" were established in several larger towns in the Generalgouvernement, as well as in smaller towns.
According an order by Krüger, Jews could still stay in 54 localities in the Generalgouvernement at the beginning of 1943. In May 1943 most of the "rest-ghettos" were liquidated and the Jews who were still able to work were deported to concentration and work camps such as Majdanek, Poniatowa, Trawniki, Plaszow, Budzyn, Janowska, Blizyn, Skarzysko-Kamienna or Szebnie. Others were killed in mass executions on the spot or were deported to the death camps, mainly to Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau or to the gas chambers at Majdanek.
Only a small group of Jewish specialists were left in a very few places. They were imprisoned in strictly separated work camps or in Gestapo prisons after the final deportations; they worked mainly for local SD offices until as late as July 1944, as in Lublin and Chelm.

There is a common misconception that the Jews did not resist their persecutors, going passively to their deaths. Resistance can take many forms, from armed struggle to simply a determination to survive. Many of the victims were incapable of opposition – elderly persons, mothers, children, worn down by years of neglect and abuse. Physical resistance was often only possible for politically motivated young adults. There were many examples of this. Among the best known are the ghetto uprisings in Warsaw and Bialystok, but armed resistance also occurred in ghettos such as Czestochowa, Minsk Mazowiecki, Vilnius, and Bedzin.
Faced by well-armed and trained troops, and surrounded by a native population who were largely indifferent to their fate, the failure of these uprisings was never in doubt. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and these acts of armed resistance by Jews, however hopeless, were to have consequences that still resound today, for they were to provide those who survived with a determination that Jews would never again become helpless victims.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of life in the ghettos was the determination of the Jews to record their experiences. In Warsaw, on the initiative of Dr Joseph Milejkowski, a group of doctors began research into the clinical aspects of the starvation from which they themselves were suffering. In many ghettos, a communal chronicle or diary was maintained. Some of these have been either entirely or partially lost; those that have survived are considered the most important accounts of ghetto life, among them the "Warsaw Oneg Shabbat Archive" of Dr Emanuel Ringelblum, and diaries of Adam Czerniakow and Chaim Kaplan, as well as the composite chronicles of the Lodz and Kovno (Kaunas) ghettos. Other testimonies were maintained by people who felt compelled to document their personal experiences for posterity. One of these was Stefan Ernest, who succeeded in escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto to the "Aryan" side of the city in January 1943. In hiding as the ghetto was liquidated, and knowing he could not survive, he wrote a history of the ghetto, concluding with these words:
"…I wish to repay fate for giving me a few weeks extension of life and to give testimony as to how things really were. I want to believe and I do believe that my voice will not be alone in describing these events and that there are and will be others who will present evidence as well. Better, comprehensive, exact… The struggle to save myself is hopeless… But – that's not important. Because I am able to bring my account to its end and trust that it will see the light of day when the time is right… And people will know what happened… And they will ask, is this the truth? I reply in advance: No, this is not the truth, this is only a small part, a tiny fraction of the truth… Even the mightiest pen could not depict the whole, real, essential truth."

In the Lodz Ghetto, Jozef Zelkowicz wrote:
"Son of man, go out into the streets. Soak in the unconscious terror of the newborn babies about to be slaughtered. Be strong. Keep your heart from breaking so you'll be able to describe, carefully and clearly, what happened in the ghetto during the first days of September in the year one thousand, nine hundred and forty two."

For descriptions of a range of ghettos see:
Biala Podlaska, Bialystok, Bochnia, Brody, Czestochowa, Grodno, Jaworow, Kielce, Kolomyja, Krakow, Krasnystaw, Lodz, Lubartow, Lublin, Lvov, Miedzyrzec Podlaski, Minsk, Piotrkow Trybunalski, Przemysl, Radom, Radomsko, Rawa Ruska, Riga, Rzeszow, Siedlce, Tarnow, Terezin (Theresienstadt), Tluszcz, Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Vilnius, Warszawa (Warsaw), Zamosc, Zwolen.
For a town in which a ghetto was not established see:
Jozefow Bilgorajski.

See the ARC Ghetto List!

Map:
Sir Martin Gilbert *

Sources:
Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1990
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003
Gutman Yisrael. The Jews Of Warsaw 1939-1943, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989
Arad Yitzhak, Gutman Israel and Margaliot Abraham, eds. Documents On The Holocaust, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1999
Browning, Christopher R. The Origins of the Final Solution – The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939 – March 1942, William Heinemann, London, 2004
Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000
Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat – The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1996
Dobroszycki, Lucjan, ed. The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941-1944, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1984
Herbert, Ulrich, ed. National Socialist Extermination Policies – Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2000
Gilbert, Martin. The Boys – Triumph Over Adversity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996
Adelson, Alan and Lapides Roberts, eds. Lodz Ghetto – Inside a Community Under Siege, Viking Penguin, New York, 1989
Eisenbach, Artur. Hitlerowska polityka zaglady Zydow. (Hitler`s Policy of Annihilation of the Jews), Warszawa 1961
Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw: Testimonies by Survivors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ghetto

© ARC (http://www.deathcamps.org) 2005