Life in the Ghettos

Conditions in the ghetto were unbearable with overcrowding, disease, and starvation infiltrating every part of the closed in space. The Warsaw Ghetto reached its highest population April 1941, with an estimated 460,000 residence and around 85,000 of that number were children under the age of 14. On average, living spaces may contain 8 to 10 people per room and were extremely unsanitary conditions. Food and other supplies were purposely limited by the Nazi administration and smuggling, mainly by children, became one of the only options to provide food to the inhabitants of the ghetto. Starvation, overpopulation and limited medical care also brought disease to the ghetto including a typhus outbreak. Between 1940-1942, 92,000 people died, around 20% of the population, which led many to try and escape from the ghetto. The Nazi government warned that anyone caught trying to escape would face face and anyone that provided assistance in an escape would meet the same fate.

The captives in the Warsaw Ghetto faced daily threats of violence and death from the Nazi soldiers and German police in charge of securing the ghetto.

Forced labor was made compulsory for all Jewish men and boys (14-60) on October 26, 1939. The Nazi administration used the captives in the ghettos to supplement the war effort through harsh, physical labor. Many of the Jews in the ghetto worked in factors of war profiteers looking to amass wealth from the war and exploit the cheap, and often free, labor of the ghetto. Workers in the factories were often safe from deportation early in the war, but by 1943 even these workers were not kept from the camps. In 1943, one factory owner transferred his business, including 10,000 Jewish slave workers, to the Poniatowa concentration camp and another sent 6,000 to the Trawniki concentration camp. Once Jewish labor was no longer needed, or useful, they faced deportation to the camps.