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This article presents a list of locations where the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland were established during World War II. The ghetto system had been imposed by Nazi Germany roughly between October 1939 and July 1942 in order to confine Poland's Jewish population of 3.5 million for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. In smaller towns, the ghettos often served as staging points for Jewish slave-labor and mass deportations, while in the urban centers they resembled walled-off prison-islands described by some historians as little more than instruments of "slow, passive murder," with dead bodies littering the streets. In most cases, the large ghettos did not correspond to traditional Jewish neighborhoods. As a result, the displaced non-Jewish Poles and members of other ethnic groups were ordered to take up residence elsewhere. Smaller Jewish communities with populations under 500 were dissolved immediately following the invasion.

The Holocaust

The liquidation of the Jewish ghettos across Poland was closely connected with the formation of highly secretive killing centers built in early 1942 by various German companies, for the sole purpose of annihilating a people. The Nazi extermination program depended on death factories as much as on the effectiveness of their railways. Rail transport enabled the SS to run industrial-scale mass-extermination facilities and, at the same time, openly lie to their victims about the "resettlement" program. Jews were delivered to their deaths in cattle trucks from liquidated ghettos of all occupied cities, including Litzmannstadt, the last ghetto in Poland to be emptied in August 1944. In some larger ghettos there were armed resistance attempts, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising and the Łachwa Ghetto uprising, but in every case they failed against the overwhelming German military force, and the remaining Jews were either executed or deported to the death camps. By the time Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe was liberated by the Red Army, not a single Jewish ghetto in Poland was left standing. Only about 50,000–120,000 Polish Jews survived the war on native soil with the assistance of their Polish neighbors, a fraction of their prewar population of 3,500,000.

In total, according to USHMM archives, "The Germans established at least 1000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone." The list of locations of the Jewish ghettos within the borders of prewar and postwar Poland is compiled with the understanding that their inhabitants were either of Polish nationality from before the invasion, or had strong historical ties with Poland. Also, not all ghettos are listed here due to their transient nature. Permanent ghettos were created only in settlements with rail connections, because the food aid (paid by the Jews themselves) was completely dependant on the Germans, making even the potato-peels a hot commodity. Throughout 1940 and 1941, most ghettos were sealed off from the outside, walled off or enclosed with barbed wire, and many Jews found leaving them were shot. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe, with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of 1.3 square miles (3.4 km), or 7.2 persons per room. The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 inmates. In documents and signage, the Nazis usually referred to the ghettos which they built as 'Jüdischer Wohnbezirk' or 'Wohngebiet der Juden'; meaning 'Jewish Quarter'. By the end of 1941, most Polish Jews were already ghettoized, even though the Germans knew that the system was unsustainable, with most inmates having no chance of earning their own keep, and subsiding without any savings left to pay the SS for further deliveries. The quagmire was resolved at the Wannsee conference of 20 January 1942 near Berlin, where the "Final Solution" (die Endlösung der Judenfrage) was set in place.

Table of Jewish ghettos created by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland

The settlements listed in the Polish language, including major cities, had been all renamed after the 1939 joint invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union. Renaming everything in their own image had been one way in which the invaders sought to redraw Europe's political map. All Polish territories were confiscated as either Nazi zones of occupation (i.e. Bezirk Bialystok, Provinz Ostpreußen, Reichskommissariat Ostland, etc.), or Soviet brand-new extensions to the two fledging western republics, soon overrun again in Operation Barbarossa. The names of ghetto locations in both other languages are available through active links.

For a chronological list of ghetto operations, please use table-sort buttons.

Aftermath

The ghetto inhabitants – most of whom were killed during Operation Reinhard – possessed Polish citizenship before the Nazi–Soviet invasion of Poland, which in turn enabled over 150,000 Holocaust survivors registered at CKŻP to take advantage of the later repatriation agreements between the governments of Poland and the Soviet Union, and legally emigrate to the West to help form the ascent State of Israel. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah without visas or exit permits upon the conclusion of World War II. By contrast, Stalin forcibly brought Soviet Jews back to USSR along with all Soviet citizens, as agreed to in the Yalta Conference.

Notes and references

1. Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987.
2. Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1960.  Template:Pl icon
3. ^ The statistical data compiled on the basis of "Glossary of 2,077 Jewish towns in Poland" by Virtual Shtetl Museum of the History of the Polish Jews  Template:En icon, as well as "Getta Żydowskie," by Gedeon,  Template:Pl icon and "Ghetto List" by Michael Peters at www.deathcamps.org/occupation/ghettolist.htm  Template:En icon. Some figures might require further confirmation due to their comparative range. Accessed June 21, 2011.
4. ^ Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006, p. 114.
5. "The War Against The Jews." The Holocaust Chronicle, 2009. Chicago, Il. Accessed June 21, 2011.
6. ^ Dwork, Deborah and Robert Jan Van Pelt,The Construction of Crematoria at Auschwitz, W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.
7. Cecil Adams, "Did Krups, Braun, and Mercedes-Benz make Nazi concentration camp ovens?"
8. Jewish Virtual Library, Łódź. Overview of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto's history. Accessed June 27, 2011.
9. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Online Exhibition: Give Me Your Children: Voices from the Lodz Ghetto
10. University of Minnesota, Majdanek Death Camp
11. Kraków Ghetto including photographs, at www.krakow-poland.com.
12. About Kraków Ghetto with valuable historical photographs. Template:Pl icon
13. "Schindler's Krakow," with modern-day photographs of the WWII relics.
14. The Kraków Ghetto complete with contemporary picture gallery, at JewishKrakow.net
15. ^ Edward Victor, "Ghettos and Other Jewish Communities." Judaica Philatelic. Accessed June 20, 2011. Cite error: The named reference "ushmm-7445" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
16. Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust, University Press of Kentucky 1989 - 201 pages. Page 13; also in Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944, University Press of Kentucky, 1986, Google Print, p.13.
17. Gunnar S. Paulsson, "The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland," Journal of Holocaust Education, Vol.7, Nos.1&2, 1998, pp.19-44. Published by Frank Cass, London.
18. ^ Peter Vogelsang & Brian B. M. Larsen, "The Ghettos of Poland." The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 2002.
19. Warsaw Ghetto, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Washington, D.C.
20. ^ Ghettos, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Cite error: The named reference "ushmm.org" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
21. François Furet, Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. Schocken Books (1989), p. 182; ISBN 0805240519
22. ^ First Jewish ghetto established in Piotrkow Trybunalski: October 8, 1939. Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
23. Maciej i Ewa Szaniawscy, "Zagłada Żydów w Będzinie w świetle relacji" (Extermination of Jews in the light of testimony).  Template:Pl icon According to 1946 research by Wojewódzka Żydowska Komisja Historyczna in Katowice, wrote Maciej i Ewa Szaniawscy, there were around 30,000 Jews in Będzin following the invasion, including those who came in from neighbouring settlements. Between October 1940 and May 1942, the first 4,000 Jews were deported. In May 1942 additional 2,000 and in August, 5,000 more. Deportations between August 1942 and mid June 1943 amounted to additional 5,000. On 22 June 1943 the next transport of 5,000 Jews departed to Auschwitz, and finally, between 1-3 August 1943, the remaining 8,000 were sent away. The dispersed Jews who stayed, amounting to 1,000 persons, were deported between early October 1943 and July 1944. In total, about 28,000 Jews are believed to have been deported from the Będzin Ghetto. This information however, is not confirmed by the two main sources of the remaining data nor the Jewish Historical Institute, listing only 7,000 victims.
24. Będzin in the Jewish Historical Institute community database. Warsaw.
25. Iwona Pogorzelska, Bodzentyn od 1869 roku do niepodległości. Polska.pl. Accessed June 16, 2011.
26. "Getto w Łowiczu," at Miejsca martyrologii, Wirtualny Sztetl. Instytut Adama Mickiewicza.  Template:Pl icon
27. "Cmentarz żydowski w Mogielnicy (Jewish cemetery in Mogielnica)," at Kirkuty.xip.pl.
28. Angelika Lasiewicz-Sych, "An Essay of Traces of the Past," published in Kultura Współczesna nr 4 (38) 2003
29. ^ Piotrków Trybunalski – Getto w Piotrkowie Trybunalskim. Virtual Shtetl. Museum of the History of the Polish Jews. Accessed July 1, 2011.
30. ^ Holocaust: "The Jews in the County of Cracau (sic)." The JewishGen ShtetLinks. Accessed June 28, 2011.
31. Ćmielów – Historia, Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Wirtualny Sztetl.
32. ^ The Hrubieszow Genealogy Group. ShtetLinks Project. Accessed June 30,2011.
33. The 90th session of the Senate of the Republic of Poland. Stenograph, part 2.2. A Report by Leon Kieres, president of the Institute of National Remembrance, for the period from July 1, 2,000 to June 30, 2001. Donald Tusk presiding. See statement by Senator Jadwiga Stokarska.  Template:Pl icon
34. ^ Jack Kugelmass, Jonathan Boyarin, Zachary M. Baker, From a ruined garden: the memorial books of Polish Jewry, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed June 27, 2011.
35. Jack Fischel, The Holocaust, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998, pg. 58; in Google Books.
36. ^ "Treblinka Death Camp Day-by-Day," at Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (www.HolocaustResearchProject.org). Accessed June 30, 2011.
37. Piotr Berghof, "Radoszyce, wspomnienie o żydowskich mieszkańcach miasteczka."  Template:Pl icon. Accessed June 27, 2011.
38. ^ Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder (2001). "The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust". NYU Press. p. 1255. ISBN 0814793568. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
39. "Tarnobrzeg. Warto zobaczyć" (Tarnobrzeg worth seeing), Wydawnictwo Bezdroża. Accessed June 27, 2011.
40. Wadowice – Historia. Wirtualny Sztetl.  Template:Pl icon. Accessed June 27, 2011.
41. "Chronology of Vilna Ghetto," at Vilnaghetto.com without additional confirmation of quantitative data. Accessed June 24, 2011.
42. "The Deportation of the Zabludow Jews to Treblinka Death Camp." 2003 Tilford Bartman, Jerusalem, Israel.
43. Gmina Sucha Beskidzka, powiat suski. Targeo.  Template:Pl icon. Accessed June 27, 2011.
44. Stefan Krakowski, Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed June24, 2001.
45. "The History of Miedzyrzec Podlaski." Association of Immigrants of Mezritch Depodalsia Area in Israel. Accessed July 5, 2011.
46. "Mezritch (Międzyrzec) Podlaski in the Jewish sources." Association of Immigrants of Mezritch Depodalsia. Accessed June 16, 2011.
47. Philipp Ther, Ana Siljak (2001). "Redrawing nations: ethnic cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948". Rowman & Littlefield. p. 138. ISBN 0742510948. Retrieved May 11, 2011.
48. Devorah Hakohen, Immigrants in turmoil: mass immigration to Israel and its repercussions... Syracuse University Press, 2003 - 325 pages. Page 70. ISBN 0-8156-2969-9
49. Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust politics: Britain, the United States & Jewish refugees, 1945-1948. Page 15. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2620-0 Accessed June 20, 2011.

• The Holocaust in Poland
• Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland