The Ghettos of the Holocaust

As Albert Einstein once said, “The world is too dangerous to live in, not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen.” The horrific accounts told of the Holocaust, inside the ghettos, symbolize the negligence shown to others during World War II. World War II started with Germany attacking Poland on September 1, 1939 (World War II in Europe). Many citizens of the surrounding countries were terrified because of the horrendous acts they heard of. Hitler took over and tried to kill as many Jews as he could. The word ghetto did not originate during the time of the Holocaust; ghettos have been referred to the sixteenth century (Ghettos). Ghettos were areas closed off from the surrounding cities, which were bordered with walls or fences. The different types of ghettos varied in size. The smallest ghetto house could hold at least three-thousand people. The largest ghetto was the Warsaw, and it could hold four-hundred thousand people. The second largest ghetto could hold sixteen-hundred thousand citizens and that was Lodz (The Ghettos). While World War II went on, there were three types of ghettos: open ghettos, closed ghettos, and destructive ghettos (Life in the Ghettos).

Open ghettos were not set up as often as the other types of ghettos. The open ghettos had certain rules for coming in and out of the area they were in (Types of Ghettos). Walls and fences were uncharacteristic of open ghettos, making the living conditions more favorable than the other types of ghettos. The Belchatow ghetto is an example of an open ghetto. The ghetto was established there between 1940 and 1941. The residents were able to travel outside the ghetto only during certain hours (Belchatow). Another example for an ope...

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