The Role Of The Warsaw Ghetto In The Holocaust

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The years of 1933 to 1945 are known throughout the world as the Era of the Holocaust. Throughout this time, countless Jews were confined into harsh ghettos and concentration camps, and treated inhumanely. One of these ghettos was known as the Warsaw Ghetto, located in Warsaw, Poland. According to the the article “Warsaw,” from the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “The Warsaw Jewish community was the largest in both Poland and Europe” (1). As a result, it makes sense that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party would establish a ghetto within the city, and concentration and extermination camps nearby. According to Mitchell Hurvitz, the author of “Warsaw Ghetto,” the Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto ever established by the Nazis. (Hurvitz 1) The Warsaw Ghetto plays the role of a perpetrator in the Holocaust because it robbed Jews of their basic human rights, it confined Jews into harsh living conditions, and it held Jews until they could be deported to extermination camps for their execution. To begin, the Warsaw …show more content…

Any Jewish inhabitant of the ghetto that escaped, or even attempted to escape, would be shot immediately ( Hill 228). This prevented countless Jews from making their attempt to reach freedom. Also, even if they did attempt escape, they still had to surpass the “three - meter high wall topped with barbed wire and broken glass.“ (Dreifuss 902) This wall made escaping nearly impossible, and therefore, confined Jews into what was essentially “death row.” For Warsaw Jews, at the end of “death row” was typically the Treblinka killing center. According to the article “Warsaw Ghetto” from History in Literature, “250,000 Jews were murdered in Treblinka.” (Warsaw Ghetto 1) Therefore, the Warsaw Ghetto is to blame for the death of those 250,000 Jews, because it held them there until they could be

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