The Lódz ghetto
The German Einsatzgruppen, or "the killing squad" went from town to town, shooting Jewish women, children, and men as well as communists or others who were considered ideology or racially dangerous. The Jewish people who survived these raids were sent to ghettos. There were Ghettos created all over Eastern Europe during the 1940s but one of the largest one was located in Lódz, Poland. Lódz held about 165, 000 Jewish people in a small area of 4 sq. km. Jewish people received very little food and because of the overcrowding, there were many different diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis that spread amongst the population. Diseases and starvation alone killed 500,000 Jewish people in the ghettos.
In 1942, the Nazis began deporting Jewish people from the ghettos as a part of an operation called Reinhard. The Reinhard operation's goal was to systematically Jewish people in the General Government sector of German-occupied Poland. From 1942-1944, the ghettos were liquidated and the inhabitants were either shot or transported to concentration camps.
Looking closely at the Ghettos we can see how there were steps that slowly got rid of more and more Jewish people and in more and more extreme ways. However, if Hitler would've started with his last step, which was the systematic murder in concentration camps, I don't think that he would've received the support in order to do this. By going step by step, the steps didn't feel very drastic and people were, therefore, naive to Hitler's actions. He started by boycotting their businesses and working his way up. For the Jewish people, they watched their community be destroyed and their people killed and I assume most of them realized that even if they survived the Einsatzgruppen, and made it to the ghettos, they would either be killed there by a disease, or the would be killed in the concentration camps. I think looking back at this as a whole, it is scary to see how Hitler was able to push little by little to work up to a terrifying finish when the original plans seemed relatively harmless.
Source: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/ghettos-in-the-holocaust
In 1942, the Nazis began deporting Jewish people from the ghettos as a part of an operation called Reinhard. The Reinhard operation's goal was to systematically Jewish people in the General Government sector of German-occupied Poland. From 1942-1944, the ghettos were liquidated and the inhabitants were either shot or transported to concentration camps.
Looking closely at the Ghettos we can see how there were steps that slowly got rid of more and more Jewish people and in more and more extreme ways. However, if Hitler would've started with his last step, which was the systematic murder in concentration camps, I don't think that he would've received the support in order to do this. By going step by step, the steps didn't feel very drastic and people were, therefore, naive to Hitler's actions. He started by boycotting their businesses and working his way up. For the Jewish people, they watched their community be destroyed and their people killed and I assume most of them realized that even if they survived the Einsatzgruppen, and made it to the ghettos, they would either be killed there by a disease, or the would be killed in the concentration camps. I think looking back at this as a whole, it is scary to see how Hitler was able to push little by little to work up to a terrifying finish when the original plans seemed relatively harmless.
Source: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/ghettos-in-the-holocaust
The way you describe Hitlers plan to get rid of Jewish people slowly reminds me of this thing I remember reading, that if you put a frog in boiling water it'll jump out right away but if you put it in cold water and heat it up slowly, it'll get cooked because it doesn't notice. This kind of reminds me of the Jewish people and also the Germans, who stayed sedentary and nonreactive until it was too late and people were being killed. I think paired with the slowly but always increasing bad treatment of Jews was also a hatred of Jews that previously existed in Germany but was fueled by Hitler, and so they were able to justify some part of the actions that were taken.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good post! I like how well you explain what happened to the Jews in the Lódz ghetto. The most interesting, and scariest part for me is the part where you talk about how, basically, it was a lose-lose situation for the Jews. If they were able to survive the Einsatzgruppen, and were able to get back to the ghetto, they would most likely be killed in the death camps, or killed by diseases. This is scary because no one wants to be killed, and there was nothing anyone else could really do about what was happening, even though they knew what was going on.
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