Jewish ghettos in Europe existed because
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s were viewed as that they were foreigners due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Renaissance Christian environment. As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities. The character of ghettos has varied through times. In some cases, the ghetto was a
Jewish quarterIn the Jewish Diaspora, a Jewish quarter is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were often the outgrowths of segregated ghettos instituted by the surrounding Christian authorities. A Yiddish term for a Jewish quarter or...
with a relatively affluent population (for instance the Jewish ghetto in Venice). In other cases, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during
pogromA pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers...
s, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during
ChristmasChristmas , also referred to as Christmas Day, is an annual holiday celebrated on December 25 that commemorates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The day marks the beginning of the larger season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days. The nativity of Jesus, which is the basis for the anno Domini...
, Pesach, and
Easter WeekEaster Week or Bright Week is the period of seven days from Easter Sunday through the Saturday following.-Western Church:In the Latin Rite of Roman Catholicism, Anglican and other Western churches, Easter Week is the week beginning with the Christian feast of Easter and ending a week later on...
to prevent the Jews from leaving during those times.
In the 19th century, Jewish ghettos were progressively abolished, and their walls demolished, following the ideals of the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
. The
NazisNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
re-instituted Jewish ghettos before and during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in Eastern Europe.
Germany
- Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2008 population of 670,000. The urban area had an estimated population of 2.26 million in 2001...
From its creation to its dissolution at the end of the 18th century, the city councils limited expansion in the Judengasse, resulting in a steady increase in population to the point of overcrowding. The original area of about a dozen houses with around 100 inhabitants, grew to almost 200 houses and some 3,000 inhabitants. The plots, originally quite generous, were successively divided while the total size of the ghetto remained the same. This increased the number of plots but subsequently reduced the size of each plot. In the process, many houses were replaced by two or more houses which were often divided in turn. Many of the houses were designed to be narrow and long, in order to maximize the limited space – the smallest house, the Rote Hase, was only about one and a half meters wide.
Italy
- Some ancient Ghettos in Piedmont
Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,399 km
2 and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the so-called Occitan Valleys...
, where Judæo-PiedmonteseJudæo-Piedmontese was the vernacular language of the Jews living in Piedmont, Italy, from about the 15th Century until the Second World War.The dialect was based on the Piedmontese language, with many loans from ancient Hebrew, and also languages like Provençal and Spanish, since many Piedmontese...
(a kind of Piedmontese languagePiedmontese , is a Romance language spoken by over 2 million people in Piedmont, northwest Italy. It is geographically and linguistically included in the Northern Italian group...
with Hebrew words was spoken): TurinTurin is a major city as well as a business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River surrounded by the Alpine arch...
, MoncalvoMoncalvo is a city and commune in the Province of Asti in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 45 km east of Turin and about 15 km northeast of Asti on the national road SS 547 which links Asti to Casale Monferrato and Vercelli...
, VercelliVercelli is a city of about 47,000 inhabitants in the Province of Vercelli, Piedmont, northern Italy. One of the oldest urban sites in northern Italy, it was founded, according to most historians, around the year 600 BC.The city is situated on the river Sesia in the plain of the river Po between...
, Casale MonferratoCasale Monferrato is a town in the Piedmont region of north-west Italy, part of the province of Alessandria. It is situated about 60 km east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Monferrato hills. Beyond the river lies the vast plain of the Po...
, AlessandriaAlessandria is a city in Piedmont, Italy, and the capital of the Province of Alessandria. The city is sited on the alluvial plane between the Tanaro and the Bormida rivers, c...
, AstiAsti is a city and comune of c. 75,000 inhabitants located in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy, about 55 kilometres east of Turin in the plain of the Tanaro River. It is the capital of the province of Asti and it is deemed to be the modern capital of Monferrato.-Ancient times and early...
, IvreaIvrea is a town and commune of the province of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Situated on the road leading to the Aosta Valley , it straddles the Dora Baltea and is regarded as the centre of the Canavese area. Ivrea lies in a basin that, in prehistoric times, formed a great lake...
, CarmagnolaCarmagnola is a comune in the Province of Turin in the Italian region Piedmont, located 29 km south of Turin. As of July 11, 2007, it had a population of 27,043 and an area of 96.4 km²....
, Bra
- The Roman Ghetto
The Roman Ghetto was located in the rione Sant'Angelo, in the area surrounded by today's Via del Portico d'Ottavia, Lungotevere dei Cenci, Via del Progresso and Via di Santa Maria del Pianto close to the Tiber and the Theater of Marcellus, in Rome, Italy.Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, promulgated...
, RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
In 1565,
Pope Paul IVPope Paul IV , né Giovanni Pietro Carafa, was Pope from 23 May 1555 until his death.Giovanni Pietro Carafa was born in Capriglia Irpina, near Avellino, into a prominent noble family of Naples...
created the Roman Ghetto and issued
papal bullA Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a pope. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end to authenticate it....
Cum nimis absurdumCum nimis absurdum was a papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV dated July 14, 1555. It takes its name from its first words: "Since it is absurd and utterly inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal slavery..."...
, forcing Jews to live in a specified area. The area of Rome chosen for the ghetto was the most undesirable quarter of the city, owing to constant flooding by the
Tiber RiverThe Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...
. At the time of its founding, the four-block area was designated to contain roughly 1,000 inhabitants. However, over the years, the Jewish community grew, which caused severe overcrowding. Since the area could not expand horizontally (the ghetto was surrounded by high walls), the Jews built vertical additions to their houses, which blocked the sun from reaching the already dank and narrow streets. Life in the Roman Ghetto was one of crushing poverty, due to the severe restrictions placed upon the professions that Jews were allowed to perform. This was the last of the original ghettos to be abolished in Western Europe; not until 1882, when the kingdom of Italy conquered Rome from the
PopeThe pope is the Bishop of Rome and, as such, is leader of the worldwide Catholic Church...
, was the Ghetto finally opened, with the walls themselves being torn down in 1888. Due to the three hundred plus years of isolation from the rest of the city, the Jews of the Roman Ghetto developed their own
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
, known as Giudeo-romanesco, which differs from the dialect of the rest of the city in its preservation of 16th-century dialectical forms and its liberal use of romanized
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
words.
- The Venetian Ghetto
The Venetian Ghetto was the area of Venice in which Jews were compelled to live under the Venetian Republic. It is from its name, in the Venetian language, that the word "ghetto", used in many languages, is derived.-Etymology:...
, VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
Although there is evidence indicating the presence of Jews in the Venetian area dating back to the first few centuries A.D., fjand early 16th centuries (until 1516), no Jew was allowed to live anywhere in the city of Venice for more than 15 days per year; so most of them lived in Venice's possessions on the
terrafirma. At its maximum, the population of the Ghetto reached 3,000. In exchange for their loss of freedom, the Jews were granted the right to a Jew's coat (the colour yellow was considered humiliating, as it was associated with prostitutes). The gates were locked at night, and the Jewish community was forced to pay the salaries of the patrolmen who guarded the gates and patrolled the canals that surrounded the Ghetto. The Ghetto was abolished after the fall of the Republic of Venice to Napoleon.
To place Venetian provisions requiring groups in the city to live in compulsory quarters in historical context, it should be noted that:
- Merchants from the Germanic lands were required to reside in a special building known as the 'Fondaco dei Tedeschi
The Fondaco dei Tedeschi is a historical building in Venice, northern Italy, situated on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge...
'.
- Turkish merchants were restricted to the palazzo known as the Fondaco dei Turchi
The Fondaco dei Turchi is a Byzantine-style palazzo on the Grand Canal of Venice, northern Italy.-Early history:...
.
United Kingdom
- East End of London
The East End of London, known vernacularly as the East End, is the area of London, England, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames, although it is not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries...
- Sedgley Park
Sedgley Park is a suburban area of Prestwich, a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Bury, in Greater Manchester, England. Sedgley Park is roughly bounded to the north by Scholes Lane, to the east by Bury Old Road and to the west by Bland Road/George Street....
, ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
- Gorbals
The Gorbals is an area on the south bank of the river Clyde in the city of Glasgow, Scotland.The area was traditionally home to large numbers of mixed immigrants from Italy and Ireland, as well as at one stage housing the vast majority of Scotland's Jewish population...
, GlasgowGlasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
historically.
Ghettos during the Second World War and The Holocaust
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, ghettos were established by the
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
to confine Jews into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern and Central Europe. Starting in 1939,
Adolf EichmannOtto Adolf Eichmann , sometimes referred to as "the architect of the Holocaust", was a Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer...
, head of the
Final SolutionThe Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
program, began to systematically move Polish Jews into designated areas of large Polish cities. The first large ghetto at
Tuliszkow Tuliszków is a town in Turek County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland, with 3,406 inhabitants . It was also home to the first Jewish Ghetto established by Nazi Germany during the World War II. The walls for the ghetto were estimated to have been raised in December 1939, or January 1940.
...
was established in December 1939 or January 1940, followed by the Łódź Ghetto in April 1940 and the
Warsaw GhettoThe Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, located in the territory of General Government in occupied Poland during World War II.-Creation:...
in October 1940, with many other ghettos established throughout 1940 and 1941. The Ghettos were walled off, and any Jew found leaving them was shot. The
Warsaw GhettoThe Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, located in the territory of General Government in occupied Poland during World War II.-Creation:...
was the largest of these Ghettos, with 380,000 people and the Łódź Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000.
The situation in the ghettos was brutal. In
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
, 30% of the population were forced to live in 2.4% of the city's area, a density of 9.2 people per room. In the ghetto of
OdrzywolOdrzywół may refer to the following places:*Odrzywół, Przysucha County in Masovian Voivodeship *Odrzywół, Warsaw West County in Masovian Voivodeship *Odrzywół, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship...
, 700 people lived in an area previously occupied by 5 families, between 12 and 30 to each small room. The Jews were not allowed out of the ghetto, so they had to rely on replenishments supplied by the Nazis: in Warsaw this was 181
calorieThe calorie is a pre-SI metric unit of energy. The unit was first defined by Professor Nicolas Clément in 1824 as a unit of heat. This definition entered French and English dictionaries between 1841 and 1867. In most fields its use is archaic, having been replaced by the SI unit of energy, the joule...
s per Jew, compared to 669 calories per non-Jewish Pole and 2,613 calories per German. With crowded living conditions,
starvationStarvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage, and eventually death...
diets, and little
sanitationSanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
(in the Łódź Ghetto 95% of
apartmentAn apartment, or flat, is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Such a building may be called an apartment building, especially if it consists of many apartments for rent...
s had no sanitation, piped water or
sewerA sanitary sewer is a type of underground carriage system, , for transporting sewage from houses or industry to treatment or disposal...
s) hundreds of thousands of Jews died of disease and starvation.
In 1942, the Nazis began
Operation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the beginning of the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
, the systematic
deportationDeportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The expulsion of natives is also called banishment, exile, or penal transportation. Deportation is an ancient practice: Khosrau I, Sassanid King of Persia, deported 292,000 citizens, slaves, and conquered people...
to extermination camps during
the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany,...
. The authorities deported Jews from everywhere in Europe to the ghettos of the East, or directly to the extermination camps -- almost 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto alone to Treblinka over the course of 52 days. In some of the Ghettos the local
resistance organizationA resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to fighting an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign nation through either the use of physical force, or nonviolence. The term resistance is generally used to designate movement considered...
s started
Ghetto uprisingsGhetto uprisings were armed revolts by Jews and other groups incarcerated in German Nazi ghettos during World War II against the plans to deport the inhabitants to concentration and extermination camps....
, none were successful, and the Jewish populations of the ghettos were almost entirely killed.