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The mass genocide of Jews in Europe is one of the bloodiest events of the twentieth century’s history and studying it is necessary for preventing similar problems in the future. People were imprisoned and murdered based on their ethnicity, and as World War II emerged, crimes against them went viral around the continent (Ruminski 27). It is crucial to explore how the ethnic group lived in specific areas and what professions or social class representatives were at the highest risk to understand how the dreadful offense occurred. This paper aims to discuss how Jews in Eastern European ghettos survived prior to being aware of mass genocide.
Jewish communities existed in multiple Eastern European countries, and mass persecution of this ethnicity took an important place in the history of Poland, Russia, and Lithuania. As the Polish regulations limited the residency of the Jews, the inhabitants occupied the rural areas and established shtetlach, the towns which were later seized by Nazi Germany (Ruminski 29). Before World War II, Jewish communities succeeded in building strong cultural and economic structures and becoming involved in politics and administration. Consequently, the government workers were the first to persecute and spread knowledge about the upcoming dreadful ghettoization and crimes against the Jews. As the genocide began spreading in Eastern European countries, the wealthiest people were able to emigrate to survive, and the who Jewish stayed suffered to death or were killed by the Nazis.
The Nazis controlled more than two million Jews in Poland as Germany invaded the county and eliminated their administration. Jewish people were moved to ghettos where they were used for hard labor, experiments, and murder. The areas were too small to fit the population, and families lived in crowded, unsanitary housing (Ruminski 39). Furthermore, people were underfed, had insufficient clothing, and were forced to trade their valuables or steal to survive. Jewish families had friends outside the ghettos who helped them get food and vital things through the narrow wall holes that separated the area (Ruminski 42). Children were involved in labor to survive and took advantage by crawling into facilities where they could bring bread for their parents and siblings. Suffering was a daily part of life for people in the Polish ghettos; however, they managed to survive by addressing their basic needs and maintaining strong community bonding.
Mass genocide of the Jews was a part of Hitler’s regime and spread in Europe as the German invasions happened in European countries. The Einsatzgruppen special groups swept through Jewish communities to persecute the officials of Comintern’s, commissars, and government workers who represented the ethnicity. Consequently, in Eastern Europe, specifically in Poland, the crimes against people involved in politics and Communist parties occurred prior to mass genocide (Ruminski 30). In 1939-1940, the ghettoization of Polish Jews was established as the Germans occupied Poland, and Warsaw Ghetto then remained the largest prison for the ethnic group (Ruminski 34). By 1941, the mobile killing units were established in almost all countries of Eastern European countries, such as Latvia, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria, and by 1942, most Jews became aware of the genocide.
The twentieth century’s history is full of crimes against humanity, and the holocaust is an example of an event that must never be repeated. As Nazi Germany invaded Eastern Europe, millions of Jewish people were allocated to ghettos where they suffered hunger, cold, contagious diseases, unbearable labor, and murder. Men, women, and children survived in ghettos by staying bonded, receiving help from the outside, and being focused on addressing the basic needs to maintain themselves sane.
Work Cited
Ruminski, Damian. “Survival, Struggle, and Statehood: The Fight for Life and Livelihood in the Warsaw Ghetto and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” Undergraduate Research Journal at UCCS, vol. 12, no. 2, 2019, pp. 26-45.
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