Warsaw Ghetto closed
15th November 1940: The largest Jewish population in Europe is suddenly imprisoned behind walls they have been forced to build
Four hundred thousand Jews, a third of the Warsaw population, were now imprisoned. The ghetto, announced by the Nazis on the 12th October was finally closed off on the 15th November 1940. The Jewish population were confined behind newly erected brick walls, sealing them off in the poorest part of the city.
‘Aryan’ Poles were not allowed to enter. Suddenly even illicit access to food and any other resources became much more difficult. Now, hidden from witnesses, the German persecution became even more murderous. Chaim A. Kaplan was keeping a diary1 :
What we dreaded most has come to us. We had a premonition that a ghetto life awaited us, a life of sorrow and poverty, of shame and degradation but no one believed that the fateful hour our would come so soon.
…
… we went to bed in the Jewish quarter, and the next morning we awoke in a closed Jewish ghetto, a ghetto in every detail. In the morning hours of the Sabbath a three-man guard was set up in all the open places where walls were not erected because of the trolley connections. They would not allow Jews wearing the ‘badge of shame’ to cross over into the Aryan quarter.
…
We have entered into a new life, and it is impossible to imagine the panic that has arisen in the Jewish quarter. Suddenly we see ourselves penned in on all sides. We are segregated and separated from the world and the fullness thereof, driven out of the society of the human race.
