The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish Ghettos established by Nazi
Germany in generl Governament during the Holocaust in World War II. In the
three years of it's exsistence, starvation, diseases and deportation to concentration
camps and extramination camps dropped the population of the Ghetto from an
estimated 450,000 to 37,000. The Warsaw Ghetto was the scene of the Warsaw
.Ghetto Uprising, one of the first mass uprising against Nazi occupation in Europe

 Plans to isolate the Jewish population of Warsaw and its nearby suburbs in a
ghetto first circulated immediately after the German occupation of Poland in 1939.
At the time, the German administration of the General Government had not been
fully organized, and there were conflicting interests among the three major players:
the civilian administration, the military, and the SS.  Under these circumstances, the
Jewish Council, or Judenrat, headed by Adam Czerniaków, was able to delay the
establishment of the Ghetto by one year, mainly by appealing to the military to consider
how Jews were a valuable labor resource. The Jewish were rounded up and just
allocated a scrubby flat and given little food. 
 
 

The soldier on the right with gun was identified as Josef Bloshe. The boy with his arms raised was identified as Tsvi C. Nussbaum.	Jews caught during the uprising

 
The Warsaw Ghetto was finally established by the German General Government Hans
Frank on October 16, 1940. At this time, the population of the Ghetto was estimated
to be near 440,000 people, about 37.6% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size
of the Ghetto was about 4.5% of the size of Warsaw. Nazis then closed off the Warsaw
Ghetto from the outside world on November 16  that year, building a wall. During the
next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages were brought into the Ghetto,
while diseases- especially typhoid - and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same
number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 253 kcal.
 
In late 1941, the Nazis made the decision at the Wannsee conference to exterminate
the Jews of Europe.  The first phase of the Final Solution was Operation Reinhard,
with the goal of destroying the Jews of Poland. Construction started on the Treblinka
extermination camp in May of 1942, and it was completed in July, when the wholesale
liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto was to begin.
 

On July 22, 1942, the Judenrat was informed that all Jews except those working in
German factories, Jewish hospital staff, members of the Judenrat and their families,
and members of the Jewish police force and their families would be "deported to the East".
The Jewish police were to deliver 6,000 Jews to the Umschlagplatz train station each day,
and failure to do so would result in immediate execution of some one hundred hostages,
including Czerniaków's wife. After failing to persuade the Germans to change their plans,
or at least spare the orphans of the Ghetto, Czerniaków killed himself on July 23, 1942,
leaving behind a note, "I can no longer bear all this. My act will prove to everyone what is
the right thing to do.
On July 23 members of the Jewish  underground met,  but decided not to resist, believing
that the Jews were really being sent to work camps, rather than their death.
 

On the way to deportation	Jews in the Umshlagplats

 
As orders on July 15 1942, mass deportations of the inhabitants started; in the next 52 days
until September 21, 1942 about 300,000 people were taken to the Treblinka extermination
camp. During the remaining days of July, the Jewish Ghetto Police were responsible for
carrying out the deportations, a total of 64,606 Jews were transported to the death camps
that month. From August onward, the Germans and their allies took a more direct role in
the deportations, with over 135,000 Jews deported in August alone.

The final phase of the first mass deportation happened between September 6 and
September 11, 1942, when 35,886 Jews were deported, 2,648 were shot on the spot and 60
committed suicide. After this selection approximately 55,000 to 60,000 Jews remained alive
in the Ghetto, either working in German factories within the Ghetto or living in hiding .

During the next six months, what was left of several political organizations was brought
together under the name Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa - ZOB, Jewish Fighting Organization,
headed by Mordechai Anielewicz with 220-500 persons; Another 250–450 were organized in
the Zydowski Zwiazek Walki - ZZW, Jewish Fighting Union. The members of the ZOB group
had no illusions about the German plans and wanted to die fighting. However their ZZW
counterparts wanted to leave the ghetto and continue fighting in the forests. Their armament
consisted largely of handguns, homemade explosives and Molotov cocktails; the ZZW
was better armed as a result of better contacts to the Polish underground outside the ghetto.

The Ghetto Heroes' Memorial	Monument on Mila 18

On January 18, 1943, the first instance of armed resistance occurred when the Germans
started the second expulsion of the Jews. The Jewish fighters had some success:
the expulsion stopped after four days and the ZOB and ZZW resistance organizations
took control of the Ghetto, building dozens of fighting posts and operating against Jewish
collaborators. During the next three months, all inhabitants of the Ghetto prepared for what
they realized would be a final struggle. The final battle started on the eve of Passover,
April 19, 1943. Jewish partisans shot and threw grenades at German and allied patrols
from alleyways, sewers, house windows, and even burning buildings. The Nazis
responded by shelling the houses block by block and rounding up or killing any Jew
they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 23, and the uprising ended
on May 16.  During the fighting approximately 7,000 of the Ghetto inhabitants were killed
and 6,000 were burnt alive or gassed in bunkers. The remaining 15,000 people were sent
to German death camps, mostly to Maidanek extermination camp.