JEWS 1940-41

Question 1

Lodz Ghetto

Answer 1

• First Ghetto
• February 1940
• 320,000 Jews in city- majority put in closed ghetto, Jews had to build surrounding wall
• Remaining Jews formed into labour gangs
• Jewish Council of Elders responsible for ghettos (food, health, registration, etc)

Question 2

Operation Barbarossa

Answer 2

• June 1941
• Broke Nazi-Soviet Pact August 1939
• Germans occupied eastern Poland, Baltic states, western Russia, Ukraine
• more than 3 million Soviet Jews brought under German rule

Question 3

Racial Annihilation

Answer 3

• War fought with savagery and ideological intensity- more than with western allies
• Hitler issued instruction to eliminate Bolshevik-Jewish intelligentsia even before invasion broke out- war was extermination of racial enemies
  > no official order in June 1941 to kill all Jews in Soviet Union- but troops saw killing as overall mission
  > July 1941: Göring issued order to kill communist commissars and Jewish sympathisers

Question 4

Jews further isolated

Answer 4

• November 1939: Jews banned from buying radios
• December 1939: banned from buying chocolate
• 1940: excluded from wartime rationing for clothes and shoes; could enter shop only at restricted times (Berlin 4-5pm)
• December 1941: Jews to wear Yellow star in Germany; needed police permit to travel

Question 5

Warsaw Ghetto

Answer 5

• October 1940- sealed up in November- more than 400,000 Jews and more forced in, including Gypsies
• Largest ghetto; Jews paid for construction costs
• Food rations starved Jews- 300 calories a day
• More than 100,000 died 1940-41; almost all others died in death camps during operation Reinhard 1942

Question 6

GHETTOS

Answer 6

• Jewish homes confiscated
• Forced Labour and forceful selling of property
• Massive restriction of food and medical supplies in ghettos
• Average 6 people in one room
• Infestations spread- lice, typhus, tuberculosis
• Few homes had running water
• Designed to ensure Jews died due to starvation, cold, disease- many worked to death
• Total of 500,000 Jews died in ghettos

Question 7

Resistance in ghettos

Answer 7

• Jewish authorities tried to get around regulations
• Black market for food smuggled from outside- small children would sneak through cracks in wall
• Jewish leaders organised religious festivals and prayers despite being strictly forbidde
• Illegal schools and printing presses
• Most Jewish elders acted responsibly- but some accused of corruption and cooperation with Nazis