This ghetto was extremely different from the places that we now — following the Holocaust — associate with the word ghetto.
In Venice, Jews from the nearby mainland were granted refuge in Venice after fleeing from a besieging army. Prior to this point, an organised Jewish community had not been permitted to exist in the city. After granting refuge to Jews, the leaders of the city ordered that they must live on a single island, known as the Ghetto Nuovo , or the new ghetto. Whilst very different to the Nazi ghettos, the ghetto in Venice was still extremely cramped and overcrowded, and the residents lacked freedom of movement.
Although this is the first recorded incident of a Jewish settlement being called a ghetto, it was not the first Jewish settlement that was confined to a specific area in a town or city by authorities. These ghettos primarily existed to ensure that Jews and other occupants of the city remained segregated. This added to growing antisemitic stereotypes prevalent at the time. New ghettos continued to be established across Italy until the end of the eighteenth century.
By the early nineteenth century, the term ghetto had become common across Western Europe. Ghettos for Jews were established in places like Frankfurt and Prague as well. Following the Enlightenment , ghettos across Europe were legally abolished as Jews gained equal rights for the first time, including the freedom to live wherever they pleased.
However, despite ghettos no longer existing as physical places in pre-war Europe, the idea of them, who they held, and what they represented, remained. The use of the term ghetto soon also spread as a derogatory way to refer to other non-Jewish, unenclosed, communities and settlements. One example can be seen in the United States of America where the term ghetto was used to describe spaces where communities of African-American people had settled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The Nazis used ghettos to confine, exploit, and persecute the Jews of Poland and eastern Europe. Here, Stroop offers an insight into why the Warsaw Ghetto in particular was created. This document is a translation used in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. The Nazis held extremely antisemitic and racist beliefs.
As a result of their antisemitic ideology, following the invasion of Poland the Nazis developed ghettos to segregate and control Jews. Historically, ghettos had been used to segregate Jewish communities from the rest of the population across Europe. The Nazis also introduced ghettos due to their false theories that Jews spread diseases and therefore should be segregated to protect the rest of the population.
This was in line with their racist and eugenic beliefs. This order from Himmler, issued on 21 June , highlights the escalation of policy against Jews following the Wannsee Conference — from ghettoisation to extermination. Following the invasion of Poland in September , three million Jews came under Nazi control.
This presented a problem for the Nazis, as they wanted their newly acquired land to be free of Jews in line with their antisemitic beliefs. In response, the Nazis segregated the Jews from the rest of the population, and ghettos were developed to forcibly detain them. These ghettos were initially thought of as temporary holding spaces.
The Nazis initial plan to remove Jews from Poland was to deport all Jews to the island of Madagascar. This was called the Magagascar Plan. On 21 September , Reinhard Heydrich issued an order to the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen known as the Schnellbrief.
The more affluent Jews cannot wait to get away from the Ghetto and buy the abandoned palazzi that the Venetian aristocracy can no longer afford. The people who remain are poor, working-class Jews. So the place Howells sees is anything but interesting.
When people visit the Ghetto today, they see two Holocaust memorials. Some people even think the Ghetto was created during the Second World War! The Holocaust did have a huge impact on the Jewish population.
Unlike in other places, the Jews in Italy felt totally integrated into the fabric of Italian society. In , when the Fascist Party, which some of them had even joined, declared them a different race, they were devastated. In , the Fascists and Nazis started rounding up and deporting the Jews. But the people they found were either the very elderly, the sick, or very poor Jews who had no means of escaping.
Almost people were deported to Auschwitz. Eight of them returned. Today the Ghetto is a popular tourist site. Venice has never had so many tourists and so few residents. In the past 30 years, the monopoly of mass tourism as the prime economic force in the city has pushed out half the population.
In that sense the Jews are no different from others. Today the Ghetto is one of the most popular tourist destinations, with nearly a hundred thousand admissions to the synagogue and Jewish Museum per year.
But it is the community that makes the Ghetto a living space, not a dead space. Less than people actually live here, including the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitchers. They market themselves as the real Jews of Venice. In Topic 2, Fela Bernstein and Ruth Foster talk about the acts of Jewish policemen, who were controversial figures in the ghetto.
Approximately 1. They were often the most vulnerable of all the Nazi's victims - in Topic 2, Ruth Foster describes the Nazi murder of an infant. Many children, however, were able to develop unique survival tools, using fantasy, creativity and play.
Listen to survivor Edith Birkin describing how children sang songs, made up plays and played games in the ghetto. Children had to adapt to many role changes at this time.
They assumed adult responsibilities in the ghettos, they smuggled food, contributed to family finances, cared for younger siblings after the deportation of parents and even participated in underground activities. Thanks to their smuggling activities, the ghetto Jews were saved from total starvation as rations supplied by the authorities were not enough to cover normal requirements.
In Budapest , Hungarian authorities required Jews to confine themselves to marked houses so-called Star of David houses. On October 15, , leaders of the fascist Arrow Cross movement seized power in a German-sponsored coup. A few weeks later, the Arrow Cross government formally established a ghetto in Budapest. About 63, Jews lived in this 0.
Approximately 25, Jews who carried certificates indicating they were under the protection of a neutral power were confined in an "international ghetto" in the city. In January , Soviet forces liberated that part of Budapest in which the two ghettos were located and liberated the nearly 90, Jewish residents. Corni, Gustavo. Hitler's Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society London: Arnold, Kermish, Joseph, editor. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, Sterling, Eric J.
Life in the Ghettos during the Holocaust. Trunk, Isaiah. New York: Stein and Day, We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors. Trending keywords:. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics.
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