Life In The Ghetto Essay

Words: 454
Pages: 2

Life in the ghettos was mostly intolerable. It was always overcrowded. One apartment would have not one but many families living in it. Plumbing wasn’t working, so human garbage were thrown out into the streets with other garbage. Contagious diseases spread quite fast, considering the conditions Jews lived in. People were always hungry. Germans deliberately tried to starve the Jews by not letting them purchase anything but small amounts of bread, potatoes, and fat. Some Jews had some money or expensive things they could trade for food smuggled into the ghetto; others would beg or steal to survive. Throughout the cold winters, heating was rare, and almost all Jews had no warm clothing. Jews were weakened by hunger and the cold, so they became …show more content…
Jewish kids learned to hide books under their clothes when necessary, to avoid being caught by the German, because education wasn’t allowed. Although suffering and death were everywhere, children did not stop playing with their friends or their toys. Some Jews had dolls or cars they brought along into the ghetto with them. In the Lodz ghetto, kids would turn the tops of empty cigarette boxes into playing cards. The ghettos were run by Jewish councils (Judenrat) who were responsible for completing German orders. When it was time for a transport to Jews to concentration camps, the Nazis would demand 1,000 Jews. The Council cooperated, realizing that "if we don’t hand over 1,000, they will ask for 2,000" (Holocaust survivor Arek Hersh). In the end, eventually everyone in the ghettos were taken to the camps, including the council members and their loved ones. In conclusion, the life for Jews in the ghetto was deadly. You either worked until you died, or starved and froze to death. If you had a child, there was a really good chance they would soon be an orphan. Imagine if your family is starving but you have a young one who can smuggle in food. Do you risk the life of your young one, or the life of your whole family? Many parents chose to run away from this life and killed themselves and their