Historical Research Paper

The conditions faced by the Jews in the concentration camps and ghettos of Poland and occupied Europe were horrific and disgusting. The Jews were treated like this because the Germans believed that they were biologically inferior to them and believed they were racial parasites (Lowe, 24).

The Jews were persecuted for many reasons; for one they didn't have a country to call their own so many people saw them as aliens to their country and did not welcome them. Many people also didn't like them because of their beliefs and some blamed them for the death of Christ and believed they were "Children of the Devil". The Nazis believed that if they killed off the Jews that they could create a type of super human race of Aryans by only breeding with people six foot tall with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Jewish persecution hadn't started with Hitler, Jews have been persecuted for hundreds of years. In the middle ages at the time of the black plague Jews were blamed, the Christians believed that the Jews were poisoning the water. Others believed that God was punishing them because the Jews didn't believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

Confining Jews to ghettos was not the Nazi's idea. For centuries Jews had faced persecution, and were often forced to live in designated areas. At the commencement of WWII the Jews were told to leave their homes and possessions and then were moved to the ghetto where they were to live in small rooms that they shared with numerous people. Marian Pretzel in his book Portrait of a Young Forger states "The floor was bare, the dining table and chairs were gone, and the wallpaper hung in rough strips. Cold air was blowing in from the kitchen." Page 55

"It was much worse then I remembered. The stained black walls, the old shabby furniture, a piece of plywood replacing a broken panel of glass in the window, a few pieces of old carpet lying in front of the beds, and Giza at the barren wooden table." Pretzel page 176

The Nazi ghettos differed from the first ghettos however, in that they were a preliminary step in the elimination of the Jews, rather than just a method to isolate them from the rest of society.

"All ghettos had the most appalling, inhuman living conditions. The smallest ghetto housed approximately 3,000 people. Warsaw, the largest ghetto, held 400,000 people. Lódz, the second largest, held about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Bialystok, Czestochowa, Kielce, Kraków, Lublin, Lvóv, Radom, and Vilna." http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline.html

As World War II progressed the ghettos became transition areas, used as collection points for deportation to concentration camps. Living conditions in concentration camps varied between camps but it is easily said that they were inhumane. The deaths that occurred were usually the results of maltreatment, or of SS and SA men shooting prisoners whom they had a personnel grudge with.

"Russian prisoners-of-war who had volunteered to work at the camp, herded a group of us ...