The Warsaw Ghetto.

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History Coursework – The Warsaw Ghetto _                        Chris Russell

Question 1

The main purpose of the Final Solution was the extermination of Jews in death camps in order to achieve a pure, Aryan race. The methods used to ‘exterminate’ Jews at death camps were gas chambers and crematoria. The first step in the final solution was the boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933. That same year, Jews were dismissed from professional employment. In 1935 Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade sex and marriage between Jews and non-Jews. It also took away their German citizenship. The first organised violence against Jews took place in 1938 during Krystallnacht. This was soon followed by the extermination of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen, who followed Nazi armies into Poland and killed the Jews that they came across. The Nazi forces in Poland soon started ghettoisation, a process by which Jews were forced to live in a walled off part of a city. The final solution was planned at the Wansee Conference in Berlin. There, it was decided to set up death camps, mainly in Poland, for the extermination of the Jews. These death camps and a lot of other evidence were destroyed as it became more obvious that an Allied victory was near. Overall, 6 million Jews were killed during the holocaust and many see it as the greatest tragedy in human history.

Question 2

        From Source A, which shows the Warsaw ghetto, we learn that the ghettos were walled in areas of cities. They were hugely overcrowded and starvation and epidemics were major causes of death. According to Source A, conditions were so bad that more than 100,000 Jews died before the first train left for Auschwitz. Source A even shows dead bodies lying in the streets. The ghetto in Warsaw caused the population of the city to rise from 40,000 to 500,000 and the source describes the ghettos as “The greatest human trap in history.” These ghettos, a stage in the Final Solution, isolated Jews before they were taken by train to concentration camps and the gas chambers. Source B, an extract from Martin Gilbert’s ‘Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy’, confirms that they were “The ‘stages’ leading to the fulfilment of this ultimate aim.” Source B also tells us what the ghettos were “The concentration of Jews in the cities.”

Source C tells us why the ghettos were established. The Jews were to be isolated. “All Jews living outside the walls must move inside them, and all Poles living inside the ghetto must leave it.” This confirms Source A, which shows the Jews, wearing their yellow stars, in the walled in part of Warsaw. The Jews were to be isolated because the Nazis didn’t want people to find out about the cruelty then inflicted. They used the excuse of being afraid of epidemics, which we learn in Source A. There was a sign that said, when translated, “Infested Area, One Way In.” Another reason why the ghettos were established was to prepare the Jews for the Final Solution. This would mean the Nazis would have all of the Jews together- starved, weak and demoralised- when it came to taking them to the gas chambers.

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To summarise, the ghettos were the dirty, overcrowded, walled in parts of cities where the Nazis trapped Jews before they were sent to concentration camps. They were a stage in the Final Solution and helped the Nazis to round up and condition Jews before they attempted to wipe out the entire Jewish population of Europe.

Question 3

        From the very outset it can be argued that Source A is unreliable evidence in that we do not know who took the film footage that it contains. We don’t know if it was made by an outsider trying to get ...

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