Life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto

Key Words:
Ghetto - an area of a city occupied exclusively by the Jews.
Jew - a person of Hebrew descent or whose religion is Judaisim.
Red Army - the Soviet Army that had been fighting Hitler since 1941.

Your report on Lublin has caused a sensation!
Many people have been shocked and outraged.
They have demanded to know what happened in other Ghettos.
You have been sent to Warsaw to write a comparison.

Find detailed information on Ghettos

Conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto were even worse than those at Lublin. You can read about life in the Ghetto on this page.

Warsaw is the capital of Poland. In 1935 the city limits covered an area of 54 square miles with a population of 1.3 million people. On the eve of WW2 the Jewish population in Warsaw numbered 337,000, about 29% of the total population of the city, this figure had risen to 445,000 by March 1941.

As the Red Army approached Warsaw the Jews that were left in the ghetto began an armed rising against the Germans who occupied the city. This led to the almost complete destruction of the ghetto by the German Army. Further down this page, you can read about the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team - a detailed and clearly written collection of information.
The Jewish Virtual Library - contains lots of well indexed details.
Dignity and Defiance - contains stories about people who experienced the Warsaw Ghetto.
The History Place - a simple summary of what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto.
A collection of eight photos from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Write your report on what happened in Warsaw.
Remember to include a brief timeline of events, facts and figures about what happened to the Jewish population of the town.
Your Editor also expects some well selected photographs, with accurate captions and several human interest stories as well. You can read Jankiel Wiernik's Story at the end of this page.