How can we make the story of the ghettos relevant to our students? How can we shed light today, decades after the tragic events, on what Jews knew, felt or understood during those terrifying days? What are the sources that can reveal their internal worlds?
Jewish men and women continued to get married even after deportation to ghettos and camps, and under indescribable conditions
The pendant was crafted as a book with a photograph of Frania inside, and was decorated with her initials
Establishment of Ghettos and Judenrats in Poland
In Focus
The Łódź ghetto was established on 30 April 1940. It was the second-largest ghetto in German-occupied territory, and also the most isolated from its surroundings and other ghettos. Approximately 60,000 Jews were incarcerated there, joined later by tens of thousands of Jews from the region and from the Reich, as well as Sinti and Roma.
In 1941, the Germans established a transit camp and ghetto in the town of Theresienstadt (Terezín) in Czechoslovakia. By the time it was liberated on 8 May 1945, over 155,000 Jews had passed through Theresienstadt; approximately 35,000 were murdered in the ghetto, and some 88,000 were deported to the extermination camps.
Kovno, Lithuania, was occupied by the Germans in June 1941. Even before their arrival, the Lithuanians had carried out murderous pogroms against the Jews, which continued in the presence of the Germans. Anti-Jewish decrees were issued, and some 30,000 Jews were ordered to move into a ghetto, which was sealed in August 1941.
Spotlight
February 1941
November 1941
January 1943
January 1943
August 1943
Educational Materials
Reading Corner
From the Yad Vashem Art Collection
(1921 - 1985)
While living in the Yellow-Star house and in the ghetto, under extremely difficult conditions, Gedő created numerous drawings of her surroundings, her friends, the elderly and the children.
(1909 - 1988)
During the years 1942-1944, Ritov clandestinely portrayed inmates at the HKP repair facility in the Riga ghetto. He drew the portraits on the plain paper that he used for drawing license plates.
(1909 - 1985)
While in the Bershad ghetto, Arnold Daghani painted portraits of the internees, as well as scenes of ghetto life
(1919 - 1993)
Schlesinger drew portraits of members of the Jewish leadership of the Kovno ghetto, the chiefs of the Jewish police, physicians and public figures.
Online Databases
The Holocaust (Shoah) Deportation Database reconstructs the transports that took place during the Holocaust from territories of the Third Reich, from countries under German occupation, from the Axis states and from the satellite states.
On the Holocaust - a Yad Vashem Podcast
On 7 July 1944, hours before the liquidation of the Będzin ghetto and the murder of all the Jews imprisoned in it, Sarah and Yehiel Gerlitz wrote a farewell letter to their six-year-old daughter, Dita.
Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish policeman in the Otwock ghetto, took part in an Aktion (roundup) in which 8,000 of the city's Jews were deported, among them his wife Anna and daughter Athalie.
Establishment and Unceasing Terror
The Minsk ghetto was the fourth-largest ghetto, but for many reasons, its story is virtually unknown.
The Ghetto’s Underground and Liquidation
In this episode we continue to trace the fate of the Jews incarcerated in the Minsk ghetto.
Righteous Among the Nations: Featured Stories
Tuczyn, Volhynia district, Ukraine
Amid the horrors of war, a Ukrainian family opened their home — and hearts — to a Jewish family in need. This moving story recounts how the Gerasimchiks and their three children risked their lives to save the Khomut family, who escaped the Tuczyn ghetto just before its liquidation.
Krakow, Poland
Rafałówka, Ukraine
Riga, Latvia
Iwje, Poland (today Belarus)
From the Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Online Store
Guy Miron (Editor-in-Chief), Shlomit Shulhani (Co-editor)
Ben Z. Redner
Yehuda Bauer
Soviet Partisans and the Jews: Bogdan Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen – Mythos und Wirklichkeit.
