Life Inside the Ghetto

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“Orders were given that Jews had to live in one area behind this wall, and the Poles had to leave that area. Families had to make room for other families. Everyone had to give up their silver and gold, nice furs; all valuables had to be given up—definitely radios. These were orders given that if you didn’t obey them, you would be shot.” 

“The Ghetto was so densely packed, you had to bump into everyone just to walk. As I got older and learned more, there were more than 400,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto at once.” 

“I recall that I had this friend, his name was Wagner, Abram. We played in the courtyard before the ghetto often. One day the Nazis, the Ukrainian Nazis, were assaulting Jews and rounding them up to transport, and I don’t remember all the details, but Abram’s mom was killed in her house by them. She was shot, and I don’t even know.” 

“All around the ghetto in 1940 you could see people begin to starve. Children would start to swell up from malnutrition and die on the streets just in piles in the ghetto.”  

“From the malnutrition when I woke up and first stood up it was excruciating pain. Once I started walking it would stop, but I was always so scared to sit down in fear of the pain.” 

“I would smuggle in and out of the ghetto through the wall into the Aryan side of Warsaw to bring back meat and wood and whatever I get. I risked getting shot by the guards, or the Latvians, or turned in by the Judenrat every time I leave the ghetto.”