Life of the Jews in Poland during WW2

Before the WWII 3 million, 3 hundred thousand of Jewish people lived in Poland, approximately ten per cent of the total population. For centauries Poland has been one of the largest and most significant Jewish communities in the world. This country was the center of the Jewish culture since the middle Ages. The Jewish population made up about one-third of the population of cities in central Poland.

It started with the invasion of Germany to Poland on September 1 in 1939, when the second WW just begin. After the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east, Jews are liable for forced labor. They can be picked up off the streets for work at manual labors jobs such as digging ditches, cleaning streets and shoveling snow. October 1939, Jews were forbidden form certain areas of major cities. In the past two months things got worse, and they need to wear an indentifying star or clothing that would be easy recognized as a Jew, they can’t change residence and the curfew for Jews enforced from 9 pm to 5 am. The control for the Jews people was getting stricter, they can’t travel by train without a special permission, and they needed to register their properties including furniture, jewelry and clothing. April 1940 the first major ghetto was built, at Lodz. They began sending groups of Jews to the ghettos. Mass deportations of Jews, Gypsies and Poles, because the amount of people star increasing, The Nazis were forced to built new ghettos, Warsaw and Crackow ghettos were built by the year of 1940.

In 1941 all Jews needed to be in the ghettos and they were forbidden to leave, if they escape or somebody would try to help them escape, the punishment would be the death penalty. Its population reached one half of a million people who vegetated under terrible conditions, suffering from hunger and diseases.

December 1941 concentration camps begin their operations. Poland is the site of six major concentration camps set up to kill Jews.

 March 1942, Jews from Lublin ghetto were deported to Belzec death camp. Nazis began sending people from the ghettos to concentration camps. By 1943 many of the ghettos like Crackow, Lvov and Warsaw were liquidate and the people were sent to concentration camps. This pattern is repeated in every Polish city with a ghetto population. 

Germany was losing power and more powerful countries were against them. By 1944 the red army of the Soviet Union crosses Poland. This made a little of stability on Poland. January 17, 1945 Germany evacuate the ruins of Warsaw and the Soviet army start doing alliances with the Polish people and in April 30 begins the battle of Berlin, Soviet Union and some Polish people  against  Germany. This generates a series of problems that made Germany’s priorities change, and some countries like United States and Great Britain, took this as an opportunity to save Jews people.  By the end of this year and the beginning of 1946, lots of Jews people were saved. Poland lost about 6 million dead in WW2, of whom about a half were Jews, with only fifty to seventy thousand surviving. 

By: Andrea Alva