Ghetto
Nazi-occupied Europe

During World War II, the Nazis established new ghettos in numerous cities of Eastern Europe as a form of concentration camp to confine Jews and Romani into limited areas. The Nazis most often referred to these areas in documents and signage at their entrances as "Jewish quarter." These Nazi camps sometimes coincided with traditional Jewish ghettos and Jewish quarters, but not always. On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued a decree ordering the dissolution of all Jüdische Wohnbezirke /ghettos in the East and their transference to Nazi concentration camps or their extermination.

The Nazi ghettos were an essentially different institution than the historical ghettos of European society. The historical ghettos were places where Jews lived for many generations and created their own culture – even if they were under social and political conditions of segregation and discrimination. The Nazi ghettos were part of The Final Solution; they were intended as a transitional stage – first confine each city's Jews in one easily accessible and controllable location, then "liquidate" the ghetto and send the Jews to an extermination camp. Most Nazi ghettos were liquidated in 1943; some, such as that of Łódź, persisted until 1944; very few, e.g. the Budapest Ghetto and the Theresienstadt Ghetto, existed until the end of the war in 1945.
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