Extension:Ex-4.1-2
Ghetto was the common name for compulsory Jewish residential districts imposed upon Jews by German authorities. In the Generalgouvernement the establishment of ghettos was a widespread practice but not a policy. Ghettos were generally created at the initiative of local officials seeking a way to manage the Jews in their territories until those Jews were deported elsewhere. They came into being piecemeal between late 1939 and the end of 1942.
In some parts of the Generalgouvernement, most notably in Distrikt Lublin, ghettos existed in only a handful of communities. In Distrikt Krakau (west Galicia) approximately 70 ghettos have been identified, out of upwards of 125 cities or towns with Jewish populations. Most were established in 1941. In Distrikt Galizien (east Galicia) a similar number was established, although the number of Jewish settlements was nearly double.
A primary reason for the different proportions was that in the areas conquered by Germany in 1939 the future of the Jews remained uncertain, making ghettos a useful stopgap measure for some local officials. By contrast, in the regions that fell under German rule in 1941 systematic mass killing of Jews quickly became accepted practice. Many smaller Jewish communities were annihilated shortly after the arrival of German forces, rendering ghettos superfluous. In cities and larger towns ghettos served various purposes: as vehicles for looting and property confiscation, as sites for exploiting Jewish labor, or simply as holding pens until liquidation could be completed. The holding pen model was also applied to numerous hitherto-unghettoized communities in Distrikt Krakau on the eve of and following the invasion of the USSR, when deportation eastward was believed imminent. In many locations in Distrikt Galizien as well, ghettos appeared only shortly before the Jewish community’s scheduled destruction.
Not all ghettos were walled, let alone hermetically sealed. In some locations ghettos were not contiguous but consisted of specially-marked houses on different streets. So-called “open ghettos,” in which Jews were compelled to live on specified streets but could otherwise move about with few restrictions, existed in many towns, including Leżajsk, Nowy Targ, Przeworsk, and Tarnobrzeg in Distrikt Krakau and Buchach, Chortkiv, Mykulintsy, and Stryi in Distrikt Galizien. In Lviv the German authorities began to force more than 100,000 Jews into an open ghetto in November 1941, completing the process in fits and starts through mid-1942. In November 1942, after half the city’s Jews had been murdered, the ghetto was closed and sealed. In February 1943 it was rebranded a “Jewish [work] camp” (Judenlager), the large majority of whose initial 14,000 inhabitants perished over the next eight months.