Ghetto is a half-forgotten word at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its original meaning is the name of the Venetian region, in which the Jewish diaspora separately lived in the Middle Ages. This part of the city was populated by non-poor people, it was chosen voluntarily, and, in general, this situation suited both its inhabitants and all other Venetians. Jews could abide by their traditional principles and not worry that the life of their community would be somehow disturbed. Then the order changed, and the residence in the ghetto became compulsory for the Jews. He was surrounded by a fence, and the door began to be locked at night.
If you ask about what an American ghetto is, he will usually answer that this is a place where the poor live, mostly black people. Of course, such places have nothing to do with medieval areas of compact Jewish residence, but the name stuck, and they used it for a long time, talking about the quarters of the South Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn.
However, this word acquired the most sinister meaning during the Second World War. The Nazis in the occupied lands immediately set about dividing the population that fell under their power on a national basis. In each captured city, a Jewish ghetto was created, into which registered representatives of this nationality were driven.
The area was blocked, surrounded by barbed wire, guard posts were set around. Soviet people, who did not know what the ghetto was, could not imagine the further fate of the inhabitants of this zone. The duties of the internal administration (kapo) included maintaining order and reporting to the occupation authorities about everything that happened behind the fence. An internal police force was formed. According to the Nazi plan, the entire Jewish population was to be destroyed, but since the capacities of the "death factories" were not enough for a quick "final solution of the Jewish question", some buffer zones were required in which the doomed would be kept at the time when it was time for them to die.
The Minsk, Terezinsky, Krakow and Warsaw ghettos gained the greatest fame, but they were in Kharkov, Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, and other large cities occupied by the enemy. The prisoners of these zones were kept in inhuman conditions, starving and suffering from illnesses, they could be killed or torn to pieces by poisoning dogs at any time. Those who experienced what the ghetto was, never forgot this humiliation. Most of the inhabitants of these enclosed areas died. Only those who managed to free the Soviet troops during the capture of Budapest and Terezin managed to escape. In the spring of 1943, an uprising broke out in the Warsaw ghetto, which was mercilessly crushed by urgently tied up SS battalions. The fighting lasted almost a month. After the defenders' forces were exhausted, the survivors were sent to the Treblin death camp , from where they had not returned.
In full measure, what is the ghetto, the world community learned after the war. The few surviving prisoners talked about the inhuman conditions of forced labor, about cruel reprisals, about hunger, scammers and executioners. Wars are not humane, but in the twentieth century genocide was carried out on an outstanding scale, when millions of people were exterminated only because they were born Jews, and the ghetto were on the threshold of this hell.