A Polish Academic Information Center Exhibit         
Warsaw: Life and Death in the Ghetto which the Germans established there during WWII

September 8, 1942. After six weeks, after the deportation of - not 60,000 - but 400,000 people, the transports stop. By now, virtually everyone has come to believe that "resettlement" means death. There remain in the ghetto 60,000 individuals. Of these, 37,000 are "legal" because they work in one or other of the Nazi factories in the ghetto. Only they receive food. Large portions of the ghetto are officially empty, though in fact they house a like population of "illegal" inhabitants who seek to hide therein from the Nazis. In the ensuing months the determination to resist further efforts at deportation grows and finds expression in the purchasing of firearms and explosives, as well as in the building of bunkers, that is shelters with multiple hidden entrances, access to water and stores of food. Efforts by the Nazi employers to persuade their workers to agree to being "resettled" as a unit with their factory are unavailing.


 

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