Life in the Warsaw Ghetto

In September 1939 the Germans took control of Poland and Warsaw after a three week siege. There was no love lost between the Germans and the Poles and it soon became clear that the Nazis, considering themselves a 'Master Race', valued Polish life at next to nothing. As was later demonstrated, on an unprecedented scale, this was one step up from the value they put on Jewish life.
There were about 350,000 Jews in the Warsaw city before the war. There were the second largest Jewish community in the world behind New York City. Germans disliked Jews and discriminatory against them. Therefore when the Germans invaded Poland and captured Warsaw, they separated the Jews and the other Poles by asking them to wear white armbands with a blue star David on it. They then moved all the Jews into a designated area in the city and built a 10 feet high wall around it. The wall was topped with barbed wire and was heavily guarded. The Ghetto was closed to the outside world and the Jews were forced to a slow death. Thus the Warsaw Ghetto was born.
The living quarters in the Ghetto were very cramped and congested. Almost 400,000 Jews were squeezed into an area of 1.3 square miles with seven persons per each room. As there was no way out of the Ghetto, food was in short supply. Between 1940 and 1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation. There were no medicines available to cure diseases either. The life inside the Ghetto was one of poverty and hardship. However, Jews set up their own school and cultural events to keep their children occupied.
Surrounded by walls that they built with their own hands and under strict and violent guard, the Jews of Warsaw were cut off from the outside world. Within the ghetto their lives oscillated in the desperate struggle between survival and death from disease or starvation. The living conditions were unbearable,