Time Frame

• The Ghetto existed between October 16, 1940 and May 16, 1943. The Warsaw Ghetto was destroyed when the famous Uprising was put down.
  
  

Evolution

• The Ghetto was formed on the orders of German governor Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. This was more than a year after the conquest and division of Poland between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The Nazis crammed 444,000 people into a small area representing less than 1/20 the area of Warsaw, and then walled it off. The perimeter of the Ghetto was patrolled by armed troops. Thousands more were sent to the Ghettos, representing the roster of people that the Nazis considered undesirable: mostly Jews and Gypsies, but also small numbers of homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah's Witnesses and even native Poles and other Slavs were deported into the Ghetto. The population remained the same, however, as disease and starvation killed off roughly the same number of people who were sent into the confines of the de facto prison camp.
  Sealed in, the Ghetto in many ways functioned as its own autonomous state, albeit an impoverished and terrorized one. Underground civic groups, hospitals, libraries, schools and other organizations were formed. The main activity in the Ghetto, however, was smuggling in food from outside the walls.
  Over 100,000 Ghetto residents had died from various causes before the deportations of the summer of 1942 had even begun. It was then that the Nazis began shipped Ghetto prisoners to extermination camps. By the end of the year, the Ghetto had resolved to resist the Nazis.
  
  

The Facts

• On January 18, 1943, armed resistance to the Nazis began with the first steps of what would have become the last mass deportation of Ghetto prisoners to the extermination camps. Initially there were successes, as the deportation was halted and the resisters seized control over the Ghetto itself. This was followed by a three month lull, with the residents of the Ghetto preparing themselves for what they realized would be the inevitable Nazi assault. The Nazi attack began on Passover (April 19) 1943, and was spearheaded by SS crack mechanized infantry. The battle lasted well into May, with the symbolic end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising being May 16, 1943, with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw.
  
  

Misconceptions

• The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is an event distinct and unrelated to the event known as the Warsaw Uprising. The latter was a military uprising of the larger Polish resistance and took place in August 1944.
  
  

Effects

• It is estimated that 13,000 Jews were killed during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The 50,000 survivors were shipped to other camps, mostly to Treblinka. The Nazis claimed to have lost 16 killed and 86 wounded, but there is reason to believe their casualties were much higher, and the real numbers were covered up for propaganda reasons.
  After the Ghetto Uprising, the Ghetto itself was a demolished ruin. However, the Nazis established the Warsaw Concentration Camp within its boundaries, and several thousand Ghetto residents escaped capture and were still hiding in the ruins or sewers.
  Survivors of the Ghetto later formed the Kibbutz Lohamey ha-Geta'ot in Israel. All of the Nazis most directly responsible for the creation of the Ghetto either died during the Second World War or were later captured and tried for war crimes.