Ghettos and Concentrations Camps
People often confuse ghettos and concentration camps due to their similarities; however,
a number of factors make the two places different. First of all, ghettos, historically, are
much older than concentration camps. Many historians believe that the word "ghetto"
derives from Venice, Italy in 1516 when the city and Catholic church officials in Venice
1
forced Jews to live in an area called "Ghetto Nuova," a poor, run-down section of the city
that used to be an old iron foundry. Jews were allowed to practice their customs and
traditions inside the ghetto but were not allowed to leave the ghetto after dark. Likewise, in
Russia, from the 1790s through 1917, Jews were, by law, forced to live in a confined area
2
called the "Pale of Settlement" and were generally not allowed to leave the designated
boundaries. During World War II, the Nazi regime reintroduced the idea of ghettos by
forcing Jews to live in very poor parts of cities. Like older ghettos, those of Nazi Germany
were enforced by law and typically confined Jews to a specific area using newly created
brick walls, fences, or gates. The main purpose of ghettos for Nazis was to segregate Jews
and other "undesirables" from the rest of the population. They were also used as an area to
house victims before sending them to concentration camps.
Concentration camps, unlike ghettos, were not created in large cities; rather, they were
oftentimes created in rural areas--out of sight from the general population of people.
Concentration camps were basically prison camps where Jews, Sinti and Roma (gypsies),
homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the mentally and physically handicapped, the elderly,
outspoken journalists and politicians, and prisoners of war were confined. Similar to
ghettos, concentration camps had borders like brick walls, fences, and gates. Concentration
camps, however, typically had much tighter security that included high-voltage electrical
fences, heavy barbed wire, spotlights, and guarded look-out towers housing round-the-clock
snipers.
Unlike ghettos, the purposes of concentration camps were more appalling. Some were
labor camps where prisoners were forced to work long hours in harsh conditions so that the
workers died of starvation or disease. Other camps were designed to use prisoners for
"medical experiments" such as hypothermia tolerance tests, sun lamp skin-burning tests, air
pressure tests, and pharmaceutical drug tests. As the war progressed, specific camps,
namely Treblinka, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, and Majdanek, became liquidation
centers in which the central purpose was to kill as many people as possible, as efficiently as
possible. At some of these killing camps, Jews and "undesirables" were herded into gas
chambers, asphyxiated, and cremated in huge ovens. In some killing camps, prisoners were
forced to dig long, deep trenches; then, German soldiers lined them up and shot them at
the edge of the trench, creating a massive, horrifying grave.
Despite the strong similarities between ghettos and concentration camps, it is important
to understand their differences. Like many events of World War II, particularly those
involving Nazi regulations and laws, the movement of victims from ghettos to concentration
camps is indicative of the continually worsening, inhumane treatment of people by Nazis in
the most destructive genocide in world history.
1. Weiner, Rebecca. "The Virtual Jewish History Tour: Venice." 5 January 2010
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Venice.html
2. Oreck, Alden. "The Pale of Settlement." 5 January 2010
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pale.html
Corey Jeffers, January 2010