Creation
The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. Frank ordered Jews in Warsaw and its suburbs rounded up and herded into the Ghetto. At this time, the population in the Ghetto was estimated to be 400,000 people, about 30% of the population of Warsaw; however, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4% of the size of Warsaw.
The construction of the ghetto wall started on April 1, 1940, but the Germans closed the Warsaw Ghetto to the outside world on November 16 that year. The wall was typically 3 m (9.8 ft) high and topped with barbed wire. Escapees could be shot on sight. The borders of the ghetto changed many times through the next years.
The ghetto was divided by Chłodna Street, which due to its importance (Warsaw's major street leading to the east) was excluded from it. The area south of Chłodna was known as “Small Ghetto”, while the area north of this street – “Large Ghetto”. Those two parts were connected by Żelazna Street (special gate was built at its intersection with Chłodna Street). In January 1942 a wooden footbridge, which after the war became one of the symbols of the Holocaust, was built there to ease pedestrian traffic.
The first commissioner of the Warsaw ghetto was his chief organizer SA-Standartenführer Waldemar Schön. He was succeeded in May 1941 by Heinz Auerswald.
Read more about this topic: Warsaw Ghetto
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the necessary qualifications of an efficient business man in these days of industrial literature seems to be the ability to write, in clear and idiomatic English, a 1,000-word story on how efficient he is and how he got that way.... It seems that the entire business world were devoting its working hours to the creation of a school of introspective literature.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)