Remember what a ghetto is. And never forget ...

The ghetto is a half-forgotten word in the early twentieth century. Its original meaning is the name of the Venetian region, in which the Jewish diaspora lived apart in the Middle Ages. This part of the city was inhabited by people who were not poor, it was chosen voluntarily, and, in general, this situation suited its inhabitants as well as all other Venetians. Jews could observe their traditional customs and not worry about the fact that the life of their community will be somehow broken. Then the order changed, and living in the ghetto for the Jews became compulsory. He was surrounded by a fence, and the door was locked for the night.

If you ask about what a ghetto is, an American, then he usually answers that this is a place where the poor live, mostly black people. Of course, there is nothing common with the medieval areas of compact living of Jews, but the name has taken root, and they have enjoyed it for a long time, speaking of the quarters of the South Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn.

However, this word acquired the most sinister meaning during the Second World War. The Nazis in the occupied lands immediately proceeded to divide the population that fell under their authority on a national basis. In each captured city, a Jewish ghetto was created, to which the representatives of this nationality who had passed registration were driven.

The area was blocked, surrounded by barbed wire, guard posts were set up around it. Soviet people who did not know what a ghetto was, could not imagine the fate of the inhabitants of this zone. The duties of the internal administration (kapo) included maintaining order and reporting to the occupation authorities about everything that happened outside the fence. Internal police were also formed. According to Nazis, the entire Jewish population was to be destroyed, but since the capacities of the "death factories" were not sufficient for a quick "final solution of the Jewish question," some buffer zones were needed in which the doomed would be kept at the time when their hour of death would come.

The Minsk, Terezin, Krakowskoe and Warsaw ghettos became most famous, but they were in Kharkov, Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, and other large cities occupied by the enemy. Prisoners of these zones were kept in inhuman conditions, starving and suffering from diseases, they could be killed or torn to pieces by attacking dogs at any time. Those who have experienced what ghetto is, have never forgotten this humiliation. Most of the inhabitants of these closed areas died. It was possible to be saved only by those who were liberated by the Soviet troops in the capture of Budapest and Teresin. In the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1943 an uprising broke out, which was mercilessly suppressed by the SS battalions, which were urgently deployed. The fighting lasted almost a month. After the defenders had exhausted their strength, the survivors were sent to the death camp in Treblinka , where they had not returned.

In the full measure of what a ghetto is, the world public learned after the war. Few surviving prisoners told about inhuman conditions of forced labor, cruel massacres, hunger, informers and executioners. There are no humane wars, but in the twentieth century genocide of outstanding proportions was carried out, when millions of people were exterminated only because they were born Jews, and the ghetto was the gateway to this hell.