Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T14:25:48.783Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Historiography and Popular Understandings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2011

Dan Michman
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Get access

Summary

The preliminary steps of the ghettoization process consisted of marking, movement restrictions, and the creation of Jewish control organs.…The three preliminary steps – marking, movement restrictions, and the establishment of a Jewish control machinery – were taken in the very first months of civil rule [in Poland].…In this book we shall be interested in the ghetto only as a control mechanism [for movement restrictions] in the hands of the German bureaucracy. To the Jews the ghetto was a way of life; to the Germans it was an administrative measure.

Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961)

Ghettoisation. The establishment of ghettos was one of the most effective means to get the Jewish population under total control and have them exploited. With the beginning of the mass murder campaign they turned for them into giant prisons, from which the Nazis could send the inmates to the annihilation camps.…The ghettos were a milestone on the way to genocide.

Michael Alberti, “‘Exerzierplatz des Nationalsozialismus’: Der Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1941” (2004)

Removing the Jew from the urban space was part of a more comprehensive process of removal from the political situation and from the German Lebensraum. The ultimate goal was to make all of these Judenrein. Whereas the space of the new city was reserved for the Aryan German, the ghetto was the urban space allotted to the Jew.

Boaz Neumann, The Nazi Weltanschauung: Space, Body, Language (2001)
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×