In March 1940, the German occupation authorities ordered a barbed wire fence strung around the Jewish neighborhood of Ostrowiec.  Though the Ostrowiec Ghetto was now clearly defined, it was not officially established until April 1941, when the gates were sealed tight.  Heavily armed sentry guards were posted to keep the 18,000 Jews, including Paula and her family, locked inside.  To maintain order among the starving and confined population, the SS formed a Judenrat, or Jewish Council, along with the Jewish police force on which Paula’s brother Herschel served. 
 
The real decisions, however, were made by SS guards and their superiors in Krakow and Berlin.  On November 11 and 12, 1942, German authorities held their first major deportation from the ghetto.  Around 11,000 people, including Paula’s two sisters, were transported to the Treblinka death camp, and the ghetto was reduced in size to maintain its previous overcrowded density.   Disease and starvation were rampant, and further selections continually reduced the population of the ghetto.  While Paula hid from deportation, other inhabitants survived by working as slave laborers in nearby cement and brick factories, or on road-building crews in the Polish countryside.  Starting in October 1942, the ghetto was transformed into a labor camp, and by the spring of 1943 the ghetto itself was emptied.  The remaining 2,000 people — including Paula and her family — remained in the Ostrowiec labor camp, spending their days and nights at regimented labor stations and in their barracks.  On August 3, 1944 this population was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.