Ghetto, which has gradually come to mean any area where a group is isolated from the main society, was originally the name of the Jewish neighborhood established in Venice, Italy in 1516. In that era, Jews in some European towns were confined to neighborhoods which were surrounded by walls and locked nightly and during holidays. This practice was abolished across Europe in the 19th century. During World War II, the Nazis re-established ghettos as places to concentrate, imprison, and exploit populations of Jews before deporting them to concentration camps and death camps. The Nazis carefully controlled the living conditions in the ghettos, relying on disease and starvation to eliminate as many Jews as possible. Paula lived in the Ostrowiec Ghetto in Poland for four years. Bert and his family were deported from Germany to the Riga Ghetto in Latvia.
