The Nazis established the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940 in Warsaw, Poland. The largest of all Jewish ghettos in World War II, at its peak it contained over 400,000 Jews in only 1.3 square miles of space. In the ghetto, thousands of people died each month, resulting from overcrowding, starvation, and epidemics. In July 1942, deportations began, and by mid-September, 250,000 Jews had been shipped to the Treblinka death camp.
During the spring of 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto was the site of one of the longest and best-organized ghetto uprisings. With only 56,000 residents remaining, the ghetto erupted in armed resistance when word reached residents that those Jews already sent for “resettlement” had been murdered in Nazi death camps. For almost a month, ghetto occupants fought off a powerful and well-armed German army. Eventually, the Germans regained control of the ghetto and deported the surviving Jews to the gas chambers of Treblinka.
