In November 1940, the Germans finally established the Warsaw ghetto. The Jewish population still living outside the "Seuchensperrgebiet" was brought inside the special area. Poles living within the designated ghetto boundaries were ordered to move out. Small factories, shopsand stores were allowed two weeks more, until December 1st, to complete their evacuation. But, beginning with November 15th, no Jew was allowed to leave the Jewish precincts. All houses vacated by Jews were immediately locked by the Germans and then, with all their contents, gratuitiously given to Polish merchants and hucksters. Hucksters and small-time pedlars, the typical brood of war conditions, those were the people upon whom the Germans counted, whose favours they tried to gain by presenting them with confiscated Jewish assets and by tolerating their practice of food-smuggling.
The walls and barbed wire surrounding the ghetto grew higher every day until, on November 15th, they completely cut off the Jews from the outside world. Contacts with Jews living in other cities and towns were, naturally, also made impossible. For Jewish workers, all possibilities to earn a living vanished. Not only all factory workers, but all those who had been working in "Aryan" enterprises, as well as government agencies became unemployed. The typically war-time group of "middlemen", tradesmen appeared. The great majority, however, left jobless, started selling everything that could possibly be sold, and slowly approached the depths of extreme poverty. The Germans, it is true, widely publicized their policy of "increasing the productive power of the ghetto", but actually they achieved the complete pauperization of the population. The ghetto population was increased by thousands of Jews evicted from neighbouring towns. These people with practically nothing to their names, alone, in strange surroundings where others were preoccupied with their own difficulties, literally dying of malnutrition, tried to build their existence anew.
The complete segregation of the ghetto, the regulations under which no newspaper could be brought into it and all the news from the outside world carefully kept out, had a very definite purpose. These regulations contributed to the development of a special way of thinking common to the ghetto inhabitants. Everything taking place outside the ghetto walls became more and more foggy, distant, strange. Only the present day really mattered. Only matters of the most personal nature, the closest circle of friends were by now the focal point of interest of the average ghetto inhabitant. The most important thing was simply "to be alive".
This "life" itself, however, had a different meaning to each, depending on his environment and opportunities. It was a life of plenty for the still wealthy few, it was exuberant and colourful for a variety of depraved Gestapo-men and demoralized smugglers, and, for a multitude of workers and unemployed, it was a hungry existence upheld by the meagre public kitchens' soup and rationed bread. Everyone tried hard to hang on to his particular sort of "life" as best he could. Those who had money sought the essence of their existence in comfortable living, strove to find it in the dense, chattery air of overcrowded cafes, or plunged into the dance music of the night clubs. Those who had nothing, the paupers, sought their "happiness" in a rotten potato recovered from a garbage pit, found evasive joy in a piece of begged-for bread with which the taste of hunger could, for a while, be stilled. These were the tragic contrasts of the ghetto so often exploited by the Germans, photographed for propaganda purposes and maliciously presented to the opinion of the world. "In the Warsaw Ghetto beggars, swollen from hunger, die in front of luscious window displays of food smuggled from the 'Aryan' sections..."
The hunger increased daily. From dark, overcrowded living quarters it got out into the streets, came into sight in the shape of ridiculously swollen, log-shaped bodies with diseased feet, covered with open wounds, wrapped in dirty rags. It spoke through the mouths of the beggars, the aged, the young, and the children, in the streets and courtyards.
Children begged everywhere, in the ghetto as well as on the "Aryan" side. Six-year-old boys crawled through the barbed wire under the very eyes of the gendarmes in order to obtain food "on the other side". They supported entire families in this manner. Often a lone shot in the vicinity of the barbed wire told the casual passers-by that another little smuggler had died in this fight with omnipotent hunger. A new "profession" appeared, the so-called "catchers". Boys, or rather shadows of former boys, would snatch packages from pedestrians and immediately, while still running, devour the contents. In their haste, they sometimes stuffed themselves full of soap or uncooked peas....
Such was the misery by now that people began to die of hunger in the streets. Every morning, about 4-5 a.m., funeral carts collected a dozen or more corpses on the streets that had been covered with a sheet of paper and weighted down with a few rocks. Some simply fell in the streets and remained there, others died in their homes but their families, after having stripped them completely (in order to sell the clothes), dumped the bodies in front of the houses so that burial would be made at the cost of the Jewish Community Council. Cart after cart filled with nude corpses would move through the streets. One on top of the other the bony carcasses lay, the heads bobbing up and down and beating against one another or against the wood of the cart on the uneven pavement.
When the ghetto was once more flooded with evicted Jews from smaller cities and towns, the situation became disastrous. There were never enough houses and living quarters. Now homeless, grimy people began loitering in the streets. All day long they camped in the courtyards, ate there, slept there, lived there. Finally, when there was no other way, they turned to the specially established "points"--transient homes for refugees. These "points" were one of the darkest spots of ghetto life, a real plague with which it was virtually impossible to cope (only some of the children could be moved into children's homes, where conditions were better).
A few hundred people crowd every large, unheated room of a synagogue, every hall of a deserted factory. Unkempt, lousy, with no facilities to wash, undernourished, and hungry ("water soups" are given once daily by the Jewish Community Council), they remain all day on their filthy straw mattresses, with no strength to rise. The walls are green, slimy, mildewed. The mattresses usually lie on the ground, seldom on wooden supports. A whole family often receives sleeping space for one. This is the kingdom of hunger and misery.
Simultaneously spotted fever raged in the ghetto. Yellow signs reading "Fleckfieber!" (Spotted Fever) were affixed to a constantly increasing number of doors and entrances. Particularly great numbers of the starvelings at the "points" were afflicted. All hospitals, by now handling contagious diseases exclusively, were overcrowded. 150 sick daily were being admitted to a single ward and placed two or three in a bed, or on the floors. The dying were viewed impatiently--let them vacate quicker for the next one! Physicians simply could not keep up with it. There had not been enough of them in the first place. Hundreds were dying at a given instance. The grave-diggers were unable to dig fast enough. Although hundreds of corpses were being put into every grave, hundreds more had to lie around for several days, filling the graveyard with a sickening, sweetish odour. The epidemic kept growing. It could not be controlled. Typhus was everywhere, and from everywhere it threatened. It shared mastery over the ghetto with the overpowering hunger. The monthly mortality rate reached 6,000 (over 2% of the population).
In such tragic conditions, the Germans attempted to establish a semblance of law and order. The Jewish Council ("Judenrat") officially governed the ghetto from the very first day of its establishment. To secure "order" a uniformed Jewish police force was formed. The children smuggling across the barbed wires now had to be careful lest still another official would catch them, and the ghetto population received another Cerberus, making a total of three: the Germans, the Polish policemen, and the Jewish policemen. But the agencies established to give the ghetto a semblance of normal life were in reality nests of corruption and demoralization. The Germans succeeded in drafting the best-known citizens into serving on the Jewish Council. The only member of the Council, however, who had the courage to leave that agency despite the death penalty for such an act was Comrade Arthur (Szmul Zygielbojm).