‘A Ship without a Steering Wheel Sailing Towards the Unknown’: The Warsaw Ghetto, 22 September 1942-17 January 1943

Abstract

This article deals with one of the less known aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto daily life between the Great Deportation (22.7-21.9.1942) and the January Aktion (18.1.1943). A few months prior to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it numbered approximately 50,000 shattered Jews. These were the survivors of the largest Ghetto the Germans had set up and who, despite the inhuman conditions that prevailed, managed to create a vital life until most of its inhabitants were sent to Treblinka and murdered. In the months between the summer of 1942 and the spring of 1943, the remaining members of the Jewish community underwent many changes – from deep sorrow and depression, through moral and social disintegration, until the establishment of a basis for a communal organization that led to the renewal of various aspects of Jewish public life. 

On the basis of rich archival documentation, life in the Warsaw Ghetto following the Great Deportation is described, as well as the important role played by the labor force in the diminished Ghetto. Diaries, testimonies and later accounts expose the social life which emerged in the Ghetto, and the role played by the young Underground activists in the new structure. The activities carried out by the Jewish Underground at the different stages of the Ghetto are presented in a broad context, in order to place them in the framework they revolved, particularly as part of the social processes and public and private life which developed in the Ghetto. Thus, the Underground grew out of the despair which they shared by all Ghetto Jews and were part of a wider Jewish structure that managed to develop in spite of the horror – albeit facing many difficulties.