1940, the first ghettos in the Warsaw District were established in Góra
Kalwaria and Parysów, and then in May in Łowicz County. In November
1940, the ghetto in Warsaw was sealed; in March 1941, ghettos in Lublin and
Kraków; in April in Radom; and in August in Częstochowa. Ghettos continued
to be established until the end of 1941.²⁶ In small towns, ghettos were usually
open, not walled nor fenced around; Jews were required to live in certain
buildings, but they were not banned from going outside the ghetto. This was
eventually changed by Hans Frank in the ordinance of 15 November 1941,
which assigned the death penalty for Jews found outside the designated districts
and allowed the police to use weapons against Jews trying to escape
from the ghettos.²⁷
Jews usually ventured outside the ghettos in search of food. When
the Germans introduced rationing of food in the occupied territories, Jews
received food ration cards to purchase minimal food products, insufficient
for daily sustenance and at artificially fixed prices. At the same time, Polish
peasants had to sell their food products at official low prices and within forced
quotas, thereby losing their profits. A black market arose as German ordinances
forbade peasants to trade with the Jews. However, illicit trade flourished
especially in small towns, and the local German authorities made profits
on bribes. The Jews sold services, crafts, and all their movable property in
exchange for food (Docs. 35, 124). An interesting phenomenon is mentioned
in several accounts concerning Jews resettled to the Warsaw ghetto. Some
of them periodically left the ghetto, heading for villages in the area from
which they originated, where they worked or begged, and their former Polish
neighbours usually responded with sympathy (Docs. 136, 159).
The outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941
brought a radical change in German policy toward the Jews in the occupied
territories. The Einsatzgruppen which had entered with the German army
were meant not only to intimidate the local population (as in September 1939
in Poland), but also to carry out mass executions of the Jews in the newly
26 B. Engelking, Życie codzienne Żydów w miasteczkach..., in Prowincja noc, pp. 168–173; Teresa Prekerowa, Wojna i okupacja, in: Najnowsze dzieje Żydów w Polsce w zarysie (do 1950 roku), ed. Jerzy Tomaszewski (Warszawa, 1993), pp. 282–283.
27 J.A. Młynarczyk, “Akcja Reinhard” w gettach prowincjonalnych dystryktu warszawskiego..., in Prowincja noc, pp. 51–52.
