The Ghetto of Warsaw

“Two hundred Dutch Jews deported from Holland by the Germans to work at clearing up debris in the ruined ghetto of Warsaw, are now the only inhabitants of what once was Europe’s greatest concentration of Jews, according to an eyewitness report from Geneva printed in the London JEWISH STANDARD. ‘The ruins of the ghetto are still strewn with the corpses of Jews who lost their lives in the last heroic resistance against the Germans,’ the report said. ‘The Dutch Jews engaged in clearing up the debris are sheltered in specially-improvised barracks and the exploding of time bombs they turn up is the only sound that breaks the silence.”

If you’re interested, you can see an oral history with one of the Jewish prisoners assigned to clear the Warsaw ghetto here. Mr. Lowenberg was the Vice Chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum while the Museum was being built.