While watching the film, one of the women stated something along the lines of respectable families would take loved ones who died and lay them on the sidewalk. Is this different from what people of lesser means would do? I'm confused as to what was meant by this. Anyone know?
shareThe death rate in the Warsaw Ghetto was about 15 times that of the pre-war Jewish Community in Warsaw (roughly 50,000 Jews died in the ghetto in 1941 alone). There were a lot of factors that were responsible for this, all of them relating to conditions the Nazis created. The official ration for Jews was reduced to as little as 120 calories per day. A lot of food was smuggled in illegally, but even with that there was mass starvation. The ghetto was extremely overcrowded (about one third of Warsaw's population crammed into 3% of its area). There were also few if any provisions for medicine, soap, new clothing or fuel. Epidemic diseases raged, especially typhus. Ironically, the Nazi used the fear of epidemics (especially typhus) as a pretext for creating the ghetto.
People left bodies on the streets for a variety of reasons. They couldn't afford the burial tax and the cost of burials, they needed the clothing from the corpses for their own use or to sell, they wanted to hold on to (the deceased) ration cards as long as possible. Again these were conditions the Nazis created and then filmed (often with staged, contrived scenes) as if to justify the genocide they were perpetrating.
OK, so she was saying the wealthy would normally bury their loved ones, but couldn't do so and were forced to leave them on the street. That makes sense. Thanks.
It's all fun and games until someone gets caught. Then it's larceny.
I think the other point the witness may have been referring to regarding "respectable families" was the fact that while there were class distinctions in the ghetto, what class one belonged to was constantly in a state of flux. Some people managed or even temporarily prospered (especially smugglers and the police) but the ghetto was full of formerly middle and even upper class people who were now pauperized. Most Jews had no regular means of earning enough money to buy food and other necessities, and survived by selling off their possessions. When these were gone, they joined the beggars on the street who were constantly dying of hunger and disease, but replaced by formerly prosperous people.
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