Ghetto Medicine: The Special Case of Ghetto Lodz, 1940-44

Abstract

"Today there is no doubt that the creation of conditions in the ghettos that would cause Jews to expire in masses 'naturally' - that is, without gas chambers and executions - was part of the Nazi plan to annihilate the Jewish population" ... The first Jewish ghetto in Poland, established soon after the German invasion in 1939, was perhaps the most hermetically sealed-off mass prison of World War II. As the living conditions deteriorated year after year, the depleted community was plagued by epidemics of infections and endemic diseases. The extermination process was completed with frequent "relocations to the East," as the deportations to the death camps were euphemistically called. These started in mid-1942 and were concluded by 31 July 1944. What were the major diseases and their fatalities during this time? 'The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto', a precise daily record of life in the ghetto over 4 years that was never discovered by the Nazis, might provide the answers.