History glossary
ghettos
sealed urban districts where Nazi authorities forced Jews to live in isolation, overcrowding, hunger, and disease.
- Category
- Persecution system
- Region
- German-occupied Europe
- Date range
- 1939–1945
What it means
Sealed urban districts where Nazi authorities forced Jews to live in isolation, overcrowding, hunger, and disease. In occupied Europe, ghettos became instruments of control, forced labour, starvation, and later deportation to killing sites.
Stories using this term
The Holocaust
From legal discrimination to genocide, the Holocaust traces twelve years of escalating persecution that killed six million Jews and millions of others across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Nazi Germany
From Weimar collapse to WWII, Nazi Germany imposed totalitarian rule, expansion, and genocide.
Operation Barbarossa
From Hitler's ideological war in the east to Soviet survival before Moscow, Barbarossa turned expected blitzkrieg into prolonged attritional catastrophe.
The Second World War
From fragile peace to global war, WWII reshaped the world through conflict, genocide, and new power orders.
