Czerniaków — the Warsaw ghetto sealed

Since the occupation of Poland, the German authorities have been concentrating Warsaw's Jews in a designated quarter. In October 1940, Governor Ludwig Fischer orders the creation of a ghetto; Jews from the surrounding area are crammed into it, and the zone is progressively isolated by walls. On November 16, 1940, the ghetto is closed: nearly 400,000 people find themselves locked inside it on a few square kilometers.

The Germans administer the ghetto through a Jewish Council (Judenrat), chaired since the autumn of 1939 by Adam Czerniaków, engineer and former senator who stayed in Warsaw when other leaders had fled. The Judenrat is caught in a vise: carry out German orders (censuses, requisitions, forced labor) or evade them at the risk of immediate collective reprisals. Each directive passed on engages the Council's responsibility before the population it is supposed to represent. What remains is to define the line it will adopt toward the occupier.

As the walls close in, he must decide on his course: cooperate with the occupier to try to organize survival (food supply, hospitals, clandestine schools), resign as a sign of refusal, or openly resist.