Ghetto

the Middle Ages with the French revolution

Certain authors use the term “ghetto” to indicate the cities in which the Roman Empire off-set the Jews with and 2nd century.

However, the first ghettos appeared in Germany, Spain, Portugal and France, at the 13th century. Paris account then four Juiverie S delimited well. In Spain, the S ( cal in space catalanophone) enjoy a privileged mode initially, then become poor districts that the Inquisition can easily supervise.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the Jews are driven back in great number in Eastern Europe, where they are maintained with the favor political parcelling out. In Avignon are built districts, the Carrières where live the “Juifs of the pope”. In Venice where, as in the other towns of Italy, they took part freely in the economic life, they all are held, starting from 1516, of living in the Ghetto .

The word “ghetto” is the pronunciation in Venetian dialect of Italian getto i.e. “foundry for bombard of Sérénissime”, foundry active at the 14th century. It was a place closed accessible by a bridge and a door. One passed in a sector where the ruins of the furnaces were accumulated. The Jews entered there in three days, occupying the already existing houses and quickly adapting them to their own requirements. Following that, the Jews were locked up in this place which one called “Ghetto”. The first ghetto and the Ghetto Novo (where the Jews in settled 1516) were followed Ghetto Vecio and Ghetto Novissimo . All these ghettos are located today in the Italian city of Venice.

The pope Pie V had recommended that the Adjacent states on its States Pontificaux build ghettos and, at the beginning of the 17th century, all the Italian big cities had one of them (except for Leghorn and Pisa).

The French revolution, with the decree of emancipation of the Jews, contributes strongly to the transformation of the European ghettos (see Napoleon and the Jews).

Known European ghettos until the 18th century August 1st

Ghetto of Ancône,
Ghetto (cal) of Gérone
Ghetto of Rome
Ghetto of Venice
Ghetto of Prague,
Ghetto of Frankfurt amndt Hand,
Ghetto of Mainz (Mainz)
Ghetto of Cova da Moura (Amadora, Lisbon)
Ghetto of Casal Ventoso (Lisbon)
Ghetto of Pezénas (France)
the careers of Provence, although those never had the name of Ghetto.

Under the anti-semitism hitlérien

The Nazisme used the system of the ghettos like stage towards the “Final solution” in Eastern Europe. During the Second world war, the ghettos were used to gather Jews, easy to control. The Nazi S locked up the Jews of Poland in districts with share which they enclosed and supervised, crossed of any contact with outside, transformed into vast prisons often over-populated, badly supplied before applying the systematic deportation towards the death camps.

It is in this context that the Ghetto of Warsaw, composed of more than 350.000 residents (of 400.000 after repatriations), sank in the most extreme misery. Not having gradually more the right to leave downtown, to work, people were famished, would die of hunger. Having understood that their fate was without exit vis-a-vis the Nazis, the population, without awaiting the attack of the troops Nazis, in the loneliness and the abandonment of the whole world, a rising organized to try to escape, the weapons with the hand. Its heroic revolt of April-May 1943 is remained a particularly tragic page of history of this time.

The Ghettos Nazis

Ghetto of Warsaw
Ghetto of Lodz
Ghetto of Budapest
Ghetto of Cracow
Ghetto of Częstochowa
Ghetto of Kolozsvár
Ghetto of Łachwa
Ghetto of Bialystok
Ghetto of Lviv
Ghetto of Marcinkance
Ghetto of Mińsk Mazowiecki
Ghetto of Pińsk
Ghetto of Rīga
Ghetto of Sosnowiec
Ghetto of Theresienstadt
Ghetto of Bedzin
Ghetto of Vilnius
Ghetto of Focsani

Under the occupation of the China by the Japan

Right before and during the Second world war, there was a ghetto with Shanghai with approximately 20.000 Jews having fled the Nazism, mainly resulting from Germany, of Austria, of Poland and Lithuania.

Ghetto of Shanghai

Recent meaning

If the concept of ghetto is historically related to the Jews, the term today became a generic term whose meaning is much broader.

Several other types of ghettos existed in parallel and remain today still like, for example, the shantytowns of the majority of the African countries but also the ghettos created under the mode of the Apartheid.

It should be recalled that the constitution of a ghetto supposes four conditions: a space imposed by the capacity on a category of population, a place ethniquement homogeneous, the constitution of an internal microphone-company, a stigmatization coming from outside. However, in France, the first condition at least is not met and the three others in a very unequal and always partial way. If the proportion from abroad, and especially of not-metropolitan people of origin (what includes naturalized, the French of foreign origin and French originating in overseas), is often raised, it is not it always more than in certain districts old and degraded downtown areas (the Goutte of Gold in Paris, the Basket in Marseilles), old working suburbs (Macreux with Aubervilliers), even of the joint ownerships adapted by a group (the “Asian triangle” of Choisy to Paris) or in déshérence (Thickets with Montfermeil) or private housing estates poor (the Portuguese of Champigny-sur-Marne, Maghrebians of the suburban districts of Vénissieux).

If the use of the ghetto term is historically and sociologiquement incorrect, the fact even as it was however often employed by the public authorities and by the media that it became of everyday usage is significant of a “carryforward of the discredit which touches the territory on the population which occupies it”. The population of the ailing districts almost always rejects this image of ghetto. When it employs this term, it is almost as much to define a situation of insulation, a town planning judged concentrationnaire, that to refer to the proportion from abroad.

See too

External bonds and references

chronological History and set of themes of the ghettos
Jewish Refugee Memorial Hall off Shanghai
the ghetto of Warsaw, personal page

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