Historical Photograph
No Entry sign for people unauthorized to enter the Ghetto,
Other ghettos arose in Frankfurt, Rome and Prague in 16-17th centuries.
The term “ghetto” originated from the name of the Jewish quarter of Venice, established in 1516 to keep Jews segregated.
I am constantly surrounded by a crowd of people: at home, in the dirty cramped kitchen, where women cook and quarrel over the stove, and in the large dark room, where my grandma sits calmly at her sewing machine working, and where my cot is too, in that room that we share with strangers. A different family lives in every corner of the room. There is no bathroom. Everyone keeps using the clogged toilet in the staircase.
Roma Liebling
Wasn’t that easy to say--escape the displacement! And how were you supposed to cross the barbed wire fence lined with policemen? How were you to make the first step in a free street? Once they noticed the armband, they would put a bullet through your head. Drop the armband? Once they noticed the white symbol slipping down your arm, they would hand you over to the police right away. Even if you hid in the darkest of gates [...] someone would always see you enter that gate as a Jew and walk out of it as--as who? Well, who? For even if you had dropped your armband a hundred times, you would still be yourself. You would still be a Jew--yet without an armband. Your Jewishness came out with every anxious move, with every hesitant step, whenever you hunched your back, as if burdened with the yoke of bondage, whenever you gave that look of a baited animal; it was evident in your whole figure, your face, your eyes, all bearing the stamp of the ghetto.
Gusta Dranger, teacher, fighter of the ZOB (Jewish Resistance Group)
