Ghetto

ghetto (gĕt`ō), originally, a section of a city in which Jews lived; it has come to mean a section of a city where members of any racial group are segregated. In the early Middle Ages the segregation of Jews in separate streets or localities was voluntary. The first compulsory ghettos were in Spain and Portugal at the end of the 14th cent. The ghetto was typically walled, with gates that were closed at a certain hour each night, and all Jews had to be inside the gate at that hour or suffer penalties. The reason generally given for compulsory ghettos was that the faith of Christians would be weakened by the presence of Jews; the idea of Jewish segregation dates from the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215. Within the ghetto the inhabitants usually had autonomy, with their own courts of law, their own culture, and their own charitable, recreational, educational, and religious institutions. Economic activities, however, were restricted, and beyond the ghetto walls Jews were required to wear badges of identification. One of the most infamous ghettos was that of Frankfurt, to which Jews were compelled to move by a city ordinance of 1460. Crowded into a narrow section, the ghetto underwent several disastrous fires. The ghetto in Venice was established in 1516 after long negotiations between the city and the Jews. In 1870 the last ghetto in Western Europe, in Rome, was abolished. In Russia the Jewish Pale continued to exist until 1917. After the 18th cent. ghettos were also to be found in some Muslim countries. During World War II the Nazis set up ghettos in many towns in E Europe from which Jews were transported to concentration camps for liquidation; the Warsaw (Poland) ghetto was a prime example. In the United States, African Americans, Chicanos, and immigrant groups have been forced to live in ghettos through economic and social forces rather than being required to do so by law. See also anti-Semitism.

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ghetto

Formerly, a street or quarter of a city set apart as a legally enforced residential area for Jews. Forced segregation of Jews spread throughout Europe in the 14th–15th centuries. Ghettos were customarily enclosed with walls and gates and kept locked at night and during Christian festivals. Since outward expansion was usually impossible, most ghettos grew upward; congestion, fire hazards, and unsanitary conditions often resulted. Ghettos were abolished in western Europe in the 19th century; those revived by the Nazi Party (see Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) were overcrowded holding places preliminary to extermination. More recently, the term ghetto has been applied to impoverished urban areas exclusively settled by a minority group or groups and perpetuated by economic and social pressures rather than legal and physical measures.

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Ghetto 

a part of the city set aside as a residential area for Jews. The designation “ghetto” appeared in the 16th century (apparently from Italian ghetta—the cannon workshop around which the Jewish quarter of Venice, set up in 1516, was situated). However, ghettos existed in many medieval European cities prior to that date (the best-known ghettos were in Frankfurt am Main, Prague, Venice, and Rome).

The settling of Jews in ghettos originally was in keeping with the corporate order characteristic of the Middle Ages, when every professional or religious group lived in isolation, but in the 14th and 15th centuries it became compulsory. Residents of the ghetto were forbidden to leave it at night (the ghetto gates were locked for the night). Life within the ghetto was regulated by the wealthy upper-class members of the Jewish community and by the rabbinate. A legacy of the Middle Ages, the ghettos disappeared in the first half of the 19th century (the Roman ghetto was permanently abolished only in 1870). There were no ghettos in tsarist Russia. Only in a few cities annexed to its territory when Poland was partitioned (late 18th century) was there a restriction on the right of Jews to live outside streets assigned to them; this restriction was ended in 1862.

During World War II (1939-45), in a number of Eastern European cities under fascist German occupation, the Nazis created ghettos that were essentially huge concentration camps in which the Jewish population was destroyed. The armed uprisings of the prisoners of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and the Białystok ghetto in August 1943 were part of the national liberation struggle of Poland’s antifascist forces.

The term “ghetto” is sometimes used to designate a section of the city inhabited by national minorities that are subject to discrimination (for example, Harlem, “Negro ghetto” in New York).

S. IA. BOROVOI