26 Warsaw

process by which old songs were modiWed to the new conditions took
manifold forms. Songs of hunger and oppression (an integral part of the
Jewish experience prior to the Second World War) were particularly adapt-
able,11 but even songs from normal lifelullabies, love songs, and songs
about childrenacquired radically altered associations and provided reveal-
ing commentary about the new events. Many new songs were also composed
in direct response to what was happening; at least seventeen of those written
in Warsaw were preserved.12

The Extremes of Ghetto Life

The ghettos were a transitional phase in the Final Solution, intended
primarily as places where Jews could be concentrated prior to mass emigra-
tion and killing. A directive issued by Reinhard Heydrich on 21 September
1939 regarding policy towards Jews in the occupied territories stated that the
Wrst prerequisite for the fulWlment of the Wnal aim was concentrating Jews
from the countryside in the larger cities. As few concentration centres as
possible were to be set up, and only at locations with rail junctions.13
Plans for the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw were considered as early as
November 1939. It was only on 12 October 1940, however, that the oYcial
decree ordering the establishment of the ghetto was issued. A map indicating
the boundaries of the area was published, and on 16 November the district was
sealed. Situated in the Jewish quarter in the northern section of the city, the
walled-in ghetto occupied only 2.4 per cent of the citys area, and included no
parks or open spaces. According to a document issued on 20 January 1941 by the
district Resettlement Department, the 403 hectares of the ghetto housed
410,000 Jews. The situation worsened steadily as refugees poured in from
outlying areas throughout 1941. By January 1942 the ghettos size had been
reduced to only 300 hectares, and was inhabited by about 400,000 Jews.14
11
Flam, Singing for Survival, 131.
12
A listing of these songs is given in the Appendix, I.
13
Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust: Selected
Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union
(Jerusalem, 1981), 1734.
14
The periodic inXuxes of refugees meant that although the mortality rate in the ghetto was high,
the population Wgure remained relatively stable. The population reached a peak of over 450,000 in
Apr. 1941. Numbers began to decrease in the latter half of 1941, but dropped dramatically only after
the great deportations during the summer of 1942. See Roland, Courage under Siege, 29; Gutman
(ed.), Encyclopedia, 16078; Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, The Martyrdom and Struggle of the Jews in
Warsaw under German Occupation 193943, in Bartoszewski and Polonsky (eds.), The Jews in
Warsaw, 31248 at 31314.