ABSTRACT
The war saw a progressive barbarisation of Nazi policies towards the Jews - not as a result of a clearly laid out plan, but as a function of conflicting objectives among the various Nazi power blocs which found resolution only in more and more radical measures. Emigration ceased and large numbers of the Jewish populations of Gennany, Austria and the newly conquered parts of Poland were rounded up and shipped to the areas of Poland not incorporated in the Greater Gennan Reich, the so-called 'remainder state' , or Polish Government -General. Here they were 'concentrated' in ghettos, the largest being Lodz (established February 1940) and Warsaw (established November 1940). The area south of Lublin also became a major reception zone for Jewish deportees, and for some months in 1940 the intention was that this would become a reservation for Europe's entire Jewish population. Once in the Polish ghettos, the Jews became slave labourers, working in poor conditions and with inadequate food.
