Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities furthering their exploitation.

In German documents, and signage at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them as Jüdischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden, both of which translate as the Jewish Quarter.

Entire Jewish communities were deported into these closed off zones by train from their places of origin systematically, using Order Police battalions,[4] first in the Reichsgaue, and then throughout the Generalgouvernement territory.

Nazi ideology depicted Jews, Slavs and Roma as inferior race Untermenschen ("subhumans") who threatened the purity of Germany's Aryan Herrenrasse ("master race"), and viewed these people and also political opponents of the Nazi party as parasitic vermin or diseases that endangered the overall health of the Volksgemeinschaft, the German racial community.

[7] German forces regarded the establishment of ghettos as temporary measures, in order to allow higher level Nazis in Berlin to decide how to execute their goal of eradicating Jews from Europe.

With the crowded living conditions, starvation diets, and insufficient sanitation (coupled with lack of medical supplies), epidemics of infectious disease became a major feature of ghetto life.

[15] To prevent unauthorised contact between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations, German Order Police battalions were assigned to patrol the perimeter.

Poland's Catholic clergy massively forged baptism certificates,[17] which were given to Jews by the dominant Polish resistance movement, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK).

[20] On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps.