This month we remember that eighty years ago in October 1940, in Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto was established. But what is it exactly that we remember, for those of us who do remember? So much can be said about the Warsaw Ghetto, and so much can be learned from what happened there and how it happened. To be sure, the concept of the ghetto didn't get invented by the Nazis to control the Jewish population, but it was simply re-introduced and "put on steroids" so to speak!

Holocaust historian and author Raul Hilberg explained that there was a progression in how the world got organized to first control and eventually get rid of its Jews, "Since the fourth century after Christ there have been three anti-Jewish policies: conversion, expulsion and annihilation. The second appeared as an alternative to the first, and the third emerged as an alternative to the second."

While the final solution concentrated on the complete eradication of European Jewry, the institutionalization of the ghetto paved the way and helped to organize that step.

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