Because of Rafah, I am thinking of the Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw Ghetto was set up by Germany in November 1940. It was a 3.4 square kilometre area of the Polish capital where, at its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned.

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. It was the first action by Nazi Germany in the attempt to create Lebensraum (living space) for Germans.

Just over a week before the invasion, Adolf Hitler delivered a speech to his military commanders: “The object of the war is … physically to destroy the enemy. That is why I have prepared, for the moment only in the East, my 'Death's Head' formations with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need.”

Nazi propaganda had been working relentlessly to convince Germans that Jews and Slavs were Untermenschen (sub-humans).

From the first day of the invasion, the German air force attacked civilian targets and columns of refugees along the roads. During the rapid German advance, the German forces (both SS and the regular Wehrmacht) murdered tens of thousands of Polish civilians.

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees fled the advancing German army. Many of the refugees fled without a specific destination in mind. They travelled on foot or by any available transport - cars, bicycles, carts, or trucks - clogging roads to the east. Most took only what they could carry.

With so many refugees escaping the Polish-German front, by the end of September 1939, the number of Jews in and around Warsaw increased dramatically, 

On 6 October 1939, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, the German army and the Soviet forces, which had attacked from the east, gained full control over Poland.

Just over a year later, on 16 October 1940, the German governor-general announced the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto. All Jewish people in Warsaw had to relocate to the area of the Ghetto. In total, 113,000 gentile Poles were forced to resettle to the 'Aryan side' and were replaced by 138,000 Jews from other districts of the capital.

The Germans closed the Warsaw Ghetto to the outside world on 15 November, 1940. The wall around it was three metres high, topped with barbed wire. Escapees were shot on sight.

Within the wall lived 395,000 residents of Warsaw of Jewish descent, 50,000 people resettled from the western part of the Warsaw district, 3,000 from its eastern part, as well as 4,000 Jews from Germany (all resettled in early months of 1941). Altogether, there were around 460,000 inhabitants, 85,000 of them children under the age of 14.

The living conditions in the Ghetto were very difficult. The density of population was extreme. There were 146,000 people per square kilometre, which meant 8 to 10 people per room on average. Jews from other districts of Warsaw, as well as those from other cities, were allowed to bring only the absolute minimum with them – usually just a few personal belongings and bedclothes. 

The German administration deliberately limited food supplies to the absolute minimum, which caused near starvation amongst the population from the very beginning of the Ghetto's existence. Malnutrition, overcrowding and lack of medical care brought another deadly factor to the daily life of the Ghetto's residents – typhus.

On 21 July 1942, the Nazis began the 'Gross-Aktion Warsaw', the mass-deportation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp, 80 kilometres north-east. Around 300,000 Warsaw Ghetto residents perished in the gas chambers at the camp.

By the Spring of 1943, there were only an estimated 50,000 people left living in the Warsaw Ghetto.

On 19 April 1943, the Nazis marched into the Ghetto to start with the final destruction of the area and its inhabitants. The Germans expected no resistance, but they were stopped by hundreds of Jewish resistance fighters, mostly young men and women, armed with handguns and Molotov cocktails.

Around one thousand Jewish fighters, received some support from Polish partisans, but had hardly any weapons or ammunition. Even so, they managed to engage the German soldiers in weeks of fierce fighting.

The Jewish resistance had built passages and tunnels between buildings. Many of the structures were equipped with toilets and sleeping places for several people, and also had stocks of food that would have allowed their inhabitants to survive for a few months. Researchers of the Holocaust have located more than eighty bunkers and shelters in the area of the former Ghetto.

After initial setbacks, 2,000 Waffen-SS soldiers soon crushed the resistance, setting houses on fire with flamethrowers and systematically burning and blowing up the Ghetto buildings, block by block. The last inhabitants of the Ghetto were either murdered there or deported to the extermination camps of Treblinka and Majdanek. By mid-May of 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist.

* * *

The Gaza Strip is a Palestinian territory of about 365 square kilometers and 2.1 million inhabitants. It has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967 and subject to an Israeli blockade that prevents people and goods from freely entering or leaving the territory since 2007. The territory is often called "the world's largest open-air prison".

Since the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in early October 2023, around 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, including some 14,000 children. Israeli attacks have destroyed or damaged more than half the buildings and 1.7 million Palestinians (70% of the population) in the Gaza Strip are currently displaced. All food, water and power supplies have been cut off.

In October 2023, the Israeli forces ordered inhabitants of North Gaza and Gaza City to evacuate and head south. In November, the Israelis ordered the evacuation of most of Deir al-Balah and parts of Khan Younis. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the air strikes and artillery bombardments in the north and central zones of the enclave. By early May 2024, as many as 1.4 million Palestinians were sheltering in the 65 square kilometres of the southern zone of Rafah. On 7 May, Israeli forces seized control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, cutting off the last remaining route for humanitarian aid to come in and, potentially, for civilians to get out. On 11 May, the Israeli forces ordered Palestinians to evacuate parts of Rafah. Aerial bombing intensified and tanks were deployed in central Rafah, as Israel prepared for a ground attack.