Warsaw and Budapest, 1939-1945: two ghettos, two policies, two outcomes

This chapter compares the histories of the Warsaw and Budapest ghettos. Prior to the Second World War a significant number of Jews lived in both cities. Their fates were very different. Of the 380,000 Jews living in Warsaw before the war only an estimated 11,500 survived, whereasout of the 200,000 Jews of Budapest more than 130,000 lived to see the liberation of Hungary. The Warsaw ghettto was created in1940, by the time it was sealed in November 1940 nearly 400,000 people were crammed into the area surrounded by 16km long 3metre high walls. The fate of Budapest unfolded differently. Between May and July 1944, 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary most of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau