The district called Ghetto was the place where all Venetian Jews were required to live. In order to prevent them from leaving the ghetto at night, the gates were closed and guarded by Christians. Jews had to pay for the guards. It was 1516 and the Venetian Senate invented the ghetto.
Jews living in the ghetto divided themselves according to ethnic identity. They were Italian Jews, Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, German Jews and the Levantine Sephardi community. Each group had its own synagogue, followed their own liturgy and cultivated the languages they brought along and two Jewish languages, Hebrew and Yiddish.
The Venetian Ghetto the ghetto was separated from the city until 1797, when Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered Italy, opened its gates and ended the 281-year period of isolating Jews. The ghetto in Venice was the first in the world, but the Roman Ghetto managed by popes lasted the longest.
While walking along the streets of the former Venetian Ghetto, we found small plaques embedded in the pavement in front of the entrances to the buildings. They commemorate the inhabitants of mostly Jewish origin who were transported to death in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the World War II.
