In Warsaw Ghetto, doctors and others halted typhus outbreak during WWII

Between 1940 and 1943, over 90,000 Jews died in the Warsaw Ghetto of starvation and disease. But that number could have been much higher if not for the efforts of doctors and ghetto officials who managed to stop a typhus epidemic in its tracks, a new study suggests.

An international group of researchers wanted to know why a deadly typhus outbreak in the ghetto fizzled in 1941. They recently published their research in Science Advances. The Nazis scapegoated Jews as supposed disease vectors to justify placing them in the ghetto in 1940 and 1941. Then, they increased the chances that Jews would contract and spread disease to one another. Over 400,000 people were packed into just 1.3 square miles and given starvation rations — only 200 calories per person, per day.