Czestochowa Ghetto

When the Germans occupied Czestochowa on September 3, 1939, there were about 28,500 Jews living in the city. Immediately the city’s Jews began to be persecuted and already the next day about 300 Jews were murdered. On September 16, a Jewish council was set up to implement the directives imposed by the germans. Jews were forced to submit to anti-Semitic decrees and forced into slave labor in nearby industries taken over by the Germans. In 1941, the German city commissioner, SS-Brigadeführer Richard Wendler, set up a Jewish ghetto in the eastern part of the city. The ghetto was shielded from the rest of the city on August 23, 1941. Only with special documents was it possible to move between the ghetto and the rest of the city. At most there were about 48,000 Jews in the ghetto.

Conditions in the ghetto were substandard and the lack of food, supplies and medicine contributed to mortality. On September 22, 1942, the Nazis began to liquidate the ghetto and about two weeks later, 40,000 Jews had bee deported to Treblinka and murdered in its gas chambers. Old and young people who could not be deported were murdered on the spot but about 2000 managed to escape or hide in the city. About 5,000 Jews who were essential for the german war effort were exempt from deportation. These Jews were housed in a new smaller ghetto. The Nazis conducted regular round-ups in the ghetto, but when the final liquidation of the ghetto began in June 1943, the jews revolted. About 3,000 Jews died during the uprising and those who survived were sent to other camps to perform slave labor. Between September 22 and December 15, 1942, about 2,000 Jews were murdered from the ghetto and buried in two mass graves just outside the ghetto.